In 2023 I read the following books.
Five Stars
Dune, Frank Herbert
God Emperor of Dune, Frank Herbert
Beowulf, Seamus Heaney
Four Stars
Dune Messiah, Frank Herbert
Novelist as a Vocation, Haruki Murakami
Three Stars
Children of Dune, Frank Herbert
Electric Forrest, Tanith Lee
Marry Him, Lori Gottlieb
Gorilla Mindset, Mike Cernovich
Two Stars
The Third Impossible Thing, Harvey L. Siebel
I read zero One Star books this year. Who's got the time?
There were more, but again I did not record them all and do not recall what I may have read early in the year. And really, the title of this book list is nearly more appropriate as "Book List 2023: October through December" but I did in fact have a couple read outside of that time frame that I remembered. I had read very few books up until the last quarter of the year when I was gifted a book in August which precipitated a revival of interest in reading more often. Ironically, I did not finish the book given to me in August until January of 2024, so the title did not make the list for 2023.
It is apparently not difficult to read more books than the typical American, with a median of four books per year, in less than a quarter of a year. If we count the 4,890+ episodes of web comics read in 2023, it likely fills a lot more books than the ten listed here.
The rating system is more or less consistent with other years, but with the caveat that it also reflects how much I enjoyed the book. For instance, Novelist as a Vocation was very enjoyable for me, but probably not of interest to most readers. Electric Forrest was very interesting for me from a prose standpoint and for that almost merits four stars, but the book itself is average in the end. God Emperor of Dune was possibly the most intriguing book of them all for me. Never having read it before, the perspective of Leto II as inhuman once human near-immortal and all-seeing was completely foreign and a interesting change of pace from other fiction types.
Five Stars are must reads.
Four Stars are highly recommended or highly enjoyed.
Three Stars are average or just above average.
Two Stars are below average.
One Stars are books that I finished but would never recommend.
