Hi everyone my name is Jen. I'm an author and a
book reviewer, and I'm here today to talk to you about my favourite books of 2023 so far, which I
am very excited to chat about. We're going to talk about a lot of books, so please pull up a seat.
I have a notebook here with some brief stats in which I'm going to mention before we dive into
the books themselves. So far this year I have read 171 books, which is a ridiculous number of
books. Please bear in mind that books are a big part of my job, and also they're what I like
to do in my spare time — basically, if I had to sum up what I do in general, I would just say
it is books. This is not an aspirational number; this is just the number based on my career
and also what I like to do in my spare time, plus mental health, because when things aren't
going good I gravitate towards more books, so even though this is the best reading
year of my life, probably ever, definitely since starting my channel, it hasn't always been
for the best reasons and I think it's always good to remember that when we're listening to people
talk about books. Yes. So, I read 171 books, 39 of those were for a specific work project
and I had no control over what those books were, so I'm not going to mention any of those
here because they're not books that I would have particularly chosen for myself, but it was
just part of a freelance job that I was doing, and then outside of that I read 132 books with
a 14% DNF rate, which is not too bad actually, I think that's okay, that works out about 24 books
that I DNF'd this year. Life is too short, I don't mind DNFing books if I'm not enjoying them, unless
I have to finish them specifically for work, I don't mind, I move on. So, pages-wise which is
probably more interesting to talk about than the number of books because books can be all different
shapes and sizes, this year I have read 33,704 pages. That doesn't include the DNFs unless I
very nearly finished them, in which case I did include them in the page count, so, essentially,
this year so far I've read the same amount as I had the whole of last year, that's just how this
year has worked out. So, 33,704 pages. 85% of the books I've read so far this year are fiction, 15%
non-fiction. 32% of the books that I've read have been translated and I've read from 32 different
countries. My top 10 countries that I have read from are the UK, USA, South Korea, Japan, Nigeria,
Canada, Norway, Indonesia and Argentina. 47% of the reading that I have done has been by writers
of colour, and 70% of the books I have read have been published by small presses. None of these
numbers and stats that I am saying to you now were goals that I had set for myself; this is just what
my reading has been and I just like tracking it, looking at where I'm gravitating towards and all
of that. Because I read so many books this year, I decided… well, I couldn't decide firstly how many
to talk about in this favourites video. I thought I couldn't possibly pick a top ten, so what I've
done is I've picked a top 20. However, I then decided that I would put that top 20 in some kind
of order and when I did that I realised I actually do have quite a clear top 10 in the end. We're
still going to talk about 20 because it's fun to talk about lots of different books but we will
work our way from my least favourite-favourite to my most favourite-favourite. Everything I
mention I'll list in the description box down below. If you have been watching my videos this
year, and you would like to, I would love it if you could pause this video right now and leave
a comment down below telling me if there are any books you expect to see on this list, then when we
get to the end of the video you can reply to your own comment talking about how right or wrong you
were, or how surprised you were, and also telling me about your favourite books because I obviously
always want more book recommendations in my life. Ok, let's get on to the books. In at number 20 we
have Takeaway by Angela Hui which is a book that I read when it was longlisted and then shortlisted
for this year's Jhalak Prize which is an award in the UK celebrating work by writers of colour.
This is a memoir that Angela wrote about her time growing up in Wales when her parents ran the only
Chinese takeaway in the local area, and because it's a family business she was expected to work
there all the time. She had this dual life and also a very mixed emotions about this because
she loves her family and she wanted to protect them at all costs, especially because they were
getting a lot of racial abuse from the locals, but also working there all the time meant she was very
isolated from her peers at school, she didn't have any kind of social life, so she's talking about
all of that in here and I thought it was great. Next, number 19, we have The Bandit Queens
by Parini Shroff. This is the first of four books that were on this year's Women’s Prize
longlist that have made it into my top 20 book of the year, which is a very good success rate
for this year's prize, actually, though none of them were shortlisted for this year's award.
Anyway, this book is a lot of fun. It's about a woman called Geeta who lives in a rural Village
in India and a few years ago her husband went missing but everyone thinks that she killed him.
And, at first, she thinks “I hate that everyone thinks that I'm a murderer, when I didn't kill
my husband!” but then she reasons that actually “it's quite dangerous living as a woman on my own,
so maybe it's quite good that people think I'm a murderer, because they will not come knocking at
my door!” However, it does mean that other people in the local area, the women who have husbands who
are perhaps quite abusive and would like to be rid of them, do come knocking at Geeta's door and say:
“hey, I hear that you got rid of your husband, mine's terrible, can you please help?” This is all
at once a very funny and endearing book but also really upsetting and tackling really hard topics,
looking at domestic violence and sexual abuse. I thought that it was brilliant. I will say that a
book that I read that I'd hoped would be similar to this one this year was Out by Natsuo Kirino
and I love this one more than the Bandit Queens, it's about a woman who works at a factory and
then one day she kills her abusive husband and then she asks other women at the factory to
help her cover up this murder. It's gruesome, really dark and twisted, I adored it. However,
you'll be like “Jen, why is that not on your list then?” Well, I loved the first 400 out of the
500 pages, and the last 100 pages became extremely male gaze heavy with a lot of sexual violence,
and it felt like it undid a lot of what had just been written. It felt like it was written by a
completely different author, it was perplexing. I'm so torn about that. I loved most of it
and then a hated the end and I just wanted to mention that in case that intrigues you at
all, so that one is not on my favourite list, this one is because I was not conflicted about
the ending, but yeah, there we go, number 19! In at number 18, we have another non-fiction
title, this is Head Above Water by Shahd Alshammari and this was my favourite read from
this year's Barbellian prize which is a prize that celebrates work by disabled writers. This
is Shahd writing about her diagnosis of MS and then her academic career as well. She's looking
particularly at the stigmatization of disabled Arab women. This is also a book that looks
at community and care work because Yasmeen, who was her student and is now her close friend,
is also someone who's helped her assemble this book by going through past documents, and the
way that this book oscillates between past and present tense reflects crip time, too. I
thought that it was really, really great. Number 17, we have a poetry collection,
in fact the only poetry collection on this list so far this year, and this is Unexpected
Vanilla by Lee Hyemi and this is translated from the Korean by Soje. This collection of
poetry examines nature, body, desire, pain, it's very magical. I really love the way that
nature is personified in this book but then in turn human bodies are …what would be the
opposite of that… they are transfigured into nature themselves, so everything blurs together
and the lines become very murky. Here is a quote from one of these poems: “I rose from sleep
and descended an endless flight of stairs, abandoning my lamp and wetting my heels in red. I
went round and round the spiral staircase but the stairs started up again and the golden bell I'd
stolen grew even heavier.” Another quote here is: “after I gave birth to a boneless
child and lit living greens on fire, the white laundry grew bloodied.” There's a lot
of folklore to this which I really appreciated. In at number 16 we have the second mention
of a Women’s Prize longlisted book, this is Wandering Souls by Cecile Pin. This is
a debut and I was really impressed by it. It is inspired by the author's family history. This is
about a group of siblings who travel from Vietnam to the UK after the war, and they had wanted to
go to America because they had family there but through a series of events they end up coming
to the UK in the 80s during Thatcher's Britain, and it's about them settling, trying to find
and create new lives for themselves, but they are hoping that the rest of their family will be
able to come and join them but the boat that they are on doesn't make it. This is a book that gives
voice to many characters over several decades and, I'll be honest, when I first realised the
book was doing that I was apprehensive, it is not a long book and if it's covering so much
ground you want to feel as though it's not rushed, you want to feel as though all those sections
are weighted appropriately and that it all comes together at the end, and I ate my words because
this is a very well-crafted book, and I do feel as though it all came together. It uses the belief
of the wandering soul which is that a soul will wander the Earth if its body hasn't been buried
appropriately, and also puts that in different contexts such as the wandering souls of refugees
who are still alive. Part of this book is inspired by Human Acts by Han Kang and I would imagine
also that part of it is inspired by Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being, at least
that's how I felt when I was reading it, I thought that it was really powerful and I …
“enjoyed” it is probably not the right word, it's a very distressing book
but I appreciated it greatly. At number 15 we have a short story collection,
this is Watching Women and Girls by Danielle Pender, and I would recommend listening to this
one on audiobook if that takes your fantasy. I didn't listen to this one audio but I discovered
after reading it in print form that the audiobook is narrated by Kristen Atherton and she always
does brilliant audiobook narrations, so that's an extra recommendation for you. Anyway, Watching
Women and Girls by Danielle Pender is a short story collection mainly about women who are being
observed by other characters or who are in turn looking at other people, and it's how everyone's
judging each other and can't really settle into their own skin. My favourite story in here is
about a teenage girl who's working at a fast food restaurant in a service station and she just
does not know what she wants to do with her life; she feels quite trapped in her home life,
in a way that she can't really articulate to many people around her, and the setting of
the story is a reflection on her life situation, that she's working in this service station
where people are zooming by in their cars, stopping off and heading off somewhere — they
know where they're going, and she's just stuck there flipping burgers, and the heat also in
this restaurant that she has to work in you can feel it, it is so well written, just makes you
feel really claustrophobic. The whole collection though is brilliant and I highly recommend it.
Then we have got at the number 14 How Kyoto Breaks Your Heart which I think is my favourite
non-fiction book that I've read so far this year. I don't think we've got any more on this list…
yep this is my top non-fiction book of the year so far. This one is about Florentyna because it's by
Florentyna Leow, and this is a non-fiction book. This is about Florentyna moving from Tokyo and
moving in with someone who she also works with, this woman who she is friends with, but then
their friendship falls apart and this is a book where she's trying to work out …maybe not
why the friendship fell apart but just to grieve that friendship; she's talking about all
the special moments that they had together, and how she wishes she had closure and answers as to
what went on. I love the weight that this gave to female friendships, which I feel we don't always
get in the books that we read. If you enjoyed Nina Mingya Powles’s book Tiny Moons then I think
that this one would be right up your street. At number 13 we have a thriller. This is All Yours
by Claudia Pinero which is translated from the Spanish by Miranda France. Claudio Pinero is an
Argentinian author and this is a wonderful book perfect for fans of Muriel spark. It's about
a woman who knows that her husband is having an affair, so one evening she decides to drive
and follow him to see who he's having an affair with. She sits in her car and she watches as her
husband kills the woman that he has met up with, and then he drives away, and she has to work out
what she wants to do, and it it's really funny but then also becomes really dark and awful. So,
she knows that he's really bad at cleaning and she thinks if she doesn't help him clean up this
murder scene he's going to get them all into trouble, but she doesn't want to tell him that
she's helping him because she thinks that would embarrass him, so she just decides she's going to
clean up this mess and she's also going to go back to this woman’s flat and see if her husband has
left any incriminating evidence there, just tidy things up a bit. It's very Desperate Housewives
meets, as I said, Muriel Spark. It gets really twisted I thought it was brilliant. Then at number 12 we have another thriller this
is The Curfew by TM Logan. This is another book I would recommend on audio, having never read the
audio, but I discovered after reading it in print form it's narrated by Richard Armitage, and who
wouldn't want to listen to that? So there you go, you're welcome, bonus recommendation. This is a
family novel so we're not really following the police at all and I quite like that in thrillers.
I do also have a police procedural later on in this list, but this is my favourite family run
thriller…? That I've read this year, that is not a genre [laughs] okay this is about a dad whose
son has recently taken his GCSEs, he's gone out partying with his friends, he's told he must be
home by midnight. The dad is awake at two in the morning, thinks his son has missed his curfew,
but he thinks “maybe I didn't hear him, I'll just go check”, so he goes to look into his son's
bedroom, sees someone asleep in his son's bed, thinks “what a silly man I am!”, goes back to bed.
The next day it turns out that something not very nice happened the previous evening and all the
parents are talking about it in the group WhatsApp but the dad thinks, “well, my son didn't have
anything to do with it because he was at home!”, except then they discovered that the person
in their son's bed is not their son. I love the way that social media was used in
this book because different generations are using different platforms, I thought
that that was very true to life, and yeah, I just thought it was brilliant. I did not want
to get back to work and not finish reading it, it was on my mind all day, the day between the
two evenings that I read that particular book. We have another thriller at number 11. This is
Yellowface by Rebecca F Kuang, which I'm sure you don't need me to tell you about because everyone
has been talking about it and rightly so. This is a book about a woman called Juniper Hayward who
is a bit of a failed novelist, her first novel was definitely a flop. She has a friend called Athena
Liu who is very successful and Juniper seems to hang out with her maybe because she's hoping to
absorb her fame through osmosis or something, but also because she thinks that if she can
pick fault with Athena as much as possible it will make her feel better about herself, which
is obviously not really how life works. Anyway at the beginning of this book Athena chokes on
a pancake and dies, has a very slapstick death, and June decides to steal Athena's most recent
manuscript, she’d just finished writing it, no one else has seen it, so June takes it
and publishes it under her own name. Athena is a Chinese-American woman and June is a white
woman and this novel is about Chinese history, so June's publisher decided to rebrand her as
“Juniper Song” because this is more racially ambiguous. As you can imagine when the book
comes out there is a huge Twitter storm, several, and this is about the repercussions of this book
being published. As I said it is a thriller, it is an expose of racism in publishing, it was
so fast paced, it made me so tense I needed to get to the end, if you're looking for a book
you can't put down, this is the one you need. All right, we are now into my top 10! In at
number 10 we have I'm A Fan by Sheena Patel. This is a horrible little book which is about
a woman, we don't know her name, she is in a relationship with a man but she's cheating on him
with someone who she calls The Man I Want to Be With. That man in turn is cheating on her with a
woman that she calls The Woman I Am Obsessed With, and this narrator starts stalking them both
online, and also their friends, to try and get out every little element of their life that they
can possibly get access to because they think that will give them some magical answer to happiness.
It is about toxic relationships, online culture and it will make you laugh, will also make you
cringe, and maybe also make you want to throw the book across the room. This is definitely one for
someone who likes unlikable people in their books, and that person is me. I love that. We have
a few more books like this to talk about! And at number nine we have Children of
Paradise by Camila Grudova which was my favourite book from this year's Women’s Prize
longlist. This is set at a dilapidated cinema in Edinburgh. It’s a cinema that I actually
used to go, to it's the Cameo in Bruntsfield, because I lived in Edinburgh for four years,
and I didn't realize that until I had finished reading it but I could definitely see how a
creepy cinema like that would inspire a book like this. This is about a woman called Holly who
applies for a job working at The Paradise cinema and when she gets the job she's put off because
everyone who works there seems to have their own little clan and they don't want to speak
to her; it's like she has to pass some kind of test in order for them to communicate with
her. They have a secret after-work film club, they drink a lot, they do drugs, and the more
that Holly spends time in the cinema the more that she feels that maybe something really odd is
going on, and that the films the cinema is showing are being mirrored back to them in secret rooms of
the cinema — she'll stumble across scenes that she thinks she has seen in films before. It's really,
really creepy, you're not sure what is real, what's imagined, because Holly starts taking drugs
herself too. Each of the chapters is named after a classic film and I did worry when I first started
reading it that I would miss lots of references if I wasn't familiar with each film that was
mentioned, but when I came across a chapter which was named after a film I had watched, I realized
that the links were so tenuous, you do not have to know the films that this book is referencing at
all, do not let that put you off. It definitely reminded me a little bit of Moshfegh in its
grossness and, yeah, another twisted delight! Number eight we have Chrysalis by Anna
Metcalfe. This is a book that has been inspired by The Vegetarian by Han Kang. It is
about a woman, an unnamed woman, who decides to radically change her body by going to the gym
and becoming a bodybuilder. This woman has, as I said, radically changed her body but
we never get to hear from her as to why she wants to become this bodybuilder. Instead, we
have a novel split into three sections where we listen to other people observe her from afar:
the first section is told from the point of view of a man who sees her working out at the gym
and then has a very odd relationship with her; the second part is from the point of view of this
woman's mother; and then the third part is from a colleague of hers. After she's changed her body,
she decides to start a YouTube channel where she films herself meditating in her garden and she
encourages people to be at one with nature and to separate themselves from society. Some characters
in this book think that that is a toxic thing to do, when in fact she is talking about removing
toxicity from your life, but it turns into this really interesting conversation about boundaries
and when it is correct to sever ties with a person for self-preservation, and also when that
can be taken too far as well. It also gives glimpses into discussions on online
culture which I also very much enjoyed. The next book… where are we at now Number
seven? So, number seven is a representation of an entire series, this is The Puppet Show
by MW Craven but number seven is the entire Washington Poe series. There are five
novels so far, I've read all of them, I've thoroughly enjoyed them. It's about
a character called Washington Poe who works for the NCA, the National Crime
Agency. He lives in the Lake District, he is a disgraced detective but is brought back
in when a serial killer arrives and has written Washington Poe’s name on the body of one of his
victims. I just had a lot of fun with this series, it was escapist, it was just what I needed. I
read it when I was recovering from surgery and, yeah, I thought it was very atmospheric. The Lake
District is a great crime setting, you know? And if you are looking for a series of books following
on from Freida Klein, because I have recommended that series so much, I would recommend this one.
Beware that it is a bit gory in places but it's a series that's told with a lot of hearts,
and yeah, it has a special place in mine. Now then, at number six we have Miss Ice Sandwich
by Meiko Kawakami, which is translated from the Japanese by Louise Heal Kawai. This was a
surprise for me because this is the first book by Meiko Kawakami that I've actually enjoyed.
I had read two previously but the premise of this one just intrigued me and I thought, okay, I'll
give her one more go and I'm so glad that I did. This is a perfectly formed short little book,
it's about 90 pages long, it's about a child who is struggling at school and with his home
life because his grandma is dying and the only way that he feels centred is if he can go to the
shopping mall after school and watch this woman who he calls Miss Ice Sandwich making sandwiches.
When I first saw the title of this book and read the blurb I misread it, and thought she was
making ice cream sandwiches, but she's not, she's making sandwiches but she has blue eyeshadow
and that looks like ice, so he calls her Miss Ice Sandwich. Basically I would say that this book is
like if someone had written a book about Keiko in Convenience Store Woman, it’s like observing her
from the outside, but then also talking about as I said this this child's life, too, I thought
that thematically, symbolically, imagery-wise there was just so much going on in such a short
space of time, and it was really, really lovely. In at number five we have Is Mother Dead by Vigdis
Hjorth, translated from the Norwegian by Charlotte Barlsund. I think that Vidgis Hjorth could become
a new favourite author of mine, I would describe her as Norwegian Ali Smith. It's interesting
seeing what themes creep up in favourite books depending on, you know, what's going on in your
life at a particular time. Looking at these 20 books, I can definitely see themes of motherhood,
of IVF, of online culture, of social media, as well as just a healthy dose of thrillers. So,
this book is about a woman called Johanna and she has been estranged for her from her family
for several decades but she's recently lost her husband and she decides to travel back to Norway
having lived in the States for quite a long time. She's an artist and her family have severed ties
with her because she drew pictures of them and they didn't like how she was basically exposing
family emotions to the public, they thought it was deeply embarrassing, and Joanna wants to come
back and talk to her mother, but she doesn't even know at the beginning of the book if her mother is
still alive. She thinks, “well people would have told me if she was dead, wouldn't they?” but
the lack of question here in is mother dead, like no question mark, it's because she doesn't
really seem to actually want to know the answer; she is much more comfortable with the idea of
her mother than her actual mother at this point in time, but when she travels back to Norway
she wants to observe her mother from afar, so she decides to stake out her house and observe
her, and this is all about the inner monologue that she has while she's doing that. It's really
unsettling, beautifully written, I loved it. In at number four we have Idol, Burning by Rin
Usami which is translated from the Japanese by Asa Yoneda. This is a book that really got under
my skin. It's about a teenage girl who's obsessed with a J-pop star who she calls her Oshi. She runs
a blog where she writes everything about him, any facts she can find, any rumour, she will type it
up and she has loads of followers because of this, people come to her for news. She uses him as a
means of escaping her own reality, her own life. We're not entirely sure what's going on but it's
open to interpretation. I read it as her having a disability or a chronic illness; you might
read it as her having depression for instance, but either way she is using this blog,
and using this idea of this pop star, as a way to help her cope with her everyday
life. Then one day she finds out that her Oshi has been accused of hitting someone, a female
fan, and she can't believe it. The reason she can't believe it is because she didn't know him
in the first place, and the version of him that's in her head would never hit anyone, and now
she has to dismantle her fabricated version of him because of the real life version, and
it's having this huge domino effect, and she feels that that isn't particularly fair, but as
an influencer she has this duty of care. Anyway, it's all very complicated and again it's looking
at online culture, it's looking at responsibility, it's looking at obsession and as I said, did I
say it made me cry? I think I said it got under my skin. It also really made me cry because it
reminds me a lot of my teenage years and using fandom as a means to escape, in my case,
disability and how forums and online life was so important to me, and still is now, not
forums but you know creating content on here is really important to me, which I know is not
unique to a disabled experience, but when your body is different to other people's and your
circumstances are different to other people’s, especially in most recent years, online life
can be invaluable. I thought this was brilliant. Then moving onto the next one, this is
also about online culture, this is The Subtweet by Vivek Shraya. This is definitely
for fans of I'm A Fan by Sheena Patel. This is about two musicians called Rukmini and
Neela. Neela has been around for a while, she enjoys making music, she doesn't use
social media hugely, she looks down on new artists who (as she sees it) get to be famous
because they can manipulate the online world, whereas she thinks if her song is good enough
it will reach the masses, and that's it. Then Rukmini makes a cover of one of Neela's songs and
that cover becomes more successful than Neela's song and Neela has to work out whether she should
befriend Rukmini, whether she should be getting close to her — either because she wants to or
because it would further her career. She feels that as two brown women in music they should
be supporting each other, but she also has the struggle where she feels like they both can't be
successful because it's a white dominated industry and it won't let two brown women be successful,
so if it has to be one of them, it has to be her. It has all of the horrible internal thoughts that
you may ever have about somebody. At the same time as being like I’m a Fan I would also recommend
this for fans of Yellowface by Rebecca F Kuang, definitely has similar conversations going on
here, just a lot of insecurities about creativity, about self, and about success. Again, it has
really unlikable people in here and sometimes they will say things that you find yourself
agreeing with followed by something so outrageous you think “how could I possibly have agreed with
you before?!” It will get your head in a spin. Moving on to number two we have The Employees by
Olga Ravn which is translated from the Danish by Martin Aitken. This is a very strange book about
a spaceship called The Six Thousand Ship. It is made up of a part human crew, a part humanoid
crew, and they have discovered a new planet, and on this planet they have found eggs which
they have brought into their spaceship. This is split up into statements from different crew
members, and as the novel progresses you find it more and more difficult to work out if a human
is speaking or if a humanoid is speaking. Both humans and humanoids feel a connection with
these eggs and they want to nurture them. It's all about what it means to be human about
what it means to create life. I read this as an allegory for IVF, but that's just because
that has been my life for the past few years, I'm not sure if that was the intended purpose.
Olga Ravn has a new book coming out later this year which is about motherhood, which I'm very
keen to read, too, but yes this was a really, really unsettling book. If you like Black Mirror
I think you'll like it; if you enjoyed Sum by David Eagleman I think that you would like it. It
was just weird but also beautiful and touching. That brings us to number one. My number one book
of the year so far. And I ummed and ahhed about this. This is a book that I read earlier
this year and objectively speaking I think some of the books that I've already mentioned
maybe, in inverted commas, “better written”, but this book still is brilliantly written,
the one that I'm about to speak about, but it's just a book that I've thought
about so much; it hasn't left my brain, and I think for that reason it has to be my
favourite. I find it haunting me a little, and that is Diary of a Void by Emi Yagi and
this is translated from the Japanese by Lucy Jones and David Boyd. This is a novel set in an
office where a woman is really sick and tired of being made to do menial tasks because she is the
only woman working in this particular department, and she's trying to work out how she can
get the men to respect her, so Ms Shibata, that's her name, Ms Shibata, decides to tell
everybody in her office that she's pregnant. Thing is, she's not pregnant, she just knows
that if she says that then people will allow her to stop doing the menial tasks that she hates,
and her hope is that they will come to respect her to actually see her, to realize she is a person
with a life outside of these four walls. It kind of works to begin with because they do allow her
to stop doing the boring jobs, but she realises that this newfound respect is only because she
is carrying another life form, so before —if they respected her at all— it was because she could
be of use to them, now they respect her because she is carrying a baby and is going to become a
mother. So, they always see her as a means to get to another point, rather than just meeting her as
a human being, as the person she is in the form that she currently has. The book is a bit trippy
as it continues, and then you're not really sure what is fact or fiction anymore, and I really
like how it was um open-ended in that respect. It was definitely up to you to interpret it how
you wanted, and for that reason I'm not going to talk about plot anymore, but as I said this is
a book that I haven't stopped thinking about, it's very tightly written, very warm and funny,
but also unsettling and upsetting in places as well. I would recommend for fans of Convenience
Store Woman by Sayaka Murata. So, there we go. Those are my top 20 books of 2023 so far. Did
you guess correctly if you had guessed at the beginning? Let me know in a comment down below.
Please also tell me what your favourite books of the year have been and whether you would like to
read any of the books that I have mentioned here today. If you're new to my channel and you enjoyed
this video and you would like to subscribe, that would be very kind, and if you like my content
and you would like to consider supporting me on Patreon that would also be lovely. Patreon is a
place where you can tip creators and the support over there allows me to keep creating free content
for everybody on here, and funds my time making everything accessible by creating captions and all
of that good stuff. I hope you're all doing okay; I'm sending lots of love and I will see
you for another video next week. Bye!
