My 2023: Favourite Reads

See how I engineered this so I could have as many ‘favourite’ books of the year as possible?

Today I am choosing my top 3 reads out of the books that I read physical copies of during 2023, which is quite hard to do because I have read so many different types of book – how do you pit adult novels against children’s picture books?!

Hell Bent by Leigh Bardugo

Blurb: Wealth. Power. Murder. Magic. The Ivy League is going straight to hell in the sequel to the smash New York Times bestseller Ninth House from #1 bestselling author Leigh Bardugo.

Find a gateway to the underworld. Steal a soul out of hell. A simple plan, except people who make this particular journey rarely come back. But Galaxy “Alex” Stern is determined to break Darlington out of purgatory – even if it costs her a future at Lethe and at Yale.

Forbidden from attempting a rescue, Alex and Dawes can’t call on the Ninth House for help, so they assemble a team of dubious allies to save the gentleman of Lethe. Together, they will have to navigate a maze of arcane texts and bizarre artifacts to uncover the societies’ most closely guarded secrets, and break every rule doing it. But when faculty members begin to die off, Alex knows these aren’t just accidents. Something deadly is at work in New Haven, and if she is going to survive, she’ll have to reckon with the monsters of her past and a darkness built into the university’s very walls.

Thick with history and packed with Bardugo’s signature twists, Hell Bent brings to life an intricate world full of magic, violence, and all too real monsters.

I have switched between this and Ninth House in my head because I needed to have one of them in the list, but couldn’t decide which I liked the most because they were both amazing.

I decided on Hell Bent because I think I enjoyed the second book even more than the first, which isn’t always the case when it comes to trilogies.

*

This Is Going To Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor by Adam Kay

Blurb: Adam Kay was a junior doctor from 2004 until 2010, before a devastating experience on a ward caused him to reconsider his future. He kept a diary throughout his training, and This Is Going to Hurt intersperses tales from the front line of the NHS with reflections on the current crisis. The result is a first-hand account of life as a junior doctor in all its joy, pain, sacrifice and maddening bureaucracy, and a love letter to those who might at any moment be holding our lives in their hands.

This was equally hilarious and heartbreaking. Humans are ridiculous, brilliant, and awful. And we need to love our NHS and the people that hold it up a little bit more, because it’s important and we are losing it at a terrifying rate of knots.

This was a fantastically honest book, that was super easy to read, even for people like me that don’t often get on with non-fiction books. I romped through this one, read the Christmas follow-up, and then read another similar book as well! (Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death, and Brain Surgery by Henry Marsh – also excellent)

*

The World Of The Unknown: All About UFOs by Ted Wilding-White with a foreword by John Culshaw

Blurb: From flying saucers and supersonic spaceships, to alien encounters and famous fakes, this classic title traces UFOs throughout history, and is the perfect companion for any space enthusiast.

First published in 1977, this is the second book from Usborne’s beloved World of the Unknown series to be brought back by popular demand. With a brand new foreword by impressionist, actor and comedian Jon Culshaw, otherwise the book remains unchanged from the original.For centuries people have been seeing strange lights and shapes in the sky, and weird creatures walking the Earth, but in recent years there seem to have been more of these ‘objects’ than ever. Researchers have tried to find out more about them, but while many have been explained, there still remain a few which defy identification.World of the Unknown UFOs investigates UFO case stories. It tells you what is known of the flying saucer mystery and suggests some possible solutions to it.

Where do UFOs come from? Are they spaceships guided by creatures from other worlds? Are they figments of people’s imaginations?

You can find answers to some of these questions in this book and learn how to make your own UFO model, how to fake a UFO photograph, and even how to go hunting for real UFOs. Reissue of the 1977 cult classic, with a foreword by impressionist Jon Culshaw.

This was technically a re-read from my childhood as I used to regularly get all of this series of books out of the library as a kid. Then when Usborne re-released them, I bought them ‘for the kids’ (for me, I bought them for me) and thoroughly enjoyed reading them again. Twice.

They are a delight, very much from the 70s whilst also being timeless, and just glorious good fun.

*

I set myself two goals this year – one overall one, and one audio one. I smashed both of them!

If I finish my current read before the end of the year, then my total will be 57 (I’m reading Variable Valve Timings and Other Stories: Memoirs of a Motor Head by Chris Harris, which is EXCELLENT and would probably have been on my list if I had finished it already) – I don’t think I am going to manage to finish my audiobook in time as I still have about 15 hours left to listen to, so that can be my first read of ’24. (Teresa: Everybody Loves Large Chests Vol 5 by Neven Iliev – if you were wondering.)

I always aim to finish 52 books in a year to average one a week, but how many hours of audio shall I go for?