My #books read in 2023 ❤️ My top three were:
1. Gate of the sun by Elias Khoury. A heartbreaking novel about the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon
2. Llamadas de Amsterdam (Calls from Amsterdam) by Juan Villoro. Great modern love story
3. Guns, germs and steel by Jared Diamond. Not so new but still great informative book about why some societies developed faster than others
#booklover #bookworm #read2023
#Read2023
I read 121 #books this year. My "read" includes listening to #audiobooks, else I wouldn't manage to read that amount of books.
My favourites this year were
"The Devil And The Dark Water" by Stuart Turton",
"The Brilliant Abyss" by Helen Scales and
"American Prometheus" by Kai Bird.
The surprise of the year came in quite late: "Gray" by Leonie Swann.
I read a lot of very good books about Big Tech and Climate Change, both topics will very likely be also huge in 2024.
#read2023
The House with a Clock in its Walls, by John Bellairs.
Lewis goes to live with his uncle who turns out to be a warlock. The house’s builder has left a ticking that pervades every wall and the story gets more dramatic as they get closer to figuring out why
Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief, by Rick Riordan.
Percy discovers that he is the child of one of the ancient Greek gods and therefore attracts the attention monsters of legend, so he goes to Camp Half-Blood where he is safe and can train to better protect himself. Then there is the matter of someone stealing Zeus’s lightning in order to start a war between the gods…
I really enjoyed this book.
#read2023
Moving Pictures, by Terry Pratchett.
People find themselves called to Holy Wood hill to become part of Moving Pictures, but where are all these strange ideas coming from, and what else might come to the Discworld too?
I read this a long long time ago and had forgotten a very large amount of it. What noticed this time were characters I love from the later books: Detritus, Gaspode, Ponder Stibbons and Windle Poons. It felt kind of like an origin story prequel and I was here for it.
Alice ♦ Christina Henry | Review
Alice by Christina Henry is a haunting and atmospheric rendition of Lewis Carroll’s classic tale
https://theartofreading.de/alice-christina-henry-review/
#4Stars, #4Sterne, #Adult, #ChristinaHenry, #DarkFantasy, #Horror, #Read2023, #Retelling, #Review, #Rezension, #TheChroniclesOfAlice, #TitanBooks.
#read2023 The Lost Road and Other Writings, by #JRRTolkien, edited by Christopher Tolkien.
This is volume 5 of the History of Middle-earth, and has the earliest versions of the Númenor story, and an aborted start to a time travel story (the titular "The Lost Road"). It also has the last version of the Silmarillion material before it was put aside to start work on that Hobbit sequel that his publisher wanted (having rejected all of the above projects).
One highlight is seeing the first versions of the battle of the last alliance made famous as the opening of Peter Jackson's adaptation of Fellowship of the Ring - this predated the start of writing of Lord of the Rings by several years! It's the very last story of the Elder Days as Tolkien envisaged it in the mid-1930s: Sauron is overthrown, Gil-galad and Elendil die in the process and ... that's it. Story over! No Isildur, no One Ring, no Third Age.
This book also has the source material for the last chapter of the Quenta Silmarillion as eventually published, since it was the last time that stage of the story was written. It's in a very high-level, summarising style, which is why, if you're familiar with it, the decades-long War of Wrath is treated so very briefly. And old Ancalagon the Black gets but one sentence.
The last part of the book has 60-odd pages of etymological stems in Elvish languages and how they developed. Not exactly gripping reading for non-linguists, but there are little gems here and there about things that never show their face elsewhere, new aspects to known characters, or creatures that don't appear in a story.
@jonberger This book stole your
picture for it book cover.
Starter Villain by John Scalzi
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