Cyberkitten and Marian recently posted a “Ten Year Book Tag”, which I missed because my weekend consisted of horror movies and a six-hour karaoke party . This should be fun, because 2013 was a banner year here at Reading Freely, with book after book on various topics that drastically altered my thinking.

What was your favorite book read in 2013?
Okay, foul. Foul, foul, foul. Look at this list. Do you see how many bolded titles there are on it? Bolded titles are my rare five-star absolutely loved it, best of the best reads. 2013 was the year Jane Jacobs upended my worldview, the year I encountered counterculture conservatives*, the year I discovered Wendell Berry and E.F. Schumacher — the latter of which whose mention of the Catholic social doctrine of distributism would lead to my love affair with Catholic culture. Believe me, as an ex-Pentecostal who spent years as an agnostic/atheist, I never saw that coming. I suppose since I frequently refer to Jayber Crow as my favorite novel, I’ll name it here.

What is your favorite book of 2023 (so far)
Adventures with Ed, biography/memoir of a friendship with Ed Abbey.

What was your least favourite book in 2013?
Hmm…I’m usually very picky about what I read, believe it or not, so it’s rare that I read a stinker. Harry Turtledove is on the list, though, so I’ll say his Things Fall Apart. It was part of his Supervolcano series, which was so lazy that it inspired me to give up on Turtledove altogether despite reading a lot of his stuff in the early years of the blog.

What is a book published in 2013 that you still want to read?
I had to google for nonfiction published in 2013, and there are several on this list by the Post that are on my interest list. The End of Power is actually in my TBR pile, though.

What is the book published (to be published) in 2023 you want to get before 2024?
Eh, none really. My priority is the TBR. There are several titles this list I plan on reading, especially The Six (about the first six female American astronauts), and Tom Holland’s new book on Rome, but TBR takes priority.

What is a genre you used to read a lot of that you don’t read as much of anymore?
Hmm….that’s hard to say. My religious-spiritual reading was more varied ten years ago, though, because from 2007-2012, roughly, I was reading about all kinds of religions and philosophies to understand man’s search for meaning — to learn what different religions and philosophies had in common, and what they didn’t to find out what they said about human nature and the cosmos and how to live in it. I was still informing and forming my own worldview. These days my religious reading is almost wholly Christian, and usually from Catholic or Orthodox sources, though there’s a lot of other philosophy that feeds into how I understand the world and pursue goodness within it.

What is a new genre you’ve discovered since 2013?
That’s a difficult question. In 2013, I think I’d still say “Oh, I’m not really a SF fan, I just like Star Trek and Isaac Asimov”, but ten years later with SF consistently the runner-up fiction genre, I can’t say that. I’m also a little more prone to reading fantasy than I was ten years ago, when I’d only read the Harry Potter series and started on LOTR.

What is a reading or book habit you are hoping to leave behind in this decade? 
Not reviewing books. I’m done pretty good this year, but last year I was terrible at forgetting to post reviews.

What is a new reading goal or habit you want to create in the upcoming decade?
Mm….reading books faster than I buy them.

[*] Reading that review of Crunchy Cons is fascinating and funny now, in part because Dreher is one of the few authors whose books I will willingly buy new-on-release, and whose substack was the first I ever did a paid subscription for. Reading it opens a fascinating window into a me-in-transition, to someone whose humanism was shifting from “ethics without religion” to one that was broader, more historically rooted, and deeply concerned with human flourishing and a meaningful life — which, as I believe completely now and was strongly suspecting then, involves active resistance to becoming a simple consumer-creature.