#I guess the good thing about having a slightly disastrous pre-field-season-construction-period is that I had hours and hours and hours

[over-fen-and-field]

End of year reading round-up! Woo-hoo!

My reading goal for 2023 was to read a book a week – while using very broad definitions of “book” (includes things like plays, novellas, and graphic novels), “read” (audiobooks and radio recordings count, not just written texts), and “week” (sometimes I read multiple short things in a week, sometimes it took me two or three weeks to get through a longer book).  I’m also defining “finished” as when I’m done with the book, but not necessarily when I’ve read every word on every page – I picked and chose chapters a bit from the essay collections, for example, and bounced off a few books halfway through if they just weren't for me or weren't for me at that time. Anything with an asterisk is a reread.  I have these roughly in chronological order of when I finished them, but I tended to be in the middle of several books at once and didn’t keep a good spreadsheet to keep track, so it’s a bit cobbled together from my memory and library records.  Also, please note that just because I read a book, doesn’t mean I agree with or endorse all or even most of the ideas in it.

The Ministry of the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson

Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler

New York 2140 by Kim Stanley Robinson

The Lifecycle of Software Objects by Ted Chiang

Flight Behavior* by Barbara Kingsolver

The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi

The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making* by Catherine M Valente

Deerskin* by Robin McKinley

Holy Silence by J Brent Bill

You Don’t Have to be Wrong for Me to be Right by Brad Hirschfield

A Letter in the Scroll by Jonathan Sacks

Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler

One Nation, Indivisible by Celene Ibrahim and Jennifer Howe Peace

Chalice* by Robin McKinley

Braiding Sweetgrass* by Robin Kimmerer

Dracula* by Bram Stoker

Hamlet* by Shakespeare

Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Here All Along by Sarah Hurwitz

This is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared by Alan Lew

The Scientist’s Guide to Writing by Stephen B Heard

Everything is God by Jay Michaelson

The Cooking Gene by Michael W. Twitty

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

The Poisonwood Bible* by Barbara Kingsolver

The Power of Ritual by Casper ter Kuile

Unsheltered* by Barbara Kingsolver

Pride and Prejudice* by Jane Austen

Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner

No Cure for Being Human by Kate Bowler

Everything Happens for a Reason and Other Lies I’ve Loved by Kate Bowler

Jane Eyre* by Charlotte Bronte

Praying with Jane Eyre by Vanessa Zoltan

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

Barrel Fever by David Sedaris

When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris

Proverbs of Ashes by Rita Nakashima Brooks and Rebecca Ann Parker

The Splinter in the Sky by Kemi Ashing-Giwa

Staying with the Trouble* by Donna Haraway

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

The Incarnations by Susan Baker

Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love of This World for Crucifixion and Empire by Rebecca Ann Parker and Rita Nakashima Brock

The Anthropocene Reviewed* by John Green

The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine by Rashid Khalidi

My Promised Land by Ari Shavit

This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

Enemies and Neighbours: Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel by Ian Black

Dragonflight* by Anne McCaffrey

The Masterharper of Pern* by Anne McCaffrey

The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood

A Peace to End All Peace by David Fromkin

Dragonsdawn* by Anne McCaffrey

Overall, I’m feeling pretty good about the list!  There are definitely some themes that pop up again and again, but there’s a nice mix of genres, fiction/nonfiction, length, tone, first-time reads and rereads, etc.  I haven’t set a formal goal for this coming year yet, but I’m hoping to get some off-the-beaten-path recommendations from friends for things that I wouldn’t otherwise have heard about – so, if you have any favorites, I’d love to hear about them!