I suppose that if I am going to make a list of everyone else’s best reads of the year then it’s only reasonable that I do so myself. I started the year strong but tailed off towards the end of the year where I didn’t seem to be able to do any concentrated reading and so I have about a dozen half-started, half-finished books littered about the house. As I result I didn’t quite hit my reading goals for the year but did manage to pass 50 with a few days to go. Not all of them of the highest quality it has to be said. Yet I would also say that you cannot go wrong with any of my final top ten. So there’s that.

I consider listening to an audiobook as reading. Admittedly technically reading is an activity done through your eyes (or fingers if you’re blind) but listening to someone else read that same book is still consuming the book itself. So it counts.

Goodreads offers the usual year in books stats. Below is a gallery of my top ten of the year with an unintentionally even split between fiction & non-fiction.

Below that are the full categories (Fiction, Non-fiction) and then the same for audiobooks with favourites in bold. They are listed in reverse chronology (so most recently read at the top).

The Last 5 Years Picks: 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019,

* The links in the images are associate links meaning a small commission to me if you purchase after clicking.

Fiction

1. Nero by Conn Iggulden
2. The Visitor by Lee Child
3. High by Adam Roberts
4. Soul Music by Terry Pratchett
5. Die Trying by Lee Child
6. The Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin
7. The Far Side Gallery 3 by Gary Larson
8. The Curse of Madame “C” by Gary Larson
9. Killing Floor by Lee Child
10. The Chamber by John Grisham
11. Camino Royale by Ross O’Carroll-Kelly
12. Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
13. Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford
14. Moving Pictures by Terry Pratchett
15. Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa
16. Tripwire by Lee Child
17. Orbital by Samantha Harvey
18. The Tiger in the Smoke by Margery Allingham
19. The Revenge of the Baby-Sat by Bill Watterson

Non-Fiction

1. Together for the City by Neil Powell & John James
2. Justinian by Peter Sarris
3. The Air we Breathe by Glen Scrivener
4. Educated by Tara Westover
5. How to live on 24 hours a Day by Arnold Bennett
6. A Christmas Sermon by Robert Louis Stevenson
7. Why you should read Children’s Books even though you are so old and wise by Katherine Rundell
8. The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by The Manhattan Engineer District
9. Romans: A letter that makes sense of life by Andrew Ollerton
10. 80/20 Running by Matt Fitzgerald
11. Multilingual Church by Jonathan Downie
12. Time Peace by Ellen Vaughan
13. Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman
14. Esther by Anthony Tomasino
15. Timothy Keller: His Spiritual & Intellectual Formation by Collin Hansen
16. Free to Focus by Michael Hyatt

Audiobooks

Fiction

1. 1984 by George Orwell
2. Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
3. The Lost Colony by Eoin Colfer
4. Just William by Richmal Crompton
5. Mrs Frisby & the Rats of NIMH by Robert O’Brien
6. Use of Weapons by Iain M Banks
7. The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro
8. Impossible Creatures by Katherine Rundell
9. Who let the gods out? by Maz Evans
10. Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson

Non-Fiction

1. The Perfect Mile by Neal Bascomb
2. Running the Dream by Matt Fitzgerald
3. Around the World in 80 Days by Micheal Palin
4. The Tech-Wise Family by Andy Crouch
5. Hal Koerner’s Field Guide to Ultrarunning by Hal Koerner
6. Amazing Love by Corrie Ten Boom
7. Attack Warning Red! by Julie McDowell
8. Faith, Hope & Carnage by Nick Cave
9. Gladys Aylward: No Mountain too High by Myrna Grant
10. A History of Britain Volume 3 by Simon Schama