Books I finished in 2023

I have thoroughly neglected this account. I started out with so much verve to actively engage with books that I've read by reviewing every single one, no matter how little I have to say about them. Obviously, that didn't happen. Work has been very hectic, I've been busy with my personal life and to be perfectly honest, I just have frighteningly very little to say about anything.

Anyway, I finally got a personal PC so I am once again feeling motivated to post more frequently. This list is purely for documentation purposes. I don't want to contribute to this weird culture that bookish communities only have where everyone seems to be flexing on how many books they have read in a year. This list is mostly an excuse to post something today. I have also noted down the dates when I finished each book just to track my most productive reading months.

Merry Christmas to you all!

1. Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (1.2)*
2. Bring Up The Bodies by Hilary Mantel (1.8)*
3. The Mirror and The Light by Hilary Mantel (1.26)
4. The Road by Cormac McCarthy (2.2)
5. Freedom by Jonathan Franzen (2.13)
6. Klara and The Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro (2.16)
7. The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher (2.17)
8. White Noise by Don DeLillo (2.25)
9. The Colony by Audrey Magee (3.4)
10. Devils by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (3.24)
11. The Scar by China Mieville (4.15)
12. A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel (4.22)
13. The Housekeeper and The Professor by Yoko Ogawa (4.25)
14. The Broom of the System by David Foster Wallace (5.5)
15. The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu (5.13)*
16. New Dark Age: Technology and The End of The Future (5.22)
17. The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu (5.28)*
18. Lonely Castle in The Mirror by Mizuki Tsujimura (6.1)
19. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin (6.24)
20. Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer (6.25)
21. A Passage North by Anuk Arudpragasam (7.6)
22. This is How You Lose The Time War by Amal El-Montar and Max Gladstone (7.15)
23. Ambergris Trilogy by Jeff VanderMeer (8.16)
24. The Giant O'Brien by Hilary Mantel (8.22)
25. Both Flesh and Not by David Foster Wallace (9.3)
26. Pedagogy of The Oppressed by Paulo Freire (9.14)
27. Bolla by Pajtim Statovci (9.21)
28. The Remains of The Day by Kazuo Ishiguro (9.25)
29. Trust by Hernan Diaz (10.10)
30. The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin (10.22)
31. The White Boy Shuffle by Paul Beatty (11.4)
32. Railsea by China Mieville (11.26)
33. The Pale King by David Foster Wallace (12.21)
34. The Sellout by Paul Beatty (12.30)
*Re-read

I finished less books this year but I don't mind too much. This year has treated me very well. I hope next year will be just as good to me. :)

Looking back on this year

I am usually not one to wax poetic during new year. I thought dividing the passage of time into neat months and years is primarily for convenience's sake and so saying this or that year is good or bad didn't mean much to me back then. I suppose that's because years tend to blend into each other for me. Nothing significant happens to set one year apart from another.

However, this year has been a particularly good year for me. You need only to scroll down to get a glimpse of how down I was last year. It was a bad time for me and I thought I would continue to look back on it with sadness and regret. Not to sound banal but this year makes me want to believe that everything happens for a reason. Special things happened to me this year that was only possible because of the events that transpired last year.

I do not know what the future will bring. I want to believe that things will continue to look up but obviously I don't know that for sure. At the very least, I will be motivated by the fact that this year happened, that there is indeed a silver lining.

This year I rekindled old friendships, learned intimacy and did things that made me happy. I am grateful that this year happened to me and that I allowed things to happen to me without resisting. If I had continued to overthink, I don't think I would reach this stage I am in now.

I hope next year will be just as good but if it doesn't I will continue to face it head on.