Books, 2023

Not my biggest reading year. Work was heavy, and since October a lot of my evenings have gone to writing instead. Thirty-one books, by my notebook's count. These are the ones I'd hand you.

• Lessons in Chemistry, Bonnie Garmus. Kristin told me to, in the comments last New Year's Eve, and did not ask. A chemist in the early sixties ends up hosting a cooking show on television and teaching chemistry through it. Kristin was right, and I've told her so in writing, so she can frame it.
• Small Mercies, Dennis Lehane. South Boston in the summer of 1974, and a mother looking for her daughter. Furious, and very good.
• All the Sinners Bleed, S. A. Cosby. A Black sheriff in a small Virginia county, and a killer the county would rather not look at. I read it in two nights and slept badly both.
• The Last Devil to Die, Richard Osman. The fourth Thursday Murder Club, and the saddest. I cried on the bus, which the bus is used to.
• Gaudy Night, Dorothy L. Sayers. A reread, a year and a half after the first time. Harriet Vane goes back to Oxford for a reunion and finds a poison pen loose in her old college. I came away with a different answer to her question this time, which I suspect will keep happening.
• The Murder at the Vicarage, Agatha Christie. The first Miss Marple, narrated by a vicar who would like everyone to stop dying in his study. My mother considered it a gap in my education and closed it by mail.
• Tom Lake, Ann Patchett. A mother tells her daughters about the summer she was an actress, while they pick cherries in Michigan. Quiet, and very nearly perfect.
• The Long Goodbye, Raymond Chandler. My every-other-year reread. I read it for the company of its detective more than for the plot, and every time he's better company.
• Slow Horses, Mick Herron. Spies who've failed, exiled to a building that smells. Funny in a way that hurts a little.

What did you read this year that I should have?