Matt's Books and Music

When I came up with my ‘Bookish Hall of Fame’ last year, I put a lot of thought into what it would mean for me to celebrate the ‘best’ one hundred novels for me. I gave less thought to what it would mean to keep it up to date. But, as we’re well into a new year, the time has come to see how my 2023 favourites fared against my historical favourites.

I had a few considerations in mind when I took this on:

• I wanted it to reflect not just how new favourites fit in with my existing Hall of Fame titles, but also how my reading life has changed. So, I wanted to have another look at the whole list, including previous reads that didn’t make the cut in the 2023 Hall of Fame.
• I accepted that in doing this on an annual basis, recent titles might be privileged in one year, then drop off significantly the next if they haven’t stood the test of time. I don’t think this is a bad thing. This is a snapshot of my reading life, from roughly 1997-2023, as it stands at the end of the first quarter of 2024.
• When looking at which titles to include or exclude, I focused on the big question at hand: Can I justify saying this is one of my 100 ‘best’ novels?
• I accepted that in doing things this way, a lot of titles I love are going to get bumped from the list every year. Rather than increase the number of books in the Hall of Fame, I’ve decided to create an ‘Emeritus’ category to continue celebrating books that once were among my top one hundred.

With all that in mind, here are some general results:

There was a lot of turnaround in the list. Twenty-nine new titles made my list this year; of these, one was a pre-2023 read that didn’t quite make the top 100 last year, but has risen in my esteem in hindsight.

This means that there are twenty-nine Emeritus titles.

Hall of Fame Emeritus

Significant Achievements

In this category are books that have lasting importance in the literary world, irrespective of my own feelings about them. Some of these are legitimately among my favourites; others probably only ever made the top 100 in the first place because I thought they ‘should’ be there more than because I loved them. Either way, these are great books that deserve to be celebrated.

• And Then There Were None, by Agatha Christie (1939): 4 years in HoF (78→n/a)
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter 7), by JK Rowling (2007); 3 years in HoF (80→n/a)
• Beloved, by Toni Morrison (1987); 1 year in HoF (81→n/a)
• The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, by CS Lewis (1950): 20 years in HoF (84→n/a)

Genre Literature Favourites

The biggest thing I noticed in seeing which titles didn’t make the cut this year is that a lot of them fall into the broad category of ‘genre’ fiction. These are YA titles, fantasy novels, science fiction, dark comedies, or romances that I absolutely love, but which I simply couldn’t justify keeping among my ‘top 100’ novels of all time.

• The Kingdom of Copper (Daevabad 2), by SA Chackraborty (2019) (52→n/a)
• The City We Became, by NK Jemisin (202); 3 years in HoF; (56→n/a)
• The House in the Cerulean Sea, by TJ Klune (2020); 3 years in HoF (59→n/a)
• My Sister, the Serial Killer, by Oyinkan Braithwaite (2018): 4 years in HoF (61→n/a)
• The War that Saved my Life (2015) and The War I Finally Won (2017), by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley; 3 years in HoF (72 & 71→n/a)
• The Marrow Thieves, by Cherie Dimaline (2017): 4 years in HoF (83→n/a)
• Amari and the Night Brothers, by B.B. Alston (2021): 2 years in HoF (87→n/a)
• Red, White and Royal Blue, by Casey McQuiston (2020): 3 years in HoF (91→n/a)
• All Systems Red (Murderbot Diaries 1): 3 years in HoF (92→n/a)
• Long Way Down, by Jason Reynolds (2017); 2 years in HoF (94→n/a)
• Pony, by RC Palacio (2021); 2 years in HoF (95→n/a)
• Keep This to Yourself, by Tom Ryan (2019): 4 years in HoF (98→n/a)
• Garden Spells, by Sarah Addison Allen (2007): 5 years in HoF (100→n/a)

Literary Favourites

There were also a number of titles from last year’s list that only fell off the list because there were simply more books I liked better than them. There are some amazing titles here and they were all really difficult cuts to make.

• Cleanness, by Garth Greenwell (2020): 1 year in Hall of Fame (99→n/a)
• Franny and Zooey, by JD Salinger (1957): 15 years in Hall of Fame (97→n/a)
• Red at the Bone, by Jacqueline Woodson (2019): 1 year in Hall of Fame (96→n/a)
• Lampedusa, by Stephen Price (2020); 2 years in Hall of Fame (93→n/a)
• The Secret Chord, by Geraldine Brooks (2015): 3 years in Hall of Fame (90→n/a)
• Ragged Company, by Richard Wagamese (2008): 1 year in Hall of Fame (89→n/a)
• The Shipping News, by Annie Proulx (1993): 3 years in Hall of Fame (88→n/a)
• The Penelopiad, by Margaret Atwood (2005): 11 years in Hall of Fame (86→n/a)
• Interior Chinatown, by Charles Yu (2020); 2 years in Hall of Fame (95→n/a)
• The Weight of Ink, by Rachel Kadish (2017): 4 years in Hall of Fame (75→n/a)

Just Following the Rules (of my own making)

Finally there was one book that I love so much that last year I included it despite the fact that it isn’t a novel and therefore doesn’t meet the inclusion criteria. With so many great novels knocking on the door, I just couldn’t justify letting it slide for another year.

• Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel (2006); 3 years in Hall of Fame (47→n/a)

Tomorrow I’ll look at the biggest gainers and losers from the books that stayed within my list.