Hello to you, my non-existent readers. As you likely don’t exist I won’t apologize for the absence, but let me say the most recent months have coincided with a truly chaotic, although overall good, moment in my life. I’ve had little time to breathe, and am just in the past month or two returning to my hobbies of handi-crafts and writing. I’ve kept up my reading, although not as thoroughly as last year when I hit five hours a week every single week for a year and read 104 books. This year I’ve decided to read fewer books, picking up some tomes I avoided as they might slow down my count; and I’ve been more relaxed about the hours – although I still aim for five a week, I’ve missed a few here and there. There are lots of thoughts that I would like to share here, and still hope to, but for now here is a long-delayed reflection on what I read in 2023.

I intended this to be a top-10 books, but it felt more like I had a few individual standouts and then tranches of books that I enjoyed. So on the theory that I can do whatever I like with my own blog, here is my review of last year’s reading.

1. How Far the Light Reaches

This is probably one of my favorite books of all time, let alone this year. Sabrina Imbler is a writer I’ve followed for years, and their ability to take complex scientific concepts and explain them in a way that is both entertaining and clear is one I am deeply jealous of. How Far The Light Reaches is on another level, however. I’m a sucker for a good essay, but these are transcendent. It never feels like anthropormism as Imbler puts strange sea creatures alongside their experiences with race, sex, gender, family and love. Instead the nature writing forms an analogy, shedding light on their life rather than projecting human experience onto the creatures.

• A Fistful of Shells

I’ve written frequently about history and reading as gaps and spaces — filling in or writing around. Perhaps the thing I love best about history is when my view of a period that was previously terra nullis is filled in: so that is what Europeans were doing as Rome receded, or this is how certain communities native to the Americas organized their governance. A Fistful of Shells adds stunning detail an era it is easy to see in broad strokes, the early modern history of West Africa. It is an economic history that carefully documents how early European contact with West Africa was a meeting of equals, at least among elites; how the inflation of incoming goods (especially cowerie shells) against gold and enslaved labor shifted economic power away from Africa, and how those on the receiving end of this unequal exchange responded. It truly gave me a new perspective on history.

• The summary history

Most of the history I have read has been early-modern, often focused on the United States. The past year or so I’ve tried to expand out into eras I know less about, particularly medieval history. This year I read several good summary histories that gave me a much better sense of medieval history — The Inheritance of Rome and The Bright Ages, on the early and early-high middle ages in Europe, respectively; African Dominion and Caravans of Gold, Fragments of time on medieval West Africa; Children of Ash and Elm on the Viking world; SPQR on the rise of Rome and, incongruously, the Penguin History of Canada. They were all good introductory books (although African Dominion is one I wish I had read after some of the others), focused more on informing than arguing specific points.

I also read an abridged translation of the Travels of Ibn Battatuah, which was my first foray into primary texts in some time and I found fascinating – reading the description of a mango from a North African Islamic judge of the 14^th century was a wonderful and surprising thrill. This year I continued the exploration with a collection of translated Arabic writings about West Africa, and enjoyed spotting the primary sources behind much of the history I’ve read.

• The Political History

These are more in line with the kinds of books I’ve read generally – deep dives into (usually more modern) topics. Among the best of these was The Jakarta Method — a deeply disturbing and incredibly well done history of right wing Communist extermination campaigns in the “third world,”  often with the tacit and support of Washington. I also read Race for Profit, on housing policy, Debt: The First 5,000 years on the creation of currency and ethics of debt, Late Victorian Holocausts on a famine I had never known existed, Blood in the Water on the Attica uprising, and Upbuilding Black Durham on the history of a city I loved but knew little about. All helped me understand the world I live in better.

• The full genre sweep

This past year I realized I had read an unusually wide variety of fiction, and decided to go for a clean sweep: literary/realistic, historical, fantasy, science fiction, mystery, thriller, romance and horror. For all that I insist that I don’t read much fantasy these days, I read a lot of it this year – including the Lord of the Rings for the first time as an adult, which was wonderful. I enjoyed some deeply weird novels, including the surrealist historical fantasy The Vorrh, and the linguistics focused sci-fi concept novel Embassytown. And I read Jo Walton for the first time, and found her Philosopher King novels, and especially Lent, to be wonderfully intriguing concepts I continue to contemplate.