In 2023 I managed to finish 52 books, way above my yearly goal of 40. This is even more remarkable considering that I decided to focus on long and ‘difficult’ works. However, as a result, I did receive a good dose of eyestrain as recompense and had to switch to audio books for a short period.

I dived headlong into Victorian literature, reading 20 novels from that (and the adjacent Regency) period, as well as a number of European works from the same era.

Here are some nerdy stats for you:

In 2023 I read 16,661 pages (compared to 11,951 in 2022), with the average book length being 320 pages (285 in 2022). The average score awarded was 8.7 out of 10 (8.6 in 2022). I read 41 novels (4 being audiobooks), 5 collections of short stories, 2 works of non-ficiton and 2 graphical novels.

Let’s look at the standout works I encountered for which I awarded 10/10.

GEORGE ELIOT - MIDDLEMARCH

A superb study of three sets of characters in the England of the 1830s. Brilliantly written, full of erudtion and keen observance, I found this to be a page-turner and surprisingly humourous at times. In a way I regret reading this before Eliot’s other works, since subsequent novels of hers I read this year (Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner, Romola, The Lifted Veil and Brother Jacob) while excellent, did not come up to Middlemarch’s flawlessness.

THOMAS MANN - THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

A novel of claustrophobic weirdness set in the sealed world of a Swiss sanitorium for the dying, My first experience with Mann, and the novel, despite its heavy intellectual overlay, was a great read from start to finish. I have purchased ‘Buddenbrooks’, another of his huge novels, for this years’ reading.

ROBERT SHECKLEY - UNTOUCHED BY HUMAN HANDS

A short story compilation put out as part of Penguin’s class SF series. Having already read some of his works, I knew what to expect, and I was not disappointed by these fresh comedic and perfectly constructed vignettes that proove that science fiction does not have to be huge spaceship fleets battling it out across the stars, or indeed be serious.

YU HUA - TO LIVE

A rare read of a modern novel for me, this highly moving account of an old Chinese man’s reminiscences on a life which has spanned World War Two, the Civil War and the Cultural Revolution is utterly compelling, despite its bleak sadness. Simple language portraying the will to live in spite of all the horror life can throw at a person.

GEORGE ORWELL - DOWN AND OUT IN PARIS AND LONDON

Orwell gave up his creature comforts in order to experience firsthand the unbelievable squalor and privation of those at the bottom of society in 1930s France and the UK. The lives of the homeless or those existing in dosshouses and working as day labourers, frankly told. I can only imagine how much of a shocker this was upon publication, but frighteningly, it all seems a little too close to home.

WILKIE COLLINS - THE WOMAN IN WHITE

My first encounter with the prolific Mr Collins, variously charged with inventing both the sensation novel and the detective story, and I don’t know why I stayed away so long. This lengthy and intricately plotted page-turner is a tour de force, featuring some of the best characters from the whole of the Victorian era, and employs some very unconventional means of telling the story - the complex tale of injustice and misidentification is slowly revealed through the narration of different personages including the depositions of minor figures. Utterly compelling.

ALEKSANDER TISMA - THE USE OF MAN

Brutal gut wrenching novel describing the intertwining lives of a group of people living in the multi-ethnic Yugoslav city of Novi Sad during World War II. Modernist in its non-linearity with odd passages describing street scenes and a shocking mid-novel cataloguing of the fates of all the characters, it is beautifully written. A deep exploration on the nature of suffering, war, and the Holocaust.

SUSANNA CLARKE - DOCTOR STRANGE AND MR NORRELL

Breaking out of my reading preferences to try a ‘modern’ novel, this is an epic fantasy tale set in an alternate England of the Napoleonic Wars, and written in the style of Jane Austen. Very long, but a page-turner nonetheless.

To finish, here are the books that scored 9/10 - so pretty excellent works too, but I’m just too lazy to write something about all of them:

GE FEI - Flock of Brown Birds
ANONYMOUS - The Homeric Hymns
ANN RADCLIFFE - The Mysteries of Udolpho
JAMES JOYCE - Dubliners
ELLEN WOOD - East Lynne
HARRY HARRISON - Make Room! Make Room!
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT - Madame Bovary
JEROME K JEROME - Three Men in a Boat
JEROME K JEROME - Three Men on the Bummel
GEORGE ELIOT - Adam Bede
IRMGARD KEUN - Child of All Nations
SHIRLEY JACKSON - The Haunting of Hill House
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE - The Flowers of Evil
BOHUMIL HRABAL - Cutting It Short
MARY ELIZABETH BRADDON - Aurora Floyd
GEORGE ELIOT - The Lifted Veil and Brother Jacob
GEORGE GISSING - New Grub Street
THOMAS HARDY - Tess of the D’Urbervilles
GEORGE GROSSMITH - The Diary of a Nobody
GÜNTER GRASS - The Tin Drum
IRMGARD KEUN - The Artificial Silk Girl
ADAM WISNIEWSKI-SNERG - Robot

I do feel compelled to write something about Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urebervilles, however. I had avoided Hardy after reading the first few pages of one of his earlier works when I was a lad of 16 or so. I found it utterley tedious - it seemed like pages were devoted to the description of someone crossing a field. I was also put off by Hardy’s rural setting of ‘Wessex’ - I lived in the real Wessex, the rural arse-end of southern Britain, so I didn’t really have any desire to read about the bucolic boredom I could see all around my small town.

41 years later, and suffering from eyestrain, I sought out some audiobooks. Not wanting to consume anything worthwhile in this format, I decided to try Tess on the grounds that it was something I was never going to read in book form, and I could ditch it immediately if it turned out to be ten pages of someone crossing a field again.

What a revelation then unfolded! An unrelentingly bleak but incredibly powerful tale of the eponymous Tess, beautiful naive young agricultural worker whose life descends into a hellish series of misfortunes, the recounting of which eventually brought me to tears.

I didn’t like Hardy’s overly long winded prose, reminiscent of 1830 rather than the 1890s when it was written, but the story was profound. The book highlights better than other Victorian novels the plight of women, the double standards and the hypocrisy, as well as the detailed look at agricultural labour with peasants presented as humans rather than vague adjuncts to middle-class plots. I had no idea Hardy was a radical, and am now interested in his other controversial work, Jude the Obscure.

Tess only missed getting a 10/10 because of the aforemention archaic style.

CONCLUSION

2023 was a great year for reading. I accomplished all of my goals in my ‘big books’ project and went on to tackle many additional longer works, while still managing to easily surpass my desired quota of 40 books. The vast majority of works I tackled were excellent, with only a handful scoring 7/10, and only one less than that.

2023 READING ROUND UP