2023 in Review

 2023 was a phenomenal year for reading. I nearly doubled 2022's total at 40 books read this year. 40 books! I read so many that I can't tell if I'm getting faster at reading or if I was reading more. Either way, I read some wild books. I wish I could review every single one of them here however,  no one has time for that. Instead, I'll settle for my top five favorite reads, and let me tell you it is a hard decision between some of them.

Now before I get started, if you'd like to see the full list of what I read in 2023, you can find it on my website mkbingman.com. I link every book to their respective Amazon page and every link is directly correlated to which version of the book I read (ebook, hardback, paperback, and audiobook).

Number five is a unique entry to this list. Every point after this one is some sort of fiction genre. Atomic Habits by James Clear was an outstanding read. I actually listened to it in one sitting. It's not a very long book, just like other self-help books, but there was something about this one. It was read by the author and it felt as if he was breaking down the topics like he had been teaching them for years. It was obvious he put a ton of thought into every chapter. He kept it entertaining, which is important in the self-help genre. After listening to it, I was inspired, so I'd say Clear attained his goal through his writing.

Number four was the first book that Brandon Sanderson released in his 'Year of Sanderson'. Tress of the Emerald Sea. This was my first peek into the Cosmere, and in 2024 I hope to read a good chunk of the rest of it, with The Stormlight Archives. Tress was a ride of elation, whips and turns that I didn't expect all told by the funniest character I have ever had the pleasure of reading (which I've been informed that he is also in the Stormlight Archives).

Our next entry on this list wasn't the first but the second book in the Wheel of Time series, The Great Hunt. This is the book that encouraged me to read more fantasy books this year. I was fascinated and enthralled with it. I plowed through it, wanting answers but never getting them. I will be reading more in this series in 2024, especially since they apparently get better and less annoying (The Dragon Reborn left me annoyed and dissatisfied).

Now we are getting into the really good stuff, the stuff I couldn't put down. Number two surprised me though. After reading Terry Goodkind's Wizard First Rule, I didn't want to read anything else by him. It had taken me almost 6 years to finish this one book, and then something clicked in the back of my head. "Read Death's Mistress," it said. I ignored it until I couldn't any longer. I read the first chapter, thinking nothing of it, I didn't plan to read any further than that and then blam. Seven days later I was finishing it with the second book in the series on order. This book is good, like really good. I had enough knowledge from Wizard's First Rule to establish the world, and I could easily tell what was going on, though I probably missed many easter eggs. It is a spin-off series of the Sword of Truth so you know typical Terry Goodkind.

And the final entry on my favorite books I've read this year is actually not one entry it is seven. Years ago I read the first Dexter book by Jeff Lindsay. I enjoyed it a lot, but I don't know why I never read the rest of the series. This year I did though. I listened to the audiobooks, all of them were narrated by Jeff Lindsay, himself and they were freaking amazing. Even the last one where you could tell he was tired of the character, was great entertainment. The show is an overwhelming disappointment when compared to the source material. I wish there were more, I'd probably still be listening to them now. 

Some honorable mentions include Defiant by Brandon Sanderson, Orbits by Jeremy Scott, The Graveyard Shift by D.M. Guay, and Look Out for the Little Guy by Scott Lang (a tie-in to the Marvel Cinematic Universe).

(I'm not going to include my own book, Gar the Great and the Forbidden Top Shelf Shiny, in this list, however, if you want to check it out and maybe add it to yours feel free to do so! Gar would deeply appreciate it.)

2022 in Review

 As a writer, I need to consume as much written content as possible to improve my trade. I need to learn from others and develop my voice, which derives from these other writers. With that in mind, I will break down my top five books that I read in 2022. These are the books that I just couldn't put down and could honestly read again (but won't because I don't repeat content consumption).

In 2022 I read 22 books. A lot of them were good, some of them were just plain amazing and others felt like I slogged through them. Now keep in mind, I read every single day for about an hour plus or minus or an average of 1-2 chapters. I'm not the fastest reader so sometimes that is all I could manage to do. This year was interesting I had cracked open a book from 13 new authors I had never read before. In the past I stuck with authors I was comfortable with such as Stephen King (which is why my writing is like his) and Michael Crichton's. But after being disappointed by the last three Crichton books I read (Andromeda Strain, Sphere, and Dragon Teeth) I wanted to broaden my horizon. I wanted to find some new favorites, and I did.

Number 5 on my list would have to be Gwendy's Button Box by Stephen King & Richard Chizmar. This is the first book (actually a novella) that I read by an author I had never read from this year. It teases intriguing ideas and kept asking more and more questions that I felt compelled to find the answers to. It ended with many unanswered questions and tricked me into reading the other two books in its series both written by Chizmar exclusively, with King's blessing of course. The third book in this series was probably my least favorite of the three but I felt I needed to finish it since I had come so far already.

Number 4 would have to be Heat Wave by Richard Castle. Again this was an author I had never read from before, but I had noticed that the first six books in this series were a part of Kindle Unlimited. For those who don't know what Kindle Unlimited is, you're missing out. For $9.99/month, you can access millions of books, audiobooks, and magazines that you'd otherwise have to pay full price for, essentially for free. Now I had noticed that it included these books in my Kindle Unlimited subscription and I went for it. At about the same time, I really wanted to rewatch the Castle series that aired on ABC back when I was in high school. It's about a writer who helps to solve murders and would fictionalize them, giving them some flourish and adding some details from his own life. ABC saw they could make some money from this and released the actual books that this fictionalized character was working on every season. There are ten of these books in the series, I have read 6 of them (the Kindle Unlimited ones). It was rather fun to read the books and try to point out plots from Richard Castle's 'real' life. Though I haven't finished either of the series (the show or the books) I can whole-heartedly say I really enjoy the concept. The books are fun to read even though they are your basic crime thriller mystery. They follow a fairly consistent pattern that becomes obvious by the second book, but they are still great reads.

Now we are entering the top three. These books were fan-flipping-tastic and personally, make me want to be a better writer to fit in with the authors in this group. I'll say right now that they were all authors I had never read before, but these entries have made me a fan of every single one of them. It was genuinely painful for me to rank these because they were just so good. They all have their own reasons to be number 1, but I decided I would rank them from the first read to the last read to simplify and ease my inability to decide.

Number 3 is the 7th book I read in 2022 and it was a welcome and oddly appropriate book to read after number 6 (my least favorite of all the books I read this year) which happened to be about space and quantum physics. Let me tell you, number 6 took me 2 months to slog through 367 pages because it was hard non-fiction that I thought I could understand, but after being humbled by it I needed something way more entertaining and so I found number 7, Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. I had found parallel concepts between the two (even though they were unrelated), but since one was more fiction than non-fiction it was easier to read. It took me 4 days to read Project Hail Mary which was 496 pages of wonderful story-telling. I would not mind reading a sequel to this book even though Weir wrapped it up perfectly. He answered all of my questions, magically, in the last chapter of the book.

I thought I had hit the peak of the content I was going to read, for the year. I thought nothing else could top the greatness that was Project Hail Mary but then I read The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi. On a whim, Kindle gave ran an ad to me that had this as its focus. I liked the concept and I enjoy Kaiju movies (Godzilla, King Kong, you know those Kaiju movies) so I purchased the ebook. It was well worth the $14. I'm not going to provide a description for this book, because the title does a perfect job. Save the Kaiju at all costs. Easy.

Now for probably my favorite book, I have ever read. I know I just said the top three are amazing (they really are) however the number 1 book I read this year deserves a chef's kiss...Maybe a second one for good measure. I finished this book in less than a week. Its 528 pages were pure gold, every word danced on the page in perfect unison. It could not have been written any better. I'm talking about Brandon Sanderson's Skyward. It's meant for young adults, but it is amazing regardless. I got this book and the two sequels as a birthday present from one of my good friends. They sat on my shelf until about 2 weeks ago when I decided I wanted to read them. I didn't think they were going to be amazing maybe subpar but there were many chapters in Skyward where I had to remind myself to breathe and that has never happened to me. If you pick up any book next year, this is the one I would recommend without hesitation (my book is obviously implied).

For the full list of books, I read in 2022 check out my website mkbingman.com. They are in the order I finished them in and I link every single one of them to their Amazon page if you want to check them out for yourself. I would recommend you stay away from number 6 and number 19, they were both nonfiction and very boring but were read because of the Kindle challenges that were done throughout the year. All of the Richard Castle books are fun like I said and if you have the time I would check out the ABC series Castle as well. I wasn't a fan of The Altar Girl though I could see how someone could get into it. The Dead Key had potential, but then the story falls short leaving you wishing it had gone a little longer and fleshed out the story a little more. I would not recommend The Other Emily either, Dean Koontz twists and twists, and then it became a mess of genre fusion where it could have been better if he had included the science fiction element earlier in the story instead of the last chapter. Never Lie and The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August were pretty good and honestly could be considered honorable mentions for this list.