2023 Year-In-Review: Books I Read

I pretty much matched last year (though very much in bursts, including five books in the last two weeks of the year) with 26 prose books, broken down into 4 Kindle books, 4 other ebooks, and 18 physical books.
This was another year with a LOT of non-fiction, spanning a variety of topics including video games, comic books, speculative science, and predatory marketing techniques. After that came 8 sci-fi novels, 5 memoirs/biographies, and a handful of other things.

For a second year Martha Wells is my most-read author, as I read three more Murderbot books. John Scalzi is on the list twice for a novel and a collection of shorter fiction; and Paul Kupperberg is there twice as well for two books of comic history interviews.

What am I recommending? I continue to enjoy the Murderbot Diaries. Both What If? 2 by Randall Munroe and How to Take Over the World by Ryan North are fun speculative science books. Hi Honey, I'm Homo! by Matt Baume is a very interesting look at queer people in sitcoms as the medium developed. I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy was the most readable of the “Hollywood screwed me up since childhood” memoirs, even if you aren’t familiar with her work. And I’ll note that I re-read The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold, so clearly I like it.

On that comics front: I finished my re-read of the Archie Comics Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series from the 90s, including a bunch of tie-ins, specials, and annuals (probably another 50 comics) and made a big post about it for Talking Time and my dad’s CAPA-Alpha fanzine group. Then I re-read the entire Nintendo Comics Series that Valiant published in the 90s and gave it the same treatment. That’s another 30 pamphlets or thereabouts. I got through the giant box of trade paperbacks (38 volumes) and read 6 trades I picked up at Uticon and the last 3 volumes of Lumberjanes. I…didn’t make progress on my big stack of Humble Comics Bundles and really should read those. So something like 62 trade paperbacks or around 310 pamphlets this year, which feels respectable.

Going into 2024, I still have a bunch of sci-fi and fantasy stacked up on the dresser; I have a bunch of Humble Bundles I haven’t gotten to; I have some rpg handbooks I keep meaning to actually give some time to; and I have my complete collection of The Books of Magic that I figure will also get a full writeup when I next want a project.

2023 Year-In-Review: Puzzles!

This was a pretty full year for jigsaw puzzles (though they also came in fits and starts).

I did my first 1,500-piece puzzle (Mickey Mouse). We did seventeen 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzles, matching last year’s record: Game Boy Games, Arcade Titles, The Magic Maze, Ice Cream, Travel Postcards, General Store, Melting Pot, Sushi, US War Propaganda, Newspaper comics, Batman, Pop Culture, Sushi Mice, Five & Dime, Earth Day, Comics Heaven, The Crystal Caves.

We did one 750-piece (Animal Jam), three 500-piece (Spider-Man, Hero Hotline, and Eeveelutions), and four 250/300-piece (a different Spider-Man, The Solar System, the Mario puzzle I’d done twice before, and the new 8-bit Mario). I also did the three small 60-piece wooden puzzles and speed-puzzled the 100-piece Eeveelutions and Superman comics puzzles.

So 26 “real” jigsaw puzzles…again matching last year, entertainingly. Jethrien has been particularly enamored with the Magic Puzzle brand, which are 900 pieces of the main puzzle and then you rearrange them and add a secret 100-piece inner part. (We did three, and gave up on one because it was brown, muddy and unfun.) I maintain that “artwork” is the worst choice for a puzzle, but I powered through Earth Day anyway. The sharp comic book/cartoon puzzle remain the most fun, but the clipart ones with distinct sections are also pretty good. We’ll probably have another big year of puzzles if the stack on our shelf is any indication.

Meanwhile, I also did 12 Paint-By-Stickers: I finished out the last 2 from my previous book, then did 7 from the “Travel” book, 2 more comics covers, and the first from my new “Flowers” book. I also have plenty of those to do as I feel the urge.