Having spent a chunk of time compiling everyone else’s lists I thought I’d better get around to my own before the year runs away with me and the opportunity feels missed. 

I set a goal to push me into the discipline of doing something I really enjoy. I once again aimed for 75 books and managed 75 (still a day or two left to nudge my way past the goal!). Perhaps greatly helped by my having a sabbatical this year. But I notice, once again that I have to fight for the discipline of reading, despite me enjoying it when I actually do it. Reading is a joy and a gift and when I invest in it, I love it. I also continue to recognise, perhaps more than ever, that reading is a muscle that needs exercising and developing and that few things will atrophy my ability to focus and hold my attention as much as my phone can. There’s actually a lot more time for reading, I just can’t be playing video games as well.

Goodreads offers up a few stats if you’re interested, as I invariably am. If you look on Goodreads & see it says 72 read, that’s because they’re missing three audiobook editions which I’ve requested. Here are some highlights

• 43 books (mixture of Kindle & paper) and 31 audiobooks
• 28 fiction and 46 non-fiction
• 17 by female authors or co-authors
• Most popular authors: John Grisham (4), Hilary Mantel (2) Katherine Rundell (2), Andrew Wilson (2)
• Books by people I know personally: Six
• Books about running: Four

Of my top ten (in the gallery below with affiliate links) half of them were history books, half were listens and three were fiction.

I don’t separate out here books that I’ve either read to or with my kids but I have made a distinction between the books I’ve read and the books I’ve had read to me (audiobooks). I’ve put my favourites up the top in bold, the rest aren’t in any particular order.

Fiction

1. Damascus Station by David McCloskey
2. Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel
3. When the Wind Blows by Raymond Briggs
4. Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb
5. A Time for Mercy by John Grisham
6. On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness by Andrew Peterson
7. The Guardians by John Grisham
8. The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K Le Guin
9. Mad Blood Stirring by Simon Mayo
10. The Rainmaker by John Grisham
11. The Appeal by John Grisham
12. Master of Furies by Raymond Feist
13. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
14. The Skeleton Key by Erin Kelly
15. The Reckoning by John Grisham

Non-Fiction

1. Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne by Katherine Rundell
2. A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century by Barbara Tuchman
3. Metamorphosis by Matt Hatch
4. The Sermon on the Mount and Human Flourishing by Jonathan Pennington
5. Leading by Alex Ferguson
6. God of All Things by Andrew Wilson
7. Colossians Remixed by Brian J. Walsh, Sylvia Keesmaat
8. The infant baptism: The case for a pandemic origin by Francesco Arduini
9. Personal Discipleship by Krister & Joellyn Leimola
10. A Month of Sundays by Eugene Peterson
11. Simple: Justice, Wealth and Eco-Christianity by Helen Jaeger
12. T: The Story of Testosterone, the Hormone that Dominates and Divides Us by Carole Hooven
13. Hope Wins by Goff Hope
14. Connect! by Tim Jeffrey & Steve Chalke
15. Letters Of Note: Fathers edited by Shaun Usher
16. The Inconvenient Gospel by Clarence Jordan
17. The Faith by Charles Colson
18. Run or Die by Kilian Jornet
19. By Water: The Felix Manz Story by Jason Landsel
20. Sabbaticals by Rusty McKie
21. The MAF Method by Phil Maffetone
22. How Great Is Our God by Louie Giglio
23. The Plausibility Problem by Ed Shaw
24. The Plurality Principle by Dave Harvey
25. The Dawkins Letters by David Robertson
26. The Great Sex Rescue by Sheila Wray Gregoire
27. Seven: The Deadly Sins and the Beatitudes by Jeff Cook
28. Men Made New: An Exposition Of Romans 5-8 by John Stott
29. Gender Quality by Stef Liston

Audiobooks

A large chunk of my ‘reading’ is actually listening. These can be broken up into two distinct categories. Those I listened to with my kids and those I listened to on my own.

Just Me

1. Who Dares Wins: Britain, 1979-1982 by Dominic Sandbrook
2. Remaking the World by Andrew Wilson
3. A History of Britain Volume 2: The Wars of the British 1603-1776 by Simon Schama
4. Praying the Bible by Donald Whitney
5. 26.2 Miles to Happiness by Paul Tonkinson
6. Africa Is Not a Country by Dipo Faloyin
7. The Making of the Modern Middle East by Jeremy Bowen
8. Artemis by Andy Weir
9. Zeal without Burnout by Christopher Ash
10. The Coming Storm by Michael Lewis
11. Fludd by Hilary Mantel
12. Ethiopia by Wendy McElroy
13. The Lord and His Prayer by NT Wright
14. I Contain Multitudes by Ed Yong
15. The Church by CS Lewis
16. The Way Home by Mark Boyle
17. Running in the Midpack by Martin Yelling

With both kids

1. Skellig by David Almond
2. The Crackle Dawn Dragon by Abi Elphinstone
3. Tilly and the Bookwanderers by Anna James
4. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne
5. Jungle Doctor on the Hop by Paul White
6. The Midnight Gang by David Walliams
7. The Wolf Wilder by Katherine Rundell
8. Truckers by Terry Pratchett
9. The Imagination Box: Beyond Infinity by Martyn Ford

With just my son

1. Red Dwarf by Grant Naylor
2. The Arctic Incident by Eoin Colfer
3. Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne

With just my daughter

1. St. Patrick by Michael J. McHugh
2. Tramp for the Lord by Corrie Ten Boom

The post My Books Of The Year (2023) appeared first on The Simple Pastor.