December 12, 2023 ☼ books ☼ fiction

2023 - The Year in Fiction

This is my list of fiction for 2023. I have rated them into categories, but within a category they are in no particular order.

Over the past few years my reading habit has changed in one important way: I put aside a book as soon as I stop enjoying it or get bored. Some of those I set aside I might read at a later time, but mostly I just, er, write them off. I think it’s a rational response: there’s so much to read and the available time to read them keeps getting shorter.

(Related: 2022 — The Year in Fiction and 2021 — The Year in Fiction)

Completely read or re-read

Very Highly Rated

1. Past Caring by Robert Goddard
2. The Enigma of Room 622 by Joel Dicker
3. Arcadia by Iain Pears
4. The Truth by Terry Pratchett
5. Foucault’s Pendulum - Umberto Eco (Fourth complete re-read)

Highly Rated

1. Black Swan Green by David Mitchell
2. The Shadow of the Torturer by Gene Wolfe
3. The Sword of the Lictor by Gene Wolfe
4. The Citadel of the Autarch by Gene Wolfe
5. Name to a Face by Robert Goddard
6. The Erstwhile by Brian Catling
7. The Drawing of the Dark by Tim Powers
8. City of Mist by Carlos Luis Zafon
9. A Rising Man by Abir Mukherjee
10. Making Money by Terry Pratchett

Good

1. The Claw of the Conciliator by Gene Wolfe
2. The Leech by Hiron Ennes
3. The Cabinets of Barnaby Maybe by Elsa Hart
4. Love will tear us apart by C K McDonnell
5. The Physiognomy by Jeffrey Ford
6. Midsummer’s Equation by Keigo Higashino
7. Legacy by John Pilkington
8. The Reincarnationist Papers by D Eric Maikranz
9. The Cognomina Codex by D Eric Maikranz
10. The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers

Good, but disappointing

1. Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway
2. The Glass Hotel by Emily St John Mandel
3. The Hollow Places by T Kingfisher
4. The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins
5. The Dimensions of a Cave by Greg Jackson

Okay…

1. The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley
2. The Beach by Alex Garland
3. Whirligig by Andrew James Greig
4. Maigret and the Hotel Majestic by Georges Simenon
5. The Fine Art of Invisible Detection by Robert Goddard
6. The Flanders Panel by Arturo Perez-Reverte

Partly read

1. Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang
2. A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge
3. Act of Oblivion by Robert Harris
4. The Curator by Owen King
5. Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton
6. She lover of death by Boris Akunin
7. Death and Restoration by Iain Spears
8. The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekhara
9. The Dimensions of a Cave by Greg Jackson
10. The Third Policeman by Flann O’Brien
11. Disruptions by Steven Millhauser
12. Santantango by Laszlo Krasznahorkai
13. The Other Name by John Fosse
14. The Narrator by Michael Cisco
15. Vita Nostra by Marina & Sergey Dyachenko
16. The Seventh Son by Sebastian Faulks
17. Locus Solus by Raymond Roussel
18. Prophet by Helen Macdonald
19. Sanctus by Simon Toyne
20. Lanny by Max Porter
21. When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamin Labatut
22. F by Daniel Kehlmann
23. Monday begins on Saturday by Boris & Arkady Strugatsky
24. The Fraud by Zadie Smith
25. Swift to Chase by Laird Barron
26. The Perpetual Astonishment of Jonathan Fairfax by Christopher Shevlin
27. How to buy a Planet by D A Holdsworth
28. Fever House by Keith Rosson
29. Traveller of the Century by Andres Neuman
30. Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi
31. Tomas Nevinson by Javier Marias
32. Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
33. Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov
34. Cast in Order of Disappearance by Simon Brett
35. Money by Martin Amis
36. The Shadow Land by Elizabeth Kostova
37. The Stockholm Octavo by Karen Engelman
38. The Hike by Drew Magary
39. The Tower of Fools by Andrzej Sapkowski
40. Foundryside by Robert Jackson Bennett
41. Illuminations by Alan Moore

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