Favorite books read in 2023

 My stats in 2023 were pretty great.  I set a new Goodreads record (which is probably also an all-time record, but I don't have stats prior to Goodreads) for number of books read, with 144 (breaking last year's of 138, which itself broke 2015's of 134), and number of pages read, with 36,513 (which again breaks last year's record of 34,809).  The only stat that continues to elude me is books read in a single month, which remains 21 in August 2013, although I tied last year's runner up from December with June's 19.  I rated a bunch of books the full five stars, but let's narrow it once again to a top ten:

1. Paradise Lost by John Milton, the biggest welcome surprise of the suite of classics I read during the year, a grand sweeping epic poem that doesn't just spotlight Lucifer's arc, as a college class once tried convincing me.
2. The Gathering Storm by Winston Churchill, the first book in his history of WWII, explaining the many inexplicable ways WWII was allowed to happen in the first place and the even more ridiculous ways it was allowed to develop once begun.
3. The Running Grave by Robert Galbraith, the latest J.K. Rowling mystery, seventh in the series.
4. Cosmic Detective by Matt Kindt, Jeff Lemire & David Rubin, the best new graphic novel material I read this year, easily, worth anticipating the release date for much of the year.
5. Ravage & Son by Jerome Charyn, the closest he's come to uniting his literary and crime fictions.
6. Green Hills of Africa by Ernest Hemingway, an obscure but undeservedly so piece of his catalog, a literary version of a real safari he took, akin to Melville in achievement.
7. Cari Mora by Thomas Harris, proving he can achieve greatness without Hannibal Lecter.
8. All Systems Red by Martha Wells, which I finally read after hearing such good things about the Murderbot series, which at least with this first entry was absolutely accurate.
9. Cinema Speculation by Quentin Tarantino, the closest the printed word has yet gotten to his famous encyclopedic knowledge of film, covering his formative experiences watching the medium.
10. Berta Isla by Javier Marias, a kind of follow-up to his brilliant Your Face Tomorrow trilogy.

Lots of other interesting things read as well...!