Ranking the Books I Read in 2023

scribblermendez

Here’s a list of what were the fiction books I enjoyed most in 2023. They weren’t necessarily published this year; the only qualification to get on this list is that I enjoyed them.

Maths

Last year, my breakdown for books was 13% 5 stars, 29% 4 stars, 38% 3 stars, and 22% 2 stars.

This year, my breakdown for books was 16% 5 stars, 28% 4 stars, 32% 3 stars, and 24% 2 stars. When grading books, I default to giving good books 3 stars, so 3 stars is the center of a bell curve. (I discount re-reads while doing math.) I view everything above 1 star as worth reading. If you have similar taste to me, check out my 4 and 5 star reads.

Overall, I had a bad reading year. Last year I read 45 fiction books, compared to 25 this year.

5 stars (Great tier)

  1. The Spear Cuts through Water
    • This is a banger of a book. Instantly going in the top 10 books I’ve ever read.
  2. This is How You Lose the Time War (re read)
  3. Dark One: Forgotten
    • Dan Wells is a wizard.
  4. The Emperor’s Soul (Re-read)
  5. Sabriel (Re-Read)
  6. Way of Edan
    • The best Tolkienesque since Tolkien.
  7. Yumi and the Nightmare Painter
    • Cyberpunk Sanderson. I wish the author delved more into Cyberpunk tropes with this because chances are we’ll never get him to play with this genre again. But overall, I enjoyed the character growth for both protagonists.
  8. Dark Lord of Derkholm (Re-Read)

Video Games

  1. Immortality
    • PLAY THIS GAME AND GO INTO IT BLIND.
    • I liked it more than ‘The Spear Cuts Through Water’ and ‘Spear’ is one of my favorite books of all time.
    • It is a deeply fantastical, deeply disturbing story, and utterly enthralling. It’s available on Netflix and Steam. The game is short; you can beat it in 5 to 8 hours. I wish I could forget this game and relive it blind again. Not everyone will love it, but you owe it to yourself to at least try it.
  2. Deathloop
    • This is a not-for-everyone sort of game. It’s an assassination time loop, trying to discover the correct sequence of events required to break the loop. I loved the worldbuilding and characters. I still listen to the music, six months later.
  3. Stray Gods
    • This is an RPG choose your own adventure musical. Solve a mystery involving the Greek gods, with good music! Fun time.

4 stars (Above Average tier)

  1. The Judas Blossom
    • I loved this. It has the best politics of any fantasy book I’ve ever read. Also, Mongols and Persia. Fun times were had.
  2. Daughter of the Empire (Re-read) & Servant of the Empire (New)
  3. Of Honey and Wildfires
    • This book hit like a bolt of lightning from a clear day. The author’s prose is emotionally evocative.
  4. The Dragons of Deepwood Fen
  5. The Will of the Many
    • Earlier in the year, this would have been 5 stars for me. Since then, it’s worn on me. I’ll still read book 2.
  6. The Stone in the Skull
  7. Tread of Angels

Video Game

  • Elden Ring
    • I wish I could give this 5 stars. Unfortunately, the boss quality declined since Sekiro.

3 stars (The Default tier. All books begin here.)

  1. Witch King
  2. Of War and Ruin
  3. Year of Wonders
  4. Bookshops and Bonedust
    • The sequel to ‘Legends and Lattes.’ Something of the magic of the first book was lost in the transition to book 2. Still worth reading.
  5. The Bladed Faith
  6. A Touch of Light
  7. Inanna
  8. Conqueror’s Blood
    • Sequel to ‘Gunmetal Gods,’ one of my favorite books of all time. I enjoyed this, but didn’t love it. I can’t put my finger on why. It just didn’t coalesce. (In my experience, most books don’t coalesce, so this doesn’t disqualify anything.)

Video Games

  • Steel Rising
    • French Revolution Dark Souls

2 stars (Worth reading, but I have to be in a particular mood)

  1. Voice of War
    • Good clean fun. It is a perfectly acceptable book; this is so low only because I’m just not a big fan of this sub genre. I can easily see someone else giving this 4 or 5 stars.
  2. Eleventh Cycle
    • I wish I could put this in at 3 stars. Unfortunately, I don’t love the use of sexual assault in this grimdark story. Otherwise, this book is very entertaining.
  3. ‘The Fall’ and ‘The Exile’
  4. An Echo of Things to Come
  5. Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence
    • I liked the book (@ 2 stars). It was a perfectly acceptable novel; not great, not terrible. But I got attacked in the comments of my review because I pointed out some flaws. The attacks soured me on this book, so only 1.5 stars. Fandom sucks sometimes. This was the most and worst backlash I’ve gotten in seven years of weekly reviewing.

1 Star

1 star books are books I don’t recommend you read. As a general rule, I don’t include 1 star books; I view it as punching down so I usually leave them off my year-end list.

Nonfiction

  1. Drawing on the Power of Resonance
  2. The Early Middle Ages
  3. The Black Death
  4. A Distant Mirror
  5. The World of Byzantium
  6. Great World Religions: Buddhism
  7. Jesus and John Wayne
  8. The Rise and Fall of the British Empire
  9. The Fall and Rise of China
  10. Craft for the Real World
  11. Lords of the Horizon
  12. The World of Byzantium (Again)
  13. The Ottoman Empire
  14. Streams of Gold, Rivers of Blood
  15. What Life Was Like Amid the Splendor and the Intrigue
  16. The Ottomans
  17. Voltaire and Rousseau
  18. Turning Points in Middle Eastern History
  19. The Barbarian Empires of the Steppe
  20. Secrets of the Occult
  21. The Vietnam War
  22. The Rise and Fall of Soviet Communism
  23. A Cabinet of Byzantine Curiosities
  24. Grunts
  25. How Great Science Fiction Works
  26. History of Russia: From Peter the Great to Gorbachov
  27. The Spanish Civil War
  28. The Evil Hours
  29. From Jesus to Constantine: A History of Early Christianity
  30. True Age
  31. The History of Christianity
  32. With the Old Breed
  33. An Informal History of the Hugos

This year, my major reading themes were: the Middle Ages; Ottomans and Byzantium; Christianity; Russia, China, Communism and the Cold War; the United States Military; a grab bag of other topics.

The best nonfiction I read were: The Evil Hours (US Military and PTSD), Lords of the Horizon (Ottoman Empire), The Black Death, Jesus and John Wayne (Christianity in the US since 1900), and the Spanish Civil War.

The ‘worst’ was: Secrets of the Occult. It was about various supernatural ideas and religious movements throughout human history. It wasn’t bad, but it lacked a thesis. The narrator would switch from talking about Aleister Crowley one minute, to reindeer piss, to haunted houses, all in the same chapter. The narrator’s logical leaps make sense in context, but when you look at it in the abstract it kinda looks like that ‘Always Sunny’ meme with the crazy guy and papers on the wall connected with red yarn. I’d describe ‘Secrets’ as a nonfiction acid trip. I think I’ll listen to it again next year.

Again, I had a bad reading year. I only read 32 nonfiction books, compared to 60 last year.

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