Michael Hanscom

Enthusiastic ambivert. Geeky, liberal, friendly, curious, hopepunk; trying to be a good person. (he/him)

2023 Reading Round-Up 📚

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Every year, I set myself a goal of reading at least 52 books over the course of the year — an average of one a week. This year I made it to 74 books. Here’s a quick (?) overview…

2023 Reading Goal of 52 books met! 142% (74 books) Fantastic! You've exceeded yoru reading goal by 22 books.

The trend of the last few years holds true, with another year almost entirely dedicated to escapist fluff. Surprised? I’m not.

Non-fiction: Just two books, counting for 3% of my reading. One was a nice behind-the-scenes look at The Wrath of Khan, the other was an excellent memoir by Deafblind author Elsa Sjunneson. I highly recommend Being Seen, especially if you have any interest in recognizing and combatting ableism.

Non-genre-fiction (where “genre” is shorthand — though, not very short, if you include this parenthetical — for science-fiction, fantasy, and horror): Absolutely nothing this year. Everything that wasn’t non-fiction was “genre” fiction.

Quality genre fiction: About the same as last year; primarily the Philip K. Dick nominees and my Hugo project, with a few others added here and there.

As usual, I read all of the books nominated for this year’s Philip K. Dick awards. However, I’m no longer posting my thoughts or review on the nominees, as starting this year I am the coordinator for the Philip K. Dick award ceremony at Norwescon. While I have no input into selecting any of the nominees or the eventual winner, I don’t want to give any appearance of impropriety. So, I’ll just read and enjoy each year’s nominees, and you all will have to make your own judgements as to your favorites.

I added nine books to my Hugo reading project, bringing me up to 65% of the way through. This year’s selections were all good, without any I didn’t enjoy, but the surprises were Lois McMaster Bujold’s The Vor Game and Barrayar (and the other books in that series I read to make sure I got the whole story); I’d never read them before, and likely wouldn’t have picked them up based on the cover artwork and blurbs, but have ended up really enjoying the series and am looking forward to reading more.

Fluff genre fiction: Unsurprisingly, this once again ended up being the strong majority of this year’s reading. Lots of Star Trek novels, with a few detours here and there. And given everything that was going on in 2020 2021 2022 2023, it was very nice to have a bookshelf full of options that wouldn’t take a whole lot of brain power for me to disappear into.

One change this year is that I read a lot more digitally than I usually do. While I generally prefer physical books, there are times when digital books come in handy, or where they’re the only real option. In the first case, when we went on vacation this year, it was easy to bring along a small library on my iPad; in the second case, I’ve started actually reading the two SF/F magazines I subscribe to (Uncanny and Clarkesworld), both of which are distributed digitally.

Finally, Storygraph’s stats on my year’s reading tell me:

A graph of my reading over the year tracking number of books and number of pages. January, August, and September are the busiest months; March, April, and June are the slowest.

On to 2024!

📚 Fool Moon by Jim Butcher

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74/2023 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️

About the same as the first in the series; not mindblowing, but entertaining enough. Between that and enough people I know recommending that I keep going, I likely will. Though I do have to say — I like breasts as much as most people who are attracted to breasts do, but even so, Dresden/Butcher mentioning every female character’s breasts (often bare, as this book has a lot of werewolves shifting between wolf and human form) at every opportunity had me rolling my eyes a bit more each time.

Me holding Fool Moon on my iPad

Year 50 Day 241

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Me standing in our living room with a somewhat tired, resigned expression.

Day 241: After a whirlwind three days of visiting family, we made it home this afternoon. Of course, after a few hours of dealing with holiday drivers being complete jerks — either overly aggressive oversized pickup trucks (at one point forcing me off onto the shoulder to avoid being rear-ended), or getting boxed in behind people determined to stay five to ten MPH under the speed limit, or dealing with entitled Tesla drivers being entitled Tesla drivers, or obnoxious asses who’ve apparently disabled their mufflers so they’re as loud and backfire-y as possible while still running (seriously, how are these things even legal?) — we arrived home tired, frazzled, and cranky. A night of dumb TV and sleeping in our own bed should help, but right now we’re not exactly fit for public.

Year 50 Day 240

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A family photo with me, my wife our nephew, my mother-in-law, my sister-in-law, our niece, and my brother-in-law. The adults are adults, the niblings are pre-teens.

Day 240: Our last day of visiting was with my wife’s mom, sister, brother-in-law, and niblings. We went swimming, admired the nephew’s painted D&D miniatures, got tarot card readings from our niece, ate tacos, played games, watched some Mr. Bean, and had a very good day.

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Year 50 Day 238

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Me sitting next to my wife on a couch, with her dad in a chair next to us, with a plate of holiday cookies visible on a coffee table in front of us.

Day 238: Spending a few days during the inter-holiday week visiting family. First stop: my wife’s dad. Dinner and then sharing cookies while watching the first Mission Impossible film. Overnighting here, then off to our next stop tomorrow.

📚 Uncanny Issue 56 edited by Lynne M. Thomas, Michael Damian Thomas, Monte Lin, and Betsy Aoki

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73/2023 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️

This issue I really enjoyed Mary Robinette Kowal‘s “Marginalia” and Alex Jennings‘s “Lest We Become Posessed”, a review of Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror, co-edited by Jordan Peele and John Joseph Adams, which has been added to my “keep an eye out for” list.

Me holding Uncanny Issue 56 on my iPad

Year 50 Day 237

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Me sitting on our living room floor in front of our Christmas tree, with lots of unwrapped presents underneath the tree nexxt to me.

Day 237: The Christmas Day pile o’ presents! After a nice quiet morning with breakfast in front of a fire (in a fireplace, not just some random fire), we dove into the present unwrapping. Tip we discovered this year: Instead of wrapping paper, reusable gift bags are wonderful! Easier to “wrap”, and no waste when unwrapping. We’re definitely fans.

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📚 Foreign Foes by Greg Brodeur and Dave Galanter

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72/2023 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️

It felt rather rushed and busy for a good portion of the book, as there were several different threads going on that the authors switched among rather quickly, and while the details took some time to come to light, the basic mystery as to what was going on wasn’t all that mysterious, being obvious to the reader (if not the characters) within the first couple chapters. Not a stinker, but not a standout, either.

Me holding Foreign Foes.