December Reads and Favorites: 2023

You ever look back on the previous month and feel like you read way more than you actually did? Yea, that was December for me. Oh well. Still hit my book goal for the year, though.

A while back I would have been upset at myself for not finishing more books. I had gotten caught up in the amount of books I read and lost focus on the quality of what I was reading. Happy to report that I have since changed that mindset. As long as I am reading and have some type of material to flood this page with, then it’s all good.

Finished Books

1. The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury

2. Razorblade Tears by S.A. Cosby

3. The Butcher Boy by Patrick McCabe

4. Zone One by Colson Whitehead

5. Those We Thought We Knew by David Joy

6. The Conspiracy Against the Human Race by Thomas Ligotti

7. Soundtracks: The Surprising Solution to Overthinking: by Jon Acuff

8. They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? by Horace McCoy

9. Calypso by David Sedaris

10. The Villa by Rachel Hawkins

11. Shooter by Dean Walter Myers

12. Mile 81 by Stephen King

Top Picks

Razorblade Tears was the second book by S.A. Cosby that I have finished and it is just more evidence of what a fantastic author he is. The Butcher Boy was recommended by The Jeff Word Book Show. I can see why it was mentioned along the likes of The Painted Bird, and while it deserves to be in the same company, I had a hard time with it. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good. Or was it? Am I just a moron? I am still deciding how I feel about the book, honestly.

Soundtracks by Jon Acuff was fantastic. I listened to this audiobook, narrated by Acuff, and he did such a killer job. So much so that I wrote about it elsewhere.

The Villa didn’t get a ton of love on Goodreads, which is proof that Goodreads reviews are not the end all, be all of book reading and reviews. I thoroughly enjoyed that book and found the plot creative and fun to follow. I did terrible at guessing the plot twist which is something I love in a book. I don’t want to figure it out easily.

I would comment on Ligotti’s book, however, he used too many big words for me to handle.