My favorite books, movies and anime in 2023.
I love reading, and I love watching movies and anime. And sometimes I come across something that really stands out. Below you’ll find those stand outs I read and watched in 2023. Maybe some of these will be familiar to you, and maybe you’ll discover something new to explore. Either way, I hope you enjoy this look back at 2023.
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Favorite Photography Books
Dorothea Lange: Grab a Hunk of Lightning by Elizabeth Partridge
I read this as an ebook, which is not exactly the best format for a book on photography, but it’s what I have. The book was produced as a companion to the 2014 PBS American Masters series, a video I also recommend, though it’s been years since I watched it. This is a relatively short book and contains an essay about Lange followed by a collection of her photography.
Daring to Look: Dorothea Lange’s Photographs and Reports from the Field by Anne Whiston Spirn
In this book the author chose to focus on one year of Lange’s life, 1939. She pored over the various archives of Lange’s work and gathered together photographs both well known and many never before published, along with the field notes and general captions Lange had submitted with the photographs when she worked for the Farm Security Administration. So the book is more than a book of photography. It’s also a book of history, describing the state of parts of the US during that year, and of how the people lived. A fascinating book. As a side note, this was the first book I’ve checked out from a library in decades, but hopefully not the last.
Favorite Non-fiction Books
Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl
Where do I even begin with this book? It’s extraordinary. It tells the story of Frankl’s time as a prisoner within the Nazi concentration camps in World War II. It tells of the hardships he and others had to endure, but it also tells of the small pleasures he still managed to find, how he was able to appreciate what he still had. The book is split into two sections. The first is his story, and this was by far the more impactful section for me. The second was an introduction to his philosophy of logotherapy, something he’d been developing even before his time in the camps, but something that time helped solidify. I can’t recommend this enough.
A Man For All Markets by Edward O. Thorp
Ed Thorp is a name that may be known to some but is likely unknown to most. He may be most well known for his part in finding ways to actually beat the casinos of his day, things that were thought impossible, but with his skills in mathematics and other fields he did it. He contributed to many fields, with those of statistics, chance, gambling and the financial markets being perhaps the most notable. A fascinating story, one I listened to as an audiobook, which I followed up by reading the ebook to try to absorb as much as I could.
The Book of Tea by Kakuzo Okakura
This book was written in English around 1906 and geared towards a Western audience as a way to teach us the finer points of tea and the history surrounding it. And with tea such a foundational part of the Japanese culture it ends up talking about many topics. A fascinating read for anyone interested in Japan and/or tea.
Favorite Fiction Books
My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry by Fredrik Backman
I absolutely adored this book. Such a beautiful, touching, lovely, delightful, funny and sad tale about a young girl, Elsa, who has to deal with the death of her grandmother, someone she was very close to. Her grandmother left letters for all the various people she’d interacted with and Elsa finds herself delivering the letters and learning both about her grandmother and about life. I will absolutely read more by this author.
Fugitive Telemetry (The Murderbot Diaries 6) by Martha Wells
The Murderbot Diaries are my favorite recent science fiction series, telling the evolving story of an entity known as a SecUnit, which is perhaps like an android, part human and part computer. In previous books it broke away from its servitude with the help of others and in this book continues learning how to fit into their new life, unable to fully escape the prejudices against SecUnits. This book went in a different direction than I’d anticipated and I loved that.
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
Neil Gaiman is quickly becoming a go-to author for me. In this story we follow the life of a young boy whose world was shattered, leaving him raised by the ghosts and other creatures of a local graveyard, protected from those who might want to do him harm. Such a beautiful story, one that ends up being about families, parenthood, and watching your child grow up and become their own person. I listened to this as an audiobook, which had a wonderful full cast narration.
Marina by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
My first exposure to this Spanish author was The Shadow of the Wind, the first book in the series, The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, and it became one of my all-time favorite books. This time around I read Marina, a beautiful story of first love set amidst a series of strange events and people. A beautiful and tragic story, and one I very much enjoyed.
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
My first reaction after finishing this book was: what a magical, mysterious and elusive story. I find it hard to describe. It’s very different from other books I’ve read, telling the story of a man who lives in a strange house full of endless rooms and halls of statues, some of which are open to the ocean. He slowly learns more about how he came to be here and of who he is. A wonderful read. Now I’m very much looking forward to Susanna Clarke’s much longer book, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.
Edges & Silver (Inverted Frontier) by Linda Nagata
This is very much the sort of science fiction I enjoy, full of fascinating ideas, sometimes wide ranging in space and time, but also full of characters I find engaging. The first book, Edges, takes place mostly in space as the crew travel great distances seeking answers to what happened to other parts of humanity. The second book, Silver, takes place largely on a planet and deals with the consequences of an encounter with another entity in the first book. I have a number of other Linda Nagata books I hope to get to.
Favorite Graphic Novels & Comics
Critical Role Vox Machina Origins Volume III & Critical Role The Tales of Exandria: The Bright Queen
The only comics I read this year were related to Critical Role, a group of folks who stream their D&D gaming sessions, and have grown in popularity such that they now can tell their stories through books, comics, and more. This year I read the third volume of the origins of the Vox Machina group of characters, and a tale of Exandria about the Bright Queen. I still regularly watch their games, and I really enjoy reading these comics to provide more detail and richness to their collaborative storytelling.
Favorite Movies
Star Wars Episode IV - A New Hope & Star Wars Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back
The first two Star Wars movies will likely always be two of my favorites. I watched them when they first came out in theaters and they made their marks on my young life. Granted, I’ve not found some of the more recent stories in the series nearly as entertaining, but I still love these first two movies.
Hackers
Another movie I first watched in the theater when it came out. I’ve always been interested in computers and in the counterculture associated with them, so it was natural for me to watch, and end up loving, this now classic hacker movie. It remains one of my favorite computer-related films, along with Sneakers and WarGames.
Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark
Yet another classic of my youth, and one that still stands up today. What an iconic character, and what memorable adventures. It was one of those movies and series where the actor made the character, and to some extent the character made the movie.
Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
And now we get to a movie that actually came out this year and ended up a favorite. I loved playing D&D when younger, and I’ve enjoyed reading many novels either set in D&D worlds or at least similar in their styles of story. And yet when it comes to movies, much of what’s come before just didn’t work very well for me. Finally, though, here is a fantastic D&D movie, perfectly melding adventure and comedy. I’ve already rewatched it a couple times and likely will again.
Everything Everywhere All at Once
Everything Everywhere All at Once was my absolute favorite movie watched in 2023. It was completely crazy and bizarre, funny and yet very touching, exciting and confusing, and something that still managed to have a plot I could follow and messages that resonated. I can easily see myself rewatching this one.
Favorite Anime & Animated Movies
Planetes
I didn’t watch a lot of anime this year, but I am currently watching the series, Planetes, one I purchased many years back when a chain of DVD stores went out of business. It tells the story of a future when all the accumulated junk of abandoned satellites and launch debris in orbit becomes too much, which requires the creation of groups to clean up all that trash. And just as on earth, the folks who do this are often looked down upon and treated as lesser than many other professions. I’m only 7 episodes in out of a total of 26, but I’ve already seen a fantastically impactful and personal story in one episode, and I can’t wait to continue the series.
So what have you read or watched this year? Did any of your favorites match my own? And if not, what were your favorites? Let me know in the comments below.
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