Happy Saturday everyone!

How are you spending the weekend? I am off to the dreaming spires of Oxford to wander round and see if I can spot any little bookstores hidden away!

I know we’ve passed the middle of January but I haven’t quite got around to wrapping up my 2023 reading year just yet. I set myself a Goodreads challenge to complete 60 books and I literally just completed it on New Years Eve!

2023 was a fairly busy year for me but although I read 5 fewer books than 2022, I managed to read about 3,000 more pages (25,067 in total). On average, my typical book length was about 400 pages. I made my way through a range of genres including SF-F, Crime, YA and Literary Fiction.

I read Heartburn by Nora Ephron because, at some point in my memory, it had been a book pick for the Between Two Books book club. If you haven’t come across it before, they are a Florence + the Machine fan-based book club, Florence even picks some of the chosen reads for it herself! Although The Ink Black Heart was an absolute door-stopper of a book, I felt like it was a real achievement to make it all the way through to the end – I also like to think it acted as a bit of subtle weight lifting too… 😂

The Books…

First read of the year: Madly, Deeply: The Alan Rickman Diaries by Alan Rickman
Last read of the year: Congo by Michael Crichton

My Favourite Reads and Highlights!
Looking back at what I actually did read in 2023, I could rant on about why I read these particular books and even some funny stories about how/where I bought them from, but here’s just a few of my best bits!

• Madly, Deeply: The Alan Rickman Diaries by Alan Rickman – I’m a huge Alan Rickman fan and devoured his diaries. The end-notes from Rima were almost too heartbreaking to read but I found this to be such a fascinating insight into his life.
  
• Happy Place by Emily Henry – Oh how I adore Emily Henry’s writing! She has such an ability to craft a plot and characters in a way which make my heart melt!
  
• Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton – One of my favourite movies, I’m so glad I took the chance on reading this. If I didn’t love the film so much, I’d say the book was better!
  
• When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill – I listened to this on Audible and for some reason it completely had me hooked. I don’t think I fully got my head around the ‘women as functioning dragons in society’ part but Alex’s character completely sucked me into her narrative.
  
• Divine Rivals by Rebecca Ross – This was one of those reads that was definitely worth the hype! Magical typewriters, rivals to lovers, weird mystical creatures relating to some sort of world mythology… I can’t wait to read Ruthless Vows!
  
• Throne of Glass rereads – This was the year I also finished my Throne of Glass rereads on Audible. It’s one of my all-time favourite series and I’m so excited for Crescent City 3 coming out later this month!
  
• American Royals by Katharine McGee – I stumbled across an ARC of this in a charity shop and bought it on a whim. Boy was I glad I did! It’s one of those guilty pleasure reads and once I started, I just couldn’t put it down!
  
• Darker Shades of Magic by V.E. Schwab – After my little pilgrimage to the Portobello Book Shop on a trip to Edinburgh, I finally made my way through this series! I’ve finally been introduced to Lila Bard and the infamous Kell! I’m excited to see where Schwab takes the next part of the series.

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And that’s 2023 all wrapped up! Have you read anything on my 2023 list? Are some of these on your never-ending TBR? As always, drop me a comment to chat!

T – The Biblioshelf 🤗