Favorite Movies Watched in 2023

Once again, I reviewed just 9 movies in 2023, in part because there is so much great TV to watch now. I only review movies that I really enjoy, so any movies on my entire 2023 list (below) are worth watching, not just my top picks.

As in years past, you can see my full list of movies reviewed last year further down, and my top picks in each genre just below. To see all of the movies I have reviewed on my blog (a considerable list), check out the Movies tab, where they are listed by genre, though it's getting harder to categorize a movie into just one genre as there's so much cross-over now. Links go to my reviews, with a trailer. Note that where each movie is available might have changed over the years, since I first reviewed it, so double-check to see where you can watch it now.

Best of the Best Movies Watched in 2023:

(Three categories only included one movie each, so not much of a choice!)

Best Action/Suspense/Thriller

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny 

Why movies were invented! 

Nonstop action and adventure, lots of suspense, plenty of humor, and just a whole lot of fun.

 

Best Drama

CODA

Warm, funny drama about a teen girl whose deaf family relies on her, though she has dreams of her own.

Best Comedy

A Man Called Otto

Excellent adaptation of the best-selling novel, about a grumpy, lonely old man discovering a reason to live (and really both drama and comedy).

 

Best Sci Fi

Leave the World Behind

A tense sci fi thriller, as two families grapple with a mysterious crisis.

 

Best Musical

Barbie

Super clever, funny, surprisingly thoughtful musical drama with some great music and eye-popping visuals. 

All Movies Reviewed in 2023:

All of these are worth watching! It was hard to pick just one favorite in the first two categories. See the Movies tab for more great movies.

Action/Suspense/Thriller

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny 

Missing

 

Drama

Air

Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret.

CODA

Flora and Son 

Comedy

A Man Called Otto

 

Sci Fi 

 Leave the World Behind

 

Musical

Barbie

 

What were YOUR favorite movies watched last year?  

It's Monday 1/15! What Are You Reading?

Hosted by The Book Date

Life

I am still feeling great, easily the best I have felt in many, many years. I still have my chronic immune disorder, of course (still need a nap!), but I have been feeling good every day, with plenty of energy. It feels SO good to be able to be productive again!

We had some fun last week. I had an event for my book on Wednesday in Chestertown, Maryland, hosted by the fabulous Bookplate indie bookstore there. We drove down (about an hour away) Tuesday, rented a house with gorgeous views, and enjoyed a mini getaway. Unfortunately, a storm came in just as we did, and knocked out power in half of the town! But the skies cleared by morning, and we enjoyed walking around town.

Enjoying our view

Pond behind our rental house, with ducks & egrets

The book event went well. It was held at a nice restaurant in town (a great idea, as people could order drinks and food). There were fewer people there than said they'd be attending (due to the storm, power outage, and clean-up), but all of the attendees were interested and engaged ... and they all bought books, even the waitress! I talked for about an hour, then signed books, and then my husband and I enjoyed a delicious dinner.

Last night, we celebrated our younger son's 26th birthday with a steak dinner, presents, and cake (not for me, but he enjoyed it!). It was wonderful to have that tie with him.

Our son liked his new sweater!

__________

On the Blog

Busy week, with 2023 wrap-ups!

Best Books Read in 2023 - my annual wrap-up with stats, fun facts, my top picks in each category, and my Top 10 (or whatever) lists. 

2023 Reading Challenges Wrap-Up and 2024 Challenges - how I did on my 2023 challenges and which challenges I've joined for 2024

Fiction Review: Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng - my first book of the year was a good one! A scary dystopian setting with similar elements to our own world, with a wonderful young protagonist who goes on a journey to find his mother and get some answers - full of heart and hope.

I didn't get any responses to my What Do You Want to See in My Monthly Newsletter? so I am considering discontinuing it. 

If you read the newsletter, please let me know!

__________

On Video

Top 6 Nonfiction Books Read in 2023

__________

 What We're Reading

 

 

I finished reading Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng, a Christmas gift from my son and his girlfriend. It's set in a very scary dystopian near-future with elements that definitely come directly from our real world. A sweet 12-year-old boy named Bird, who is half-Chinese, is living in a dorm room in Cambridge with his father, who works at the library. Bird's mom left suddenly and without explanation three years earlier. After Bird gets a strange drawing in the mail that he knows came from his mother, he begins investigating and goes on a quest to find her. Along the way, he (and the reader) begin to learn more about how their world came to be the way it is. This novel is very immersive, especially as the reader is drawn further into its mysteries and secrets. And I love that librarians play an important role in quietly helping children and families in this novel. The setting is frightening, but it's full of heart and hope.

 

 

Now, I am reading A Blizzard of Polar Bears by Alice Henderson, book 2 in her outdoor thriller series about wildlife biologist Alex Carter. Book 1, A Solitude of Wolverines, made my Top 10 Novels of 2023 list! In book 2, Alex is in Manitoba on the Hudson Bay, studying polar bears. But not everyone wants to help her protect the bears. Like the first book, this is action-packed from beginning to end, with a lot of suspense and surprising twists. It's hard to set it down at night to go to sleep! January is the perfect time to read this very cold, snowy story.

 

 

 On audio, I am still listening to my neighborhood book group's January selection (our 200th book!), Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt. I've heard so many rave reviews of this novel and am very much enjoying it. It features multiple narrators, including Tova, a widow who has also lost her son, husband, and brother and works nights cleaning at the local aquarium; Cam, a young man at loose ends whose mother left him as a child; and Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus who is very smart and lives in the aquarium. He and Tova are both very isolated and lonely and begin to form an unexpected, unusual friendship. I'm at the point now, near the end, when different threads are starting to come together, revealing unexpected connections. I'm loving it so far, and the audio is great!

 

My husband, Ken, finished The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles (my review at the link), a book I read for the Big Book Summer Challenge that was one of my #1 novels read in 2023! He enjoyed it very much, and I loved being able to talk to him about it. It's a novel that just begs to be discussed. Now, Ken is reading IQ by Joe Ide, one of his Christmas gifts from me. It's the first book in a 6-book (so far) mystery/thriller series, about a man in East Long Beach, an LA neighborhood, who's known as IQ. With so much crime in the area, he takes on the cases the LAPD doesn't have time for. 

 

Our son, 29, finished reading Pale Kings by Ben Galley, book 2 in the Emaneska series, and enjoyed it. Now he is rereading Realm Breaker by Victoria Aveyard, book 1 in her Realm Breaker series, in preparation for reading book 2 that we gave him for Christmas.

 __________

What Are You Reading Monday is hosted by Kathryn at Book Date, so head over and check out her blog and join the Monday fun! You can also participate in a kid/teen/YA version hosted by Unleashing Readers.

You can follow me on Twitter at @SueBookByBook or on Facebook on my blog's page.  

What are you and your family reading this week?  

Fiction Review: Our Missing Hearts

My first book read in the new year was a Christmas gift from my son and his girlfriend, Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng. I had never read anything by this author and really wanted to give her a try. This latest novel of hers has a scary real-life dystopian setting but with a lot of heart and a touch of hope.

Twelve-year-old Bird Gardner lives with his father in a dorm room in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where his dad works as a librarian. Bird is half-Chinese, and his father his white. His dad used to be a professor of linguistics, but after Bird's mother left, his dad lost his position and they left their house with the wonderful garden his mom had planted. Bird's real name is Noah, and everyone calls him that now, but in his head, he's still Bird. His mother left suddenly and without warning three years ago, and Bird doesn't know why, only that a book she wrote had been banned. His father gives him strict instructions to walk straight home from school each day, following the route he outlined, with no detours or stops. In spite of this, sometimes Bird notices strange things, like the street in front of their dorm painted red overnight, or a group of maples on the common yarn-bombed, dripping with red yard and a sign reading "Our Missing Hearts." One day, a letter arrives addressed to Bird, and he knows it must be from his mother, since no one else calls him that. There's no return address, just a New York, NY postmark, and nothing inside but a single sheet of paper, covered with drawings of cats: sitting cats, sleeping cats, playing cats, cats--big and small--all over the page. It tickles an old memory in Bird's mind, and he struggles to retrieve it. As Bird begins to investigate the meaning of the letter and where his mother may have disappeared to, helped by a local librarian, it sets him off on a perilous journey to find out what happened to his mother.

I haven't described much about the world that Bird lives in, a near-future dystopia with chilling connections to what's happening in our own world, because the book is written from his perspective. As Bird slowly figures out what is happening in the wider world and all that his father has protected him from, the reader comes along on that journey of discovery. From Bird's school assignments, answering questions and writing essays about a law called PACT, to the art-based protests Bird witnesses to the way that people treat him, Bird eventually begins to put the pieces together, all leading him back toward his mother. Bird is a wonderful main character and guide to this changed world so like our own. His innocence and his love for his mother guide his actions, and we get to come along. It's a heartbreaking story of a society that has lost its way and is now led by fear, but it is also a beautiful, moving story of the power of the mother-child bond and of art to guide change. I was completely immersed in Bird's world and was rooting for things to turn out OK for him and his family. While frightening in its connections to our own world and elements that we see today in society, there is a thread of hope in the ending, and I loved the role that librarians play in that hope!

331 pages, Penguin Books

Penguin Audio

This book fits in the following 2024 Reading Challenges:

 

Mount TBR Challenge (starting the year off right!)

Motif Challenge - "Red Carpet Reads" (award nominee or winner) - Booklist Editor's Choice award

Alphabet Soup Challenge - O

Diversity Challenge

Literary Escapes Challenge - Massachusetts 

 

Visit my YouTube Channel for more bookish fun!

 

Listen to a sample of the audiobook here and/or download it from Audible. Audio is read by Lucy Liu and sounds great!

 

Or get this audiobook from Libro.fm and support local bookstores (audio sample here, too).

 

Print and e-book from Amazon.

 

You can buy the book through Bookshop.org, where your purchase will support the indie bookstore of your choice (or all indie bookstores)--the convenience of shopping online while still buying local! 
  

 

2023 Reading Challenges Wrap-Up and 2024 Challenges

I'll recap the highlights and results of my 2023 Reading Challenges below, but you can see the details (including lists of books) at the link. 

And, I am joining all the same reading challenges in 2024! I know, kind of boring, but I've done all these challenges for multiple years and they fit my reading approach: helping me to stretch and meet my goals without being too prescriptive. I'll link below to the 2024 information for each of them so you can join the fun, too! Visit my 2024 Reading Challenges page for details, including monthly prompts and categories.

Mount TBR Reading Challenge 2023 hosted by My Reader's Block.

I haven't been doing very well on this one! Last year, I lowered my goal from 48 books from my own shelves to just 36 ... and I still fell short! I read only 30 books from my own shelves in 2023. However, the challenge allows you to count audiobooks and e-books also, and I have always just counted print books actually physically on my shelf. Since I listened to 29 audiobooks last year, that only left a total of 47 (and some were e-books and some library books).

I am joining the Mount TBR Reading Challenge 2024, sill hosted by My Reader's Block. I considered including audios and e-books this time, but I really do need to work down my mountain of print books (my TBR bookcase now has double rows on two shelves!), so I will again set my goal for 36 books from my own shelves.

 

2023 Monthly Motif Reading Challenge hosted by Girlxoxo.

One of my favorites every year! I love seeing which of my books fits the theme for the month. In 2023, I hit 9 of the 12 monthly motifs.

This year, the challenge has a slightly different name but from the same hosts who are now at a new blog: 2024 Motif Reading Challenge hosted by Tanya and Kim at Chapter Adventure.

 

Classics Challenge

In a sad turn of events, the Back to the Classics Challenge that I join every year was not running in 2023. I looked all over and couldn't find another that fits for me, so I did it on my own! I used the 12 categories from the Back to the Classics Challenge 2022 because they make it more fun, and I set my goal at 6 classics - and I met my goal of 6 classics in 6 different categories!

 

2023 Alphabet Soup Reading Challenge hosted by Escape with Dollycas Into a Good Book.

In 2023, as in 2022, I read titles that fit into 21 of the 26 letters of the alphabet. I even got a Z last year! I just reread the rules and had forgotten that for Q, X, and Z, you can count any word in thew title, not just the first word, so I'll keep that in mind for 2024.

For this year: 2024 Alphabet Soup Reading Challenge.

 

2023 Nonfiction Reader Challenge hosted by Book'd Out.

I signed up for the Nonfiction Nosher category, aiming to read at least 12 nonfiction books and hitting as many of the 12 categories as I can (last year I got 9 of the 12 categories). I read 12 nonfiction books in 2023 and hit 9 of the 12 categories.

This year's 2024 Nonfiction Reader Challenge.

Diversity Reading Challenge 2023 hosted by Celebrity Readers.

This is a familiar challenge for me that I enjoy every year. I read 40 diverse books in 2023 (53% of my total books), and I hit 8 of the 12 monthly mini challenges. 

This year: Diversity Reading Challenge 2024.

 

Travel the World in Books Reading Challenge hosted by Mom's Small Victories (great blog!)

I signed up for this one back in 2014, so this is a continuation (it's a perpetual challenge. In 2023, I read 23 books set outside the U.S., visiting 25 different countries in my reading. That was almost double my numbers from 2022.

 

2023 Literary Escapes Challenge hosted by Escape with Dollycas Into a Good Book.

This one is focused on tracking where I read here in the U.S. In 2023, I read books set in 32 different U.S. states, which was higher than 2022's 25 states.

2024 Literary Escapes Challenge.

 

Big Book Summer Challenge hosted by Book By Book (me!)

My own annual challenge that I host each summer, beginning Memorial Day weekend (end of May) and running until Labor Day (first Monday of September). Hope you'll join me for the laid-back fun this summer! In summer 2023, I read 13 books with 400 or more pages. (But you only have to read  1 Big Book to join the fun!)

The new 2024 Big Book Summer Challenge page will go up on May 24, 2024.

 

R.I.P. Challenge

I love this annual fall challenge for reading spooky stuff in September and October. In 2023, I read 18 books that fit the darker themes of fall (mystery, thriller, dystopian, etc.).