Books I Loved in 2023

It’s always a good year for reading, whenever I’m reading consistently and pursuing the genres and works that I’m passionate about — and as a result, I delved into some phenomenal reads in 2023. I completed a total of 40 books in a variety of genres, with a mix of horror, fantasy, poetry, and books on creativity (mostly game writing) rounding out some of my favorite reads of the year.

For those interested, my lists of games and movies and TV that I loved over the past year are also up on my blog, Once Upon the Weird.

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Fantastical and Frightening Books About Women Reclaiming Their own Power

Recently, I put together a list of “the best fantastical and frightening books about women reclaiming their own power” for the Shepherd website, which aims to help folks discover new books. Generally, I balk at using the phrase “the best,” since there are so many more amazing books in the world that I had yet to read. However, this is the format the website uses.

As per the request of the editors, I specifically picked books that felt connected to my collection of prose poetry, Twelve.  This means that I wanted to include a mixture of prose and poetry books, as well as focusing on books that are connected to fairy tales and/or folklore. And truthfully, I love each and every one of these books and I hope many other folks come to love them, too.

If I were allowed to expand my list to beyond the five I listed, I would also included any or all of the following (to name a few):

  • Slewfoot: A Tale of Bewitchery by Brom (which I just completed at the end of December)
  • Goddess of Filth by V. Castro
  • Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon
  • The Broken Earth Trilogy by N.K. Jemisin
  • Circe by Madeline Miller
  • Paladin of Souls by Lois McMaster Bujold
  • Transformations, poems by Anne Sexton
  • Drink, poems by Laura Madeline Wiseman
  • The Moment of Change (a collection of feminist fantasy poetry), edited by R.B. Lemburg

And I’m sure I will discover many more such books of fantastical and frightening female empowerment in the future.

Books I Loved Reading in 2022

It’s been a pretty great reading year for me. I might have not have hit as many books as in years past, but the quality of books that I’ve read this year have been stellar (and I have a few more great books in the stack that I’ll likely finish by year’s end).

Fiction

Siren Queen by Nghi Vo

Maw, written by Jude Ellison S. Doyle with art by A.L. Kaplan and Fabiana Mascolo

Nghi Vo’s Siren Queen unfolds the story of Luli Wei, a talented and beautiful Chinese American woman, who is desperate to become a star in pre-code Hollywood. In order to do so, she navigate the fair-like realm of the Hollywood system, which exacts a sharp (and sometimes deadly) price on those who long for fame. The magic here is at once beautiful, wicked, and mundane.

Vo’s prose is rich and lyrical, evoking a sense of magic, menace, and desire on nearly every page. Siren Queen is a work of art; it is powerful and evocative — a book that I plan to read again and again.

The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin

The City We Became is another masterpiece from N.K. Jemisin. It presents a vision of New York City as a living creature about to be born with a human avatar — except a dark presence nearly aborts the process and the avatars of various boroughs (Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Staten Island) are awakened to hold back the tide of darkness.

Jemisin is a phenomenal writer, and the story she unfolded in this book made me fall in love with a place I have never been. I cannot wait for a sequel.

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Books I Loved Reading in 2021

In 2021, I read a total of 40 books (thus far) — which is the lowest amount of books completed in a single year in about a decade. Over the past two years in particular, I’ve found it harder to focus on reading and have turned to other forms of media to fill in my entertainment needs.

However, in reading less books per year, I’ve found that the quality of books has gone up. I’ve enjoyed or outright loved the majority of books that I’ve read, which has been a blessing — and has also made it difficult to narrow this list.

Note that the books listed here are not necessarily objectively the best, but they are the books I personally enjoyed or connected with throughout 2021.

Fiction

Network Effect and Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells

Network Effect and Fugitive Telemtry by Martha Wells

Basically, I could list the entire Murderbot Diaries among my favorite books for the year, since I read all six books (most of which are novellas) and then reread many of my favorite scenes throughout various points of the year. The series follows the adventures of a socially awkward android Sec Unit named Murderbot, who only wants to sit back and watch serial dramas, but often finds itself saving humans from doing stupid things that could get them killed.

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Exploring the Self by Honoring the Magical: Lessons from Lisa Marie Basile’s Magical Writing Grimoire

Photo by petr sidorov on Unsplash.

I’ve long been fascinated by the concept of witchcraft  the idea that ritual, spells, and willpower can effectively shape the world around you. No doubt movies like The Craft and Practical Magic had a significant influence on this interest. As a teenager, I would roam through the public library seeking out some old leather-bound tome to guide me (something that always seems so easy to achieve in movies).

If it had existed back then, The Magical Writing Grimoire by Lisa Marie Basile would have been a book that I would have found compelling. Even as a teenager, I already had the sense that the written word and poetry in particular  had a kind of magic to it. Reading was empowering for me, conjuring up deep emotions and manifesting new perceptions of the universe around me. At a time when I was just starting to figure out who I was as a writer and a human, this book would have felt like a gift.

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