Here’s my year in books (tomorrow I’ll post my favourites for 2023) –

I read 105 books in total (up from 88 last year). According to Goodreads, that’s 29,229 pages. The longest was To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara at 720 pages, and the shortest was So Late in the Day by Claire Keegan at 52 pages.

Of those I read, 86 were by female authors, 18 by male authors and one not specified.

Twenty-five books were by Australian authors (21 female authors and 4 male authors) and the rest were from America, Great Britain, Germany, Ireland, Japan, The Netherlands, France, Croatia, Bulgaria, Mexico, Latvia and Tonga.

I read 66 books from authors who were new to me in 2023.

Of the 105 books I read, 28 were published in 2023. The oldest was I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith, first published in 1948.

A third of my reading (39 books) was non-fiction (22 of which were memoirs).

My reading format remains altered by our COVID years, with more audios than I listened to a few years ago. This year, I read 27 hardbacks and listened to 25 audios and the rest were e-books.

I read mostly contemporary literature and memoirs, plus essay collections, short stories, historical fiction, biography, pop-psychology, a few suspense and true crime stories, and one dystopian novel.

Next year I’m aiming to take a leaf out of Grab the Lapels’ book – her annual wrap-up includes some terrific measures (I especially love the ‘How did I feel when the book was done?’ measure).