2023 Big Book Summer Wrap-Up

The 2023 Big Book Summer Challenge officially wrapped up on September 4, ending its 11th year! I host this challenge every summer and always enjoy participating in it myself. You can read all the details at the challenge page linked above, but the basic idea is to read books of 400 pages or longer between the end of May and the beginning of September – just one or a few or as many as you want!  First, I’ll wrap-up the whole challenge here and then tell you about my Big Book Summer. You can also watch my Big Book Summer Wrap-Up Video.

Participants in the Big Book Summer Challenge:

We had a record number of 59 participants this year! Of those, 22 people participated through their blogs and YouTube channels, and 37 readers participated through the Goodreads group, though everyone enjoyed the book discussions on Goodreads all summer long. You can still visit the group to see what everyone else read for their Big Book Summers. There’s a Wrap-Up thread there, if you want to share what you read. And if you have a blog or YouTube channel, the links list on the challenge page is still open for reviews or wrap-ups.

The winner of the annual Big Book Summer Giveaway is …

He will be receiving a gift certificate from Bookshop.org, a great website where you can buy books conveniently online while supporting indie bookstores.

Congratulations, Greg!

And a Big Book Congratulations to everyone who participated in the challenge this year! 

Whether your goal was to read one Big Book or as many as possible, I hope you had fun reading and sharing your reading adventures through the challenge. If you missed it this year, you can sign up for Big Book Summer 2024 next May 24! 

My Big Book Summer:

I look forward to Big Book Summer all year and devote my entire summer to reading bigger books. This year, I read a total of fourteen Big Books (a new record for me), half in print and half on audio (links go to my reviews):

• Billy Summers by Stephen King (528 pages)
• The House of Impossible Beauties by Joseph Cassara (416 pages) – audio
• Voyager by Diana Gabaldon (870 pages)
• The Strangers by Margaret Peterson Haddix (433 pages) – audio
• Scythe by Neal Schusterman (464 pages)
• Everything the Light Touches by Janice Pariat (512 pages) – audio
• The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (455 pages)
• The Secrets Between Us by Thrity Umrigar (400 pages) – audio
• The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles (576 pages)
• Lines of Courage by Jennifer Nielsen (400 pages) – audio
• Afterland by Lauren Beukes (404 pages)
• First Cut (at 7:10 in the linked video) by Judy Melinek and T.J. Mitchell (400 pages) – audio
• The Night Fire (at 4:00 in linked video) by Michael Connelly (448 pages)
• A World of Curiosities (at 6:08 in linked video) by Louise Penny (400 pages)