As per usual, I didn’t read a lot of new fiction, outside of my SF beat, this past year. Last year at this time I mentioned how typical this was of “old man” reading habits. This is something I’ve become aware of more and more. Complementing my need for bifocals and ongoing physical and mental collapse I can now add the fact that I read like an old man.
What do I mean by that? A lot of history and politics. This seems to be part of the aging process. I think an interesting essay or column is in there somewhere. Why do older people lose interest in new fiction, and especially new fiction by young voices? Because we can no longer identify or understand the world it describes? I’m not sure, but I’m feeling it.
Best fiction: Paul Lynch’s Prophet Song won this year’s Man Booker Prize. No, I really don’t think that means anything, but I just thought I’d point out that sometimes prize juries do make a decent pick. It’s possible, if unlikely, that some jurors even occasionally look at a few of the books they’re considering.
Lynch’s evocation of a dystopic Irish police state is lyrical and raw, literary and frightening. Clearly there is a lot of political anxiety in the air these days.
Best non-fiction: Do we live in revolutionary times? I think we do, but that may be another part of getting old (see above). I read a couple of good books on revolutionary moments this past year, The Revolutionary Temper by Robert Darnton (on the build up to the French Revolution), and Revolutionary Spring by Christopher Clark on Europe’s “Year of Revolutions.” Both are excellent, but I’ll give the nod to Clark’s book for its narrative sweep and the number of notes I had to make while reading.
Best SF: I didn’t think this was a great year for SF, though there were a number of books I quite enjoyed. A couple of fun SF detective stories — Station Eternity by Mur Lafferty (actually this came out in 2022) and Wormhole by Keith Brooke and Eric Brown — stood out, as did the graphic novel Why Don’t You Love Me? by Paul B. Rainey. I’ll go with Samantha Harvey’s Orbital though, even if it’s probably not the kind of book a lot of hard and hardcore SF fans will thrill to. There’s literally no story to it at all. Instead, it’s a poetic meditation on our connections to the Earth and to each other.
Alex Good 
Have to admit, I think I’d rather watch Scream6 than read any of these….
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Well, it would only be 90 minutes of your time so it has that going for it.
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So many movies to avoid, so many books to ignore, what’s a man to do?
😀
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Carpentry. I should have taken up carpentry.
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Much more respectable than a bootleg maple syrup runner!
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Phil must have been an old man from the age of 20, he’s always read history and politics, got more books on the stuff than the ruddy library. He does do fiction but mostly ‘what ifs’ about politics and history!
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Yep, we’re official members of the Codgers Club!
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You write that you “read like an old man.” I thought you meant nodding off after five minutes of reading. I’ve had a difficult year regarding book reading. I have struggled to finish a number of books I started this year. Not because they weren’t good. It’s all me, and something I am aiming to fix in 2024.
I have been reading far too many comics this year. Maybe they’ve finally rotted my brain, or my attention span, as my brother used to joke. He’s a big comic reader too!
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Well, I nod off after five minutes of reading too . . .
I do think there’s something to the idea that reading works out a kind of mental muscle, and that if you fall out of the habit of reading challenging or difficult books you get lazier and less able to concentrate on them. So you definitely have to mix up comic reviews with other stuff, though comics can be challenging too in different ways. You’ve got to work out everything!
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Is the French Revolution still happening where you are? What do you see when you look out your window in Paris?
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Shoppers, people sitting at cafes, heads being paraded on pikes . . .
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I do appreciate your inclusion of A TIDY ARMAGEDDON on the Toronto Star best SF of 2023 list. Wow – someone didn’t just read it, they GOT it. 🙂 Thank you.
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Thanks Brian. That was one of the books that’s stayed with me the most this year.
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