I had a pretty wild 2023 on paper but ultimately it left me feeling rather meh. I revisited some old favorites in literature (The First Law trilogy) and my love life and generally speaking I would say the sex was improved but diminishing returns on the narratives.

The new titles I read last year, in order from worst to first, were:

12. Blood Meridian (1985) - Cormac McCarthy

Everyone else apparently loves this one. For me it's just too much rape and slaughter with no one to root for. Some colorful descriptions of the desert at sunset? I don't get the hype.

11. Hamnet (2020) - Maggie O'Farrell

This is a novel about Shakespeare's wife and their household when the kids get the plague. I struggled to get through it much like I do with the works of Shakespeare himself.

10. Under The Volcano (1947) - Malcolm Lowry

This is a classic novel I heard about on an episode of Parts of Unknown where Anthony Bourdain goes to Cuernavaca. It has some good prose about being passionately drunk that I enjoyed. Mostly it was a slog to get through.

I started off the year in Cuernavaca myself. Much like reading this book, that turned out to be a mistake. I quickly bailed and fled to Guadalajara.

9. Red Rising (2014) - Pierce Brown

Either I'm too old and boring or this book is too dumb. It's a dystopic young boy against the world kind of story that you can maybe buy for that angsty 13-year-old boy in your life but I wouldn't recommend it for adults.

Speaking of being old and boring, I spent time in both Dublin and Hanoi last year and saw basically one street of each because I was inside playing poker the whole time. I had some great poker results in both cities though. Sometimes it pays to be old and boring.

8. Praise Boss (2022) - Joseph Grim Feinberg

This is a silly erotic play starring Mr. Block of old IWW comics. It has more bad puns than I was expecting and less nudity. It's no Streetcar Named Desire but at least it's not 400 pages of Texans slaughtering Mexicans (a la Blood Meridian).

These days I trot on a treadmill in a Praise Boss t-shirt my friend Jay gave me for my birthday when I was in Vegas last summer losing all the money I had won playing poker in Ireland and Vietnam. We also went to Carrot Top.

7. A Gathering of Shadows (2016) - V.E. Schwab

This is the 2nd book in the Shades of Magic series in which a magician travels between different Londons of varying magical awareness. The other main character is a thief from our London who is always up to no good and in this installment shows an aptitude for magic herself.

6. The Girl Who Drank The Moon (2016) - Kelly Barnhill

I found this one in Kinokuniya, the largest bookstore in Singapore. I bought it on a whim and found it a pleasant read. Another young girl discovering her magical capabilities.

It's a twist on a fairy tale trope in which a witch is saving babies that a village "sacrifices" and one of them accidentally, you know, drinks the moon.

5. A Swim In A Pond In The Rain (2021) - George Saunders

This book is several old Russian short stories and then essays by George Saunders about how he would teach a class on them. The Saunders essays are fantastic and quite quotable:

I think he likes the Russian short stories more than I do.

4. Mostly Harmless (1992) - Douglas Adams

This is the 5th book of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy and the last book Douglas Adams wrote before he died. I mistakenly thought that the trilogy only had 3 books for many years so was surprised to learn that this book existed.

It's funny and reads fast like all the Hitchhiker books but it's a bit darker than the rest. I liked the ending. It's bleak.

Speaking of bleak, after my failure at the World Series of Poker in Vegas I resigned myself to return to the workforce. So now I work for a company that handles pharmaceutical rebates. Hooray.

3. Breakfast At Tiffany's (1958) - Truman Capote

I'm somewhat fascinated by Truman Capote. Him and Hunter S. Thompson. Two great writers who were complete weirdos and really don't have peers in American literature.

Anyway I enjoyed this short novella. It's about an enigmatic young woman who parties in Manhattan in the 50s. If she had it her way, she'd eat breakfast at Tiffany's every goddamn day.

2. Harrow the Ninth (2020) - Tamsyn Muir

1. Gideon the Ninth (2019) - Tamsyn Muir

These are the first two books of the Locked Tomb series, in which lesbian necromancers pounce around outer space in service of a god named John who dresses like an accountant. They are loads of fun. Everything you'd want in necromancer sci-fi.

I still have a couple more of these to read, so I suppose I'll do that next year.

More broadly speaking, I haven't come up with any better ideas, so I think I'll just run it all back this year. Finish this contract I'm working, head to Vegas for the summer and play a hundred poker tourneys. Maybe drink less and fold more. At least fold more.

Also I should find better books to read. Let's call that the plan.