2023--The year's reading in review

Agent Zigzag	Ben McIntyre	Nonfiction
Piranesi	Susanna Clarke	Fiction
Lost Transmissions—The Secret History of Science Fiction and Fantasy	Ed. Desirina Boskovich	Essays
The Sense of an Ending	Julian Barnes	Fiction
A Small Death In Lisbon	Robert Wilson	Fiction
My Friend Dahmer	Derf Backderf	Graphic Novel
Ride the Pink Horse	Dorothy B. Hughes	Fiction
How To Sell A Haunted House	Grady Hendrix	Fiction
Rumpole and the Golden Thread	John Mortimer	Short stories
The Lottery or, the Adventures of James Harris	Shirley Jackson	Short stories	reread
The Space Vampires	Colin Wilson	Fiction
The Haunting of Hill House	Shirley Jackson	Fiction	reread
We Have Always Lived In the Castle	Shirley Jackson	Fiction	reread
Other Stories and Sketches	Shirley Jackson	Short stories
Agent Running In the Field	John Le Carré	Fiction
The Road Through The Wall	Shirley Jackson	Fiction
The Highest Level of All--The Story of Fantasy Wargaming	Mike Monaco	Nonfiction
The Autopsy--Best Weird Stories of Michael Shea	Michael Shea	Short stories
Hangsaman	Shirley Jackson	Fiction
Our Kind of Traitor	John Le Carré	Fiction
Let the Right One In	John Ajvide Linqvist	Fiction
The Bird's Nest	Shirley Jackson	Fiction
The Sundial	Shirley Jackson	Fiction
The Black Dudley Murder	Margery Allingham	Fiction
Checkmate In Berlin	Giles Milton	Nonfiction
Mr. Mercedes	Stephen King	Fiction	reread
Finders Keepers	Stephen King	Fiction
End of Watch	Stephen King	Fiction
The Outsider	Stephen King	Fiction	reread
The Mind Readers	Margery Allingham	Fiction
Devil In A Blue Dress	Walter Mosley	Fiction
Bloodlands--Europe Between Hitler and Stalin	Timothy Snyder	Nonfiction
Swords Against Death	Fritz Leiber	Short stories
Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke and Other Misfortunes	Eric LaRocca	Short fiction
The Good German	Joseph Kanon	Fiction
Hearts In Atlantis	Stephen King	Fiction
Rumpole À La Carte	John Mortimer	Short stories
The Hobbit	J.R.R. Tolkien	Fiction	reread
Horrorstör	Grady Hendrix	Fiction
The Hollow Places	T. Kingfisher (Ursula Vernon)	Fiction
The Cabin at the End of the World	Paul Tremblay	Fiction
Alfred Hitchcock's Your Share of Fear	edited by Cathleen Jordan	Short stories
The Gyrth Chalice Mystery (a.k.a. Look to the Lady)	Margery Allingham	Fiction
Holly	Stephen King	Fiction
Alfred Hitchcock's Daring Detectives	edited by Robert Arthur	Short stories
Your Guide to Not Getting Murdered In A Quaint English Village	Maureen Johnson and Jay Cooper	Short humor
The Lord of the Rings	J.R.R. Tolkien	Fiction	reread
What Moves the Dead	T. Kingfisher (Ursula Vernon)	Fiction
Slippage	Harlan Ellison	Short stories
The Monster Show	David J. Skal	Nonfiction
Murder For Halloween	edited by Michele Slung and Roland Hartman	Short stories

I decided at the beginning of the year to keep track of all my movie watching and major reading. I have to confess, it started with the movies, and perhaps not for the best of reasons: whether it's a consequence of middle age or of 2020's Adventures With the 'Rona, it's just not always easy to remember if I've already seen some movies until I'm in the middle of them. It's usually easier to remember if I've read a book, though that often has as much to do with whether the book (if it's a physical book, at least) can be found on a pile on the floor or on the bookshelf.

It also did occur to me that my friend Michelle always does end-of-year blog posts listing her reading, and it might be fun to join in that game. She is more thorough than I'm being here, breaking her reading down by genre, while I'm just dumping the year's list.

I might--might, I say--follow up with a post or posts commenting on anything that seems commentable. For sure, I'll at least post the movies I saw in 2023 tomorrow, leaving open the possibility the ScatterKat and I might watch something tonight, the final night of the year (it's safe to say I won't be finishing any of the other books I'm currently reading by midnight).

I say "might" because it's as obvious to me as it might be to anyone that SOTSOGM is a bit defunct these days, despite a road paved with good intentions that runs to and through the Unholy Gates with nary a speedbump or school zone in sight. I'd thought that perhaps with retirement the blogging might return.

And it still might! But you know, the obvious follow-up post to the retirement post seemed (at least at the moment) to be a rumination on a quarter-century in the legal system, and what I drafted was a screed that my heart wasn't really in; as I tried articulating what it finally meant to me to have been in the law and to have seen what I saw and to have done or attempted whatever the hell it is I did or assayed, I realized that what I really wanted was to move on.

Thus this makes a nice follow-up to the retirement announcement: many or maybe most of these books were read when I had a career; regardless, this is a thing I did this year that feels worthy of discussion, or at least of posting to the blog: I read. Never mind sorrow or rage or whatever; I read books, and some of them were better than others but I didn't regret any, and some of the less good ones were ironically among the ones I'm gladdest I got to (Shirley Jackson may be one of America's best, but her early novels... well, you can see the potential).

I might close with criteria: these are books I began and finished in 2023. Books I started in 2022 and finished don't cut it. It (the list) doesn't include articles, stories, or essays I read online, e.g. short stories posted or TOR[dot]com or longform pieces posted on blogs or by magazines, newspapers, or journals (even if they might've been longer than 25,000 words). It also doesn't include comic books or collections like The Complete Peanuts or collected Sandman (which I finally got to after all this time; yes, yes, I know); the graphic novel My Friend Dahmer by John "Derf" Backderf did make the list because it's heavy stuff, and I would've included any other standalone graphic novels, only it doesn't seem I read any others.

One last note of apology: I am reasonably certain at least one book on this list was a gift from a friend or family member that was not enjoyed in a timely manner, though it was enjoyed eventually. I fear that if I publish a similar list in 2024, there will be similar confessions of tardiness or neglect. I'm afraid I'm one of those readers who's always beginning a new book before they've finished all of the others they're reading, and I doubt it will surprise you that I have a corvid's habits of collecting more shinies than we really have room in our nest for. Shinies being books. As I'm sure you understood. The point, anyway, being please don't think a gift was poorly received because it went unused longer than it ought to have.

Happy New Year's Eve, everybody.