Reading in 2023

With my own book hitting bookshelves and another one in production, I really thought I’d read fewer books in 2023. I was wrong.

In fact, I blew my personal reading record out of the water by getting through 236 books last year (exceeding the 212 I read in 2022).

But let me be clear: READING IS NOT A COMPETITION.

I set estimates for myself, not targets, which I then track, analyse and observe (because: nerd). And I’m sure no-one will be surprised that a difficult year required more books to escape an excess of reality, and more comfort re-reads and audio books in particular to help get through more sleepless nights.
I don’t compete with my own reading records, let alone anybody else’s. Whatever you read and however you read it is wonderful and valuable.
I share the books I read to celebrate and help promote writers, words and ideas, and as an act of advocacy to help make public a predominantly privately-enjoyed art form.
- On a side note: I wrote about the visibility and value of Australia’s second most-popular artistic pastime in my wrap up of last year’s Volume National Reading Symposium, because although more than two thirds of Australians read for pleasure (more than double the amount than participate in sport), many of us do so in private, or using headphones or digital devices that hide our reading habits. So it’s no wonder that writers have amongst the lowest incomes and receive the smallest proportion of public funding as a result. As such, initiatives that model reading in public are an important part of making the value of reading more visible, and reestablishing it as a normalised and productive behaviour.

Fave reads and recs

In a year characterised by global horror and helplessness, I was grateful for the oh-so-clever and oh-so-thoughtful hopepunk of Becky Chambers’ first two Monk and Robot books – A Psalm for the Wild Built and A Prayer for the Crown Shy – and their gentle, speculative fantasy of a post-industrial, post-AI, post-gender and post-prejudice future.

In other fiction, I also drew solace from Legendborn and Bloodmarked, Tracy Deonn’s magical YA series about a modern-day Knights of the Round Table reimagined as a racist, demon-flighting sorority and a smart, fierce young woman of colour on a quest of her own. And the first two books in India Holton’s Dangerous Damsels series – The Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels and The League of Gentlewomen Witches – were exactly the cosy, Victorian-era MF romantasy I needed in 2023: funny, feisty, feminist, and a little bit silly.

In non-fiction, I was lucky to have a front-row seat for the second edition of The Relationship is the Project: a guide to working with communities (currently being printed for a March 2024 release from NewSouth Publishing). While obviously biased, I couldn’t be prouder of the expanded collection, which includes thoughtful updates and 12 brand-new chapters on all aspects of community-engaged practice (which feel more vital and insightful than ever).

I was also delighted to read the extraordinary work of some extraordinary pals, including Ten Thousand Aftershocks by Michelle Tom (a fragmented memoir about inherited and acute trauma, earthquakes and grief, difficult familial relationships, and what we require to feel safe and to heal) and Love, Dad: Confessions of an Anxious Father by Laurie Steed (gentle, thoughtful and empathetic musings on being a parent, a child of ageing parents, and a writer – in which I not only get a mention in the acknowledgements but as a pseudonymous character within the memoir itself).

And I was honoured to be at the launch of pal Alison Flett’s final poetry collection, Where We Are (a lovely, lyrical collection in English and Scots about leaving and remaking our homes and ourselves), before her heartbreaking loss later in the year.

Aus Women Writers

My 2023 reading list included 61 books by Australian women writers (26% of my reading total), with corresponding micro-reviews on Instagram and TikTok for the #AWW2023 challenge.

Highlights not already listed above included, in poetry:

My People by Oodgeroo (a powerful collection of lyrical and political First Nations poetry, with clear calls for action and justice for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people from the 1970s that are as relevant – and depressingly similar – to today’s).
Blue Wren by Bron Bateman (a stunning collection about ‘the roar inside’ lovers, mothers, daughters and women in the world).
How to Make a Basket by Jazz Money (a personal, political and powerful debut about culture, queerness, care and contemporary life in the Australian colony).
Ruby Moonlight by Ali Cobby Eckermann (a beautifully brutal historical verse novel set during the early invasion of South Australia about loss, companionship, ignorance and care).
Homecoming by Elfie Shiosaki (an unflinching collection spanning four generations of Noongar women that draws on the archives of colonialism’s cruel bureaucracies).
It’s The Sound of the Thing: 100 new poems for young people by Maxine Beneba Clarke (a silly and serious collection I wish I could time-travel back to my own younger self – clever and crafted with such obvious respect for young readers).

And in fiction:

Patience & Esther by SW Searle (a sweet and spicy queer, feminist Edwardian romance in delicious graphic novel form).
The Old Lie by Claire G. Coleman (cleverly devastating speculative fiction that uses an intergalactic war to expose startling insights into nationalism, colonialism, gender and more).
The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams (her beautiful, bibliographic story about words, family and feminism, set against a backdrop of Oxford academia, the suffragette movement and start of WWI).

We Need Diverse Books

I read 152 books for the #WeNeedDiverseBooks challenge (63% of my reading total), in which: “people of colour can be first-page HEROES rather than second-class citizens. Books in which LGBTQIA characters can represent social CHANGE rather than social problems. And books where disabled people can be just… people.” Highlights not already listed above included:

Highlights not already listed above included, in poetry:

Nangamay Mana Durali: First Nations Australia LGBTIA+ Poetry, edited by Alison Whitaker and Steven Lindsay Ross for Black Books (a wonderful collection about queerness, beauty and politics, and the joy and sorrows of contemporary life in the colony).
More Than These Bones by Bebe Oliver (nee Backhouse), excoriatingly raw and vulnerable First Nations poetry about love, loss, queerness and selfhood).
Whisper Songs by Tony Birch (an extraordinary collection of clever, insightful and moving poetry about history, family and memory – with the archival-inspired testimonies of Skin a particular highlight).
Guwayu: for all times edited by Jeanine Leane for Red Room Poetry (a powerful and topical anthology of First Nations poety that reflects strength, pride, language and connection to place, but also the intergenerational inequities and cruelties of life in our former ethnographic state).
Homie by Danez Smith (a clever, tender and jawdroppingly powerful collection about Blackness, queerness and the exaltation of friendship -including the best acknowledgements section I’ve ever read).
Punching the Air by Ibi Zoboi and Yusef Salaam of The Exonerated Five (which left me awed and grateful for their powerful poetic collaboration about injustice, racism and wrongful incarceration).

Fiction:

The Sunbearer Trials by Aidan Thomas (a gripping and thoughtful YA mythological Hunger Games with a trans protagonist about teen demigods fighting for prestige and their lives – which I loved in spite of its as-yet-unresolved cliffhanger).
Imogen, Obviously by Becky Albertali (a sweet and thoughtful coming-of-age college novel and first FF romance about allyship, over-thinking and queer discourse).
And the reimagining of Jane Austen’s Persuasion in Much Ado About Nada, a Canadian second chance romance about another smart, thoughtful, complex young Muslim woman that Uzma Jalaluddin writes so well.

And non-fiction:

All About Yves: notes from a transition by Yves Rees (thoughtful, clever and accessible reflections that I’ll be recommending as a primer for anyone interested in gender, human rights, allyship, identity and pride).
All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M Johnson (a powerful and generous memoir about queerness, Blackness, gender expectations (including how they start before birth), consent, confidence and joy. A thoughtful, gentle and articulate gift for the young people it’s written for and more. That this is currently the second most banned book in the United States is ridiculous, criminal and cruel).

Read Harder

In my first year of attempting Book Riot’s Read Harder Challenge, I barely ticked off 12 of the 24 challenges (mostly because I attempted to do them in order, which I won’t do in 2024).

Highlights not already listed above included, in fiction:

Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki, a joyous combination of contemporary, supernatural and science fiction about music, queerness, family and doughnuts (Challenge 1: a novel about a trans character written by a trans author).
Babel by RF Kuang, a magical, reimagined history about language and translation, colonialism and academia, power, privilege and protest (Challenge 2: one of my favorite author’s favourite books (thanks, Jennifer Mills). Challenge 3: a book about activism).
Flamer by Mike Curato, a gentle and devastating YA graphic novel about queerness, religion, hate and hope set in a US Boy Scout camp (Challenge 4: one of the most banned and challenged books of 2022 – which is all the more devastating as the ways this book may literally save lives seem to leap from every page).

And in non-fiction:

Come Together: Things Every Aussie Kid Should Know about the First Peoples by Isiah Firebrace (Challenge 12: a nonfiction book about BIPOC and/or queer history).
Parwana by Durkhanai Ayubi, an extraordinary combination of sociopolitical history, family memoir and culinary guide, which includes a recipe for the best eggplant dish of all time and some sobering observations about dogma, war, forced migration, resilience and the enduring expression of culture (Challenge 11: read a cookbook cover to cover. Challenge 13: read an author local to you. Challenge 14: read a book with under 500 Goodreads ratings).

Resolutions, reading stats and even more book recs

My only New Years Resolution was published in the January 2024 edition of HeartsTalk magazine, in which I resolved to do more to use my words, profile and platforms to protest inequity and unjust systems, and to raise the voice of under-represented and marginalised writers.

This has started with making the move from Goodreads to Storygraph in protest against the 2023 Goodreads Awards’ fully white, cishet romance lineup, the platform’s recent complicity in #ReviewBombGate and other issues, and to continue to detangle myself from the problematic practices of parent company Amazon.

As an unexpected bonus, this has also opened up a whole new world of Storygraph data (!!!), which tells me that my 2023 reading year included:

Approximately 90% fiction and 10% non-fiction books.
Which I read as approximately 60% ebooks, 25% audio and 15% in print.
Mostly in the genres of (in descending order): romance, LGBTQIA+ writing, contemporary, fantasy, young adult, historical, spicy books, graphic novels and poetry.

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Author: katelarsenkeys

Writer. Rabble-rouser. Arts, Cultural and Non-Profit Consultant. View all posts by katelarsenkeys