The Ellis Awards 2023 - My Top Books I Read In 2023

     Hello everyone in the distant future whenever you are reading this. It is just before four in the afternoon on New Year's Eve, 2023! Welcome to my no-stakes award ceremony for the best books I have read this year. Disclaimer: these books aren't necessarily published in 2023, they are simply books that I read this year. This year has been unbelievably productive for reading. I have been a Goodreads user since 2015 when I was twenty-going-on-twenty-one. I grew up a reader but didn't read much once I reached High School. I fell back in love with reading in 2015, two years after I graduated and have been using Goodreads to track my books ever since. This is my ninth year reading as an adult and the first year I have actually put a best of the year blog together! So, to build some anticipation I am going to do a quick ranking of my top five books I read each year from 2015-2022, and then I am going to do my top books of this year. 

Statistics Information

      In the nine years now that I have been an active bibliophile,I have usually read about a book a week. In 2015, when I got back into reading, I read just 16 books. Eased myself back into the game. I went wild in 2016 and read 52 books, a book a week. This number would prove to reoccur every even-numbered year up to now! In 2017 I read 35 books, I had just graduated EMT school and entered the fire academy for half a year. I worked in a department fifty miles from home, and on average the commute back every day took an hour and forty-five minutes at best, and two-and-a-half hours at worst. I usually got home around 7:15 in the afternoon to eat, shower, then pass out. That explains the dip in the reading numbers, but almost three books a month is pretty good considering the time and energy depletion. The pattern of exactly a book a week every other year continued when I read 52 books in 2018. In 2019 I had my best year with 74 books read. However, that number bothered me: 75 is such a prettier number, and I finished just short. If I remember correctly, I actually finished what would have been my 75th book like two or three days into the new year! In 2020, I once again read 52 books. 2021 saw a just-barely above that 52 mark with 54 books read. Last year I read 52 books again. An interesting coincidence, 52 books in 2016, 2018, 2020, and 2022. I wonder if I will hit 52 next year in 2024! My goal is always to average a book a week. For all of those years, I went back earlier today and ranked my top five books from each year. However, this year has been so massive that I can't do a top five. I need to do a top ten for this year alone! This year I set out to break my record and hit 75 books. Then, one I hit 75 around early July, I realized I could hit 100. Then I hit 100 around September, and I just decided that I am almost definitely never going to read this many books in a year again, so I went as hard as I could for the last three months. I just finished my final book of the year this morning and now sit at my new record, and probably my lifetime record... this year I have read 165 books! So you can see why I need to do a top ten instead of a top five.

    So, without further adieu, let's get this party started...

2015 

This year saw me reading a lot of Stephen King and dabbling in Ray Bradbury and some fantasy, as well. I was twenty-years-old, turning 21 on December 17th. I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life and realized that being in my twenties meant I needed to stop bouncing between jobs at the grocery store and then the rock climbing gym that I still climb at and have since 2013! I applied to my county's fire department, which is underpaid (as all departments are) but insanely so because the county I grew up in has a lot of money to invest in the community. Because I was some young dumb kid I got rejected by the department. I was told having my advanced EMT certificate would help me get hired, because the department requires all employees to not just be Firefighter-EMTs, but Firefighter-Paramedics. Being a Paramedic is the third and top step in EMS and is ridiculously challenging. All for $40,000 a year flat. Yeah, no thanks. Fuck that. But I was young and romanticized the badassery being a firefighter would entail, so I went back to college at my local technical college in pursuit of an Advanced-EMT degree while I worked at Starbucks. I would gain this degree two years later. I read 16 books this year. My top five are...

5) Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

4) The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury

3) 11/22/63 by Stephen King

2) A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin (and we still don't have the newest book!)

And the winner is... my favorite book I read in 2015: The Stand by Stephen King. I loved this book so much, the full 1,453-page doorstopper that it remained my favorite Horror (technically Dystopian, okay, but I'm saying horror) novel until I reconsidered my rankings last year. This is my third favorite of King's works now, with my 2nd being IT, and #1 being The Dark Tower Series (I mean, I have the Ka symbol tattooed on my right forearm, so the DT has to be my favorite). 

2016

This year I got accepted into EMT school after my first year of the cursed money-grab that are pre-requisite courses! I was twenty-one for like 95% of the year. 96% to be specific, I just did the math... This year I still worked at Starbucks and was transferred to open the new store near my house. Having been the original crew of a store is still a pretty cool experience looking back on it, over six years after I left Starbucks. Of the ~12 of us that were there, there are just two still working there. One remains an awesome senior barista, and the other worked her way up from barista to store manager there! I got my Basic-EMT certificate in December! I read 52 books this year, beginning my branching into non-Stephen King horror authors and also getting heavily into satire (one of my favorite genres to this day). My top five were...

5) The Divine Comedy by Dante Aligheri (mostly the Inferno). This is my oldest top five book, having been written in 1321 before even the first novel came out (Don Quixote)! Don Quixote came out in 1605, nearly three-hundred-years following The Divine Comedy. 

4) Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut. Kurt remains my favorite author of all time because of how much I personally connect with his philosophy and novels. 

3) The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto by Mitch Albom

2) The Dark Tower series by Stephen King. Disclaimer: looking back at my top five lists from 2015 to 2022, if I had read the DT in any other year, it would have easily won my favorite of the year. However, coincidentally this same year, I read what is still to this day my favorite book of all time that I have read five times. The book that speaks to my soul and everything I believe as a human being, and that is... 

My favorite book of 2016: Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut. My paternal grandmother was a huge Vonnegut fan, as well. She would always give me $100 for my bday/xmas sine I was born a week and a day before Christmas. When she passed away in February 2018, I used the last $100 she had saved for me to buy the Library of America completed works of Kurt Vonnegut, which I have sitting on my desk, heavily read to this day. In fact, the only books by Kurt I haven't read yet are his first, Player Piano and his last, Timequake. I am saving those for a special occasion. I am hesitant to finish the works by dead authors that I like, because then I will never have anything new by them. Edgar Allan Poe is one of those, though I plan to read the completed works of him in January 2024. 

2017

2017 saw me venture into Southern Gothic and a dabble of dark, gritty literary fiction. I wouldn't read more of the genre of literary fiction until this year (2023), actually, when I read several Don DeLillo books and a handful of Booker winners also Thomas Pynchon (though I hate Pynchon's writing). I graduated from my technical college as an AEMT and began working in the furthest fucking fire department from my house. Fifty miles... I would end up losing about 20 pounds in the academy. I went from 145 to 125 at 5'10 due to just not being able to eat enough calories. We were burning everything off. My top five were...

5) The Road by Cormac McCarthy (I have read all but four of his novels, though I own all except his last two). Rest in Peace. 

4) Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. A funny point is that there are a few streaky authors for me who have several novels that appear on my top five lists and then fade away as I rapidly burn through all of (or most of) their works within a year or two. 

3) Perdido Street Station by China Mieville. This was my first venture into Weird fiction, and I was enamored with it. My favorite genres to this day are Horror, Weird, and Satire all in varying orders depending on my mood. 

2) Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer. I have reread this book more than any other. I was dealing with pretty heavy depression in the fire department starting in the academy and I got really into hiking this year, so this book was very pivotal for me. Now I would probably give it four stars if I read it for the first time, but back then it spoke to me. Nature was my escape, and now my escape has turned into just leaving the department and pursuing education, which I am truly happy in! 

    My favorite book of 2017 was the chilling, the thrilling, and arguably my favorite (or one of my all-time favorite) horror novels ever. This mini-series was my first venture into the genre when I was five-years-old... I am talking about my favorite book of 2017: IT by Stephen King.

2018

In 2018 I continued the usual reading trends of mostly-horror, with some sci-fi/fantasy and satire sprinkled in, I continued my reading trend of reading a handful of different Vonnegut novels each year. I also discovered narrative non-fiction and so began my interest in history. In my personal life I graduated from the Fire Academy and was stationed at the station that the university I was unaware of until 2020 when I ran a call there and then went back to college was(damn, so many graduations, and I have another one coming up in May 2024!) in February, just a few days after my paternal grandmother (and my last grandparent) passed away. You know, the one who loved Vonnegut. She also loved Purple roses. I have a sugar skull tattoo with a purple rose on my right shoulder. Tattoos are my books of life on my flesh. Every time I read Vonnegut, I feel a spiritual connection with my grandmother. My top five books of 2018 were...

5) Silence by Shusaku Endo. The movie is one of my favorite movies, too.

4) The Terror by Dan Simmons.

3) Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer, I LOVED this book, though I felt like the two following books were disappointing but okay 3-star reads. The 2nd and 3rd novels felt like they were desperately trying and failing to reclaim the holy shit factor of Annihilation. Funny enough, a few hours ago I actually saw Jeff post about the fourth book coming out next year!

2) Locke and Key series by Joe Hill. Okay, I know this isn't a book because it is a comic series. However, if it were a series of novels instead of comics, that would not change how much I loved this series. Honestly, it would probably make it even better. 

My favorite book of 2018: House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. This book is a mindfuck and not just a novel, but a literal immersive experience. There are passages you have to read upsidedown, with a zoom on your camera, in the mirror, etc. It physically makes you see how the narrator goes crazy. 

 2019

In the end of 2019, just after I turned 25 I had a mental breakdown and an existential crisis. I needed out of not just the fire department, but just EMS and healthcare in general. However, I was halfway through my twenties and I did not have any qualifiable skills for a career! It was on December 20, 2019 that, in the midst of a mental breakdown at an O'Charleys as I ate a Caramel pie with my now-wife, that she declared "You should leave and become a History teacher." I had started reading more non-fiction books, mainly history, though the fiction far outweighed the non-fiction (this would change. In 2020, I would read about half non-fiction half fiction. 2021 and 2022 would see about 2/3 of my reading choices being history books, though the handful of horror that I read those years I loved). So, my top five books of 2019...

5) Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut

4) Last Days by Brian Evenson. I want to say that Evenson won't appear in my top-five most years, though I have read and loved everything he has written. Last Days is one of his few novels. He writes mostly short story collections, which I am always enamored with. However, I prefer novels over short story collections, so his collections, while usually five-stars are excluded from most years. He is actually my third favorite author (#1 is Vonnegut, #2 is King, and #3 is Evenson). 

3) Carrion Comfort by Dan Simmons

2) Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff. There is also a sequel that came out in 2023 that I just discovered a few weeks ago and read. 

My favorite book of 2019 was: I'm Thinking of Ending Things by Iaan Reid. Another mindfuck book. You will see that most of my favorite books are mindbenders, personal to me in some way, epic odyssey, or on the special rare occasion for my all-time favorites, a combination of all three! 

2020

This year saw me serve my third and final year in the fire department. I went back to school (online for my first two years before having to drive my ass 50-miles for campus). I had run a minor medical call on the campus back in the Fall of 2019 and was surprised there was a university that is half the price as UGA! I expected to have all 58 of my credits from my technical college transfer so I would graduate in 2022, so I nearly had an aneurysm when they told me that only English Composition I and Psychology would transfer for six credit hours. I lost all 52 other hours and would not graduate in 2022 but instead in the impossibly-far-away year of 2024. Shit! That year felt so far away that I think I actually cried. Now it is in seven hours and three minutes from when I am typing this sentence. My favorite books of this year and in 2021 and 2022 include several non-fiction reads! 

5) Destiny Unto the Republic by Candice Millard

4) Radium Girls by Kate Moore

3) VALIS by Philip K. Dick. This dude is my favorite Sci-Fi author due to his mindwarping drug-fueled narrations. 

2) The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

My favorite book of 2020, the year of the 'rona: Grant by Ron Chernow. The amazing biopic about Ulysses S. Grant. This influenced me so much that I made Grant's photo my school email photo, and that image has stayed on my email for my entire duration of college! Also, Grant, despite the following two years of reading mostly non-fiction, is the only non-fiction book that won my favorite book of the year! 

2021

This year saw me quit the fire department and become a substitute teacher and get married in June in the magical city of Mexican Florida (Cancun). I just finished this job up, I start my student teaching for my final semester in a few days. The next time I substitute teach will be in May 2024 after I have graduated, woo! Hopefully I will have a teaching job lined up for the 2024-25 school year by then! My top five books were...

5) The Glassy, Burning Floor of Hell by Brian Evenson. My favorite collection of Evenson. 

4) Rage by Bob Woodward. 

3) The River of Doubt by Candice Millard

2) A Wicked War by Amy S. Greenberg

My favorite book of 2021: Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

2022

This year saw me keeping on doing the same stuff in my personal life, reading, enjoying being out of the fire department and saw me tackle my PTSD and make tremendous gains in my mental health. I am doing great now! My top five books of 2022 were...

5) None of the Above by Anna Simonton and Anna Robinson. About how RICO charges were used against Atlanta teachers during the Atlanta teaching scandal and how systemic racism has negatively impacted the wellbeing of American schools. 

4) The Undocumented Americans by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio 

3) The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus. This book is my favorite work of philosophy: absurdism. 

2) The Great Dissenter by Peter S. Canellos

My favorite book of 2022: North American Lake Monsters by Nathan Ballingrud. What makes this win interesting is that it is the only short story collection to win my best of the year! Ballingrud is an amazing writer and also a really nice dude! 

    Now, finally...

My Top Ten Books of 2023

*note: if there is an asterisk (*) by the ranking, that means it was released this year as well!

10th - They Called Us Enemy by George Takei. Genre: History/Memoir/Comic

    This is a comic but the story is so amazing. I was given this by one of the students in my student teaching class, and I absolutely loved it. It's one of the few works of fiction that made me shed a tear (don't worry, I read it at home. These kids can't see me cry). 

9th* - Prophet Song by Paul Lynch. Genre: Literary/Dystopian

    This work of literary fiction/dystopian is about a woman trying to keep her family together after he husband is kidnapped by the secret police in future Ireland where the country is controlled by a rightwing authoritarian government. A beautiful, gut-wrenching story with an ending that you will either love or hate. Since I gave this 9th, I fall into the former. This book came out this year, too and it won the Booker award. 

8th - Wanderers by Chuck Wendig. Genre: Dystopian/Mystery

    This is an epic dystopian novel (wow, that's two dystopian novels in my top 10!). This book is an epic journey that follows a group of sleepwalkers who are all heading towards a mysterious source in the center of the country. I have bought the sequel and am eager to dive into it when I want another 750+ page epic.

7th - Behold The Void: Stories by Philip Fracassi. Genre: Short Story Collection/Cosmic Horror

    This is an amazing Cosmic horror collection and was my first introduction to the super-cool work of Philip Fracassi. You definitely need to check it out. 

6th* - The Strange by Nathan Ballingrud. Genre: Sci-Fi/Neo-Western

    A touching epic neo-western adventure on Mars. It follows a badass fourteen-year-old girl named Anabelle whose mother visits earth to say goodbye to her dying grandmother, only to get stuck on earth during a time known as The Silence, when all communication and spacefare between the planets are lost. Annabelle's mother had left her and her father a series of recordings on a tape for them, but then a gang of bandits rob their family diner and steal the tape. Annabelle sets off on a journey to hunt down the bandits and reclaim her mother's voice. 

5th - White Noise by Don DeLillo. Genre: Literary

    There is something special about DeLillo's work. He has a way of non-chalantly writing about modern life in the late-20th and early 21st-century without it being boring. This book was wickedly smart and wickedly funny. I definitely recommend watching the movie if the book bores you. 

4th - The Saturday Night Ghost Club by Craig Davidson. Genre: Literary/Speculative Fiction

    I learned after reading this that Craig Davidson is Nick Cutter, which I am glad I learned after finishing this beautiful book, because if I knew it was him, I would be hesitant to pick it up. I am not a fan of Nick Cutter. However, I am a fan of the real guy behind the Cutter facade: Craig Davidson. This is a beautiful, tear-jerker about a kid, his friends, and his strange uncle and their secret club, the aforementioned title of the book, where their uncle takes them to supposedly haunted spots and tells them the back stories behind it. I am not going to spoil it here, but it is deep and definitely not what you would expect. This is a novel without a vague ending at all, it is all tied together beautifully, so don't worry. Even if you aren't a fan of literary fiction, I think you would like this book. It is also just over 200-pages, so I read it in about 3.5 hours. 

3rd* - The Militia House by John Milas. Genre: Military/Gothic

    This debut by John Milas was amazing. It is about a quartet of Marines stationed in Afghanistan who go into an old militia house from the failed Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 20th century. Rumor has it that the Soviet Soldiers guarding the militia house were tortured and executed by the Mujahadeen in the basement and that the house is haunted. Once the narrator and his friends visit the marine house, they begin to have strange encounters and feelings. Also, there are giant porcupine quills that keep appearing to haunt the narrator. The ending is vague, and I interpreted the novel as being a big tale of the depths of PTSD. I felt a connection with this due to my own struggles from my fire department years. This may not be a top novel of the year for you, but you will still enjoy it if you like my other recommendations. 

2nd - This Thing Between Us by Gus Moreno. Genre: Psychological Horror/Cosmic Horror. 

   A man named Thiago and his wife get an Itza device (think an Alexa) that begins to behave strangely and order random things. After his wife dies in a freak accident, Thiago tries to come to terms with his loss. That is just the begging of a much, much deeper story. I can't talk more about it without ruining it. This book is fucking insane. And it was Moreno's debut in 2021, which makes it even more impressive. Fittingly, it was actually the book I started yesterday and finished today, right on time for it to end up as runner-up. I am confidant if I finished this book tomorrow, in 2024, that this would definitely have potential for winning the best of next year. It is amazing. 

1st* - ...

 Now, my favorite book of the year... I'll give you two hints... it came out this year. Well, it actually came out in 2021, but it was translated this year. This is a book that I will be pissed if it isn't at least nominated for the Stoker or Jackson awards for best novel. The second hint: this is Latin American horror: a genre I have read several novels of by now (my first was Mexican Gothic in 2021, the winner of my 2021 award)... My favorite novel of 2023 is...

Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez 

    Our Share of Night is an epic multi-generational tale of generational trauma. A widower named Gaspar in his early thirties is used by his deceased wife's family as a vessel for communicating with the dead because he is a medium. However, being a medium is tough on the mind and body, and Gaspar's body is about fifty-years older than he is and his heart is rapidly failing. To make matters dire, Gaspar's twelve-year-old son shows signs of being a medium himself. Gaspar fears that his deceased wife's family will kidnap his son following his death and force him to be a medium, thus destroying not just his body, but damning his soul to hell. The big contention with this novel with those who give it negative reviews is its length. It sits at around 800 pages long. However, this is warranted to me, because, unlike the majority of epic books, there is no filler! Every single one of the seemingly one million words are directly necessary to the story. This novel is amazing, beautiful, horrific, bleak, and grand. You have to read it. This is also in my top 10 favorite books of all time on Goodreads. This was a treat to read.

Recap... My favorite books of each year...

2015 - The Stand (dystopian/horror)

2016 - Slaughterhouse-Five (sci-fi/comedy)

2017 - IT (horror)

2018 - House of Leaves (cosmic horror)

2019 - I'm Thinking of Ending Things (psychological horror)

2020 - Grant (Non-Fiction/History)

2021 - Mexican Gothic (Gothic Horror)

2022 - North American Lake Monsters (Horror/short story collection)

2023 - Our Share of Night (horror)