Readers

“I sincerely believe that books don’t live until they’re read. While I think I’d write even if nobody was reading - it’s who I am - I thrive because I know the stories are being brought to life by all of you. In this, stories are a special kind of art, particularly ones written down. Each of you imagines this book, and its characters, a little differently - each of you puts your own stamp on it, making it yours. I don’t think a story is quite finished until that has happened to it - until the dream in my head has become a reality (even if briefly) in yours.

And so this book is yours, as are all of them once you read them. Thank you so much for bringing life to my work, and to the Cosmere.”

Brandon Sanderson, The Sunlit Man, Postscript

2023 Reading Wrap Up

I read a lot of Fantasy this year. A lot of Sanderson and Pratchett and I also discovered Jason Denzel’s work.

Here are screencaps of my stats from Storygraph.

* I’m pretty sure the longest book was also something by Jordan or Sanderson, but the page count stats got mixed up somehow.

I was enjoying this read, but something else took over. Maybe I’ll come back to it sometime.

Along with this being the Year of Sanderson (5 new books from Brandon Sanderson this year) I also decided to start Discworld again. I reread the first few Discworld books and then started working my way forward chronologically..

WoT & Grishaverse

A couple months ago I finally finished my massive re-read of The Wheel of Time.

Since then I’ve been binge reading the Grishaverse series by Leigh Bardugo. It’s darker than I usually read, but I love her characters. As the cast grows I really relate to so many neurodivergent traits. So that has kept me reading even when the circumstances are grim.

*Content warning, although most of the darkness is not explicit. If you’re a sensitive reader you may want to check out content warnings for each book on Storygraph.

You can get a taste of it via the Netflix series which is rated TV-14.

The storybook Language of Thorns was absolutely gorgeous, and used a clever illustrative style where the images slowly developed over each page. But some of the stories were so traumatic* I left mine in a Little Free Library and I’m not sure if I regret it or not.

*as are many traditional fairy tales to be fair.