What I read in 2023

We've reached the end of another year, so it's time to review the books I read in 2023. At the start of the year, I set a goal to read at least 100 books, and I finished the year with 102, the same number of books I read in 2022.

The average rating for the books I read was 4.01 stars, slightly lower than the 4.04 average from 2022's books read. The breakdown by star rating was:

• 5 stars - 31 books
• 4 stars - 41 books
• 3 stars - 30 books

As I mentioned in my last post, the reading challenge I undertook this year (to read classics that everyone "should" read before they die) did not go as well as my previous reading challenges. The 3.58-star average rating from those twelve books dragged down my overall average for the year. Without the books from the reading challenge, the other books I read this year came in at 4.07 stars, which is higher than 2022's average rating.

In my next post, I'll list my top ten reads of 2023. Stay tuned!

Reading challenge recap - books to read before I die

The reading challenge I selected for 2023 was to read a dozen of the "classics" that everyone should read before they die. As I mentioned less than halfway through the year, it turns out the classics are not for me. For the sake of formally closing out the challenge, here are the books I read (listed alphabetically by title):

• The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath 
• Catch-22 - Jospeh Heller 
• The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
• Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra 
• Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
• Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift
• Moby Dick - Herman Melville
• One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel García Márquez
• Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
• Ulysses - James Joyce
• Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

Not one of the books on the list received a 5-star rating from me. Seven of them were 4-star reads, and the remaining five received 3 stars, for an average of 3.58.

As far as reading challenges goes, this one didn't produce any great books that I enjoyed very much, but I still feel a sense of accomplishment in having read some of these "classic" works of literature.