It’s the final monthly update of the year! Read on to find out how I was Geeking By in December 2023 including a mini year in review and a list of my favourite books from this year.

December 2023 wasn’t that bad health-wise until I tripped over our robo-vac. I had even tucked it out of the way to avoid that happening, and in my hurry to stop an alarm on my phone, I completely forgot it was there. I went down hard, flying over the end of the bed, clearing the Ottoman and landing on my left side. A good thing about being plus size is having a lot of extra padding, which meant I avoided injuring my already sore hip badly. I had bruises on my thigh and elbow on that side, and due to jerking when I fell, my left shoulder and arm were sore for days.

It was not a pleasant experience, and it’s been a while since I’ve had a fall that bad. Incidentally, it happened at the same time we had snow for the first time this winter. While people were slipping and sliding in the snow and ice, there I was having a massive fall… in my bedroom /facepalm.

I was sore for about a week after the fall but recovered well. The holiday season is always difficult for me, and after last month’s chaos, it took me a while to even feel slightly festive. I finally got there after attending my therapy group’s Christmas party. We all brought along food to eat, and I made cupcakes for it. I thought I was feeling awful afterwards due to overdoing it making the cupcakes, but by the time Christmas Day came around I was in so much pain it was obvious that it was actually PMT. It was great fun making dinner on Christmas Day with high pain levels and back pain!

We got through it, and thankfully we don’t do anything for Boxing Day, and we use it as a recovery day. We always have plenty of leftovers, and that’s done on purpose so we don’t have to cook much while resting. It was extremely needed this year, I can tell you!

I’m still suffering from PMT as I write this, especially the back pain, and even though I’ve had rough PMT months throughout the year I’ve not had back pain like this. Of course, my body had to get it in before the year’s out!

December was a quiet month for gaming, with some scattered moments in Final Fantasy XIV and The Inheritance of Crimson Manor, which I’m getting close to completing.

Below is my Steam Year in Review, and the Steam Year in Review website offers additional details. While this might not look like a lot, these stats are quite high for me as usually, most games I play are MMORPGs that aren’t launched through Steam.

This month was another movie light month, with the only one being watched on Christmas Day. It was Indiana Jones and The Dial of Destiny, and for the most part, I enjoyed it. It was definitely better than the previous one, although let’s be honest, that wasn’t hard!  The storyline was good, but what put me off was the main character opposite Indy. Played by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, the character seemed to be written as a smart, sexy and strong modern woman, however, in execution the character ended up being a smug annoying cow. Normally I’d love independent characters like her, but every time she spoke I just wanted to smack her.

I started the month with more Whitstable Pearl, this time season two. After that, I moved on to Cardinal, a dark Canadian crime drama that gave me Hinterlands vibes. I binge-watched the full four seasons of that.

Next up were more Hallmark TV movies; the Garage Sale Mysteries series, Picture Perfect Mysteries series, Darrow & Darrow series, Mystery 101 series, and the Ruby Herring Mysteries series.

The Doctor Who 60th Anniversary specials continued, and I enjoyed them up until the end of ‘The Giggle’. Popping my thoughts under a spoiler cut:

View Spoiler »

There were so many things I loved about ‘The Giggle’; the way Donna dealt with the creepy dolls, the Kate Stewart disability rant that perfectly highlighted ableist comments that disabled people deal with all the time and the accessible TARDIS are just a few.

Then we got to the end of the episode and when the Doctor regenerated he split into TWO Doctors. I adored Ncuti Gatwa from the first moment, and I can’t wait to see more of him. I’ve also always been a fan of David Tennant as an actor and as The Doctor. They both performed superbly in this episode, however, it never sat well with me that before introducing the first black Doctor the BBC decided it was necessary to bring back a previous white Doctor for their 60th Anniversary specials.

Then the moment when the Doctor regenerates, Russell T Davies decides to KEEP said Doctor, making it so that two Doctors are existing in the current universe. It’s not the first time a Doctor has existed more than once, although it’s been in another universe. I didn’t voice my concerns at the time as it wasn’t my place, and the only reason I am now is because racists have done exactly what I was worried about. They are calling the new Doctor fake, even though Davies has emphasised that he is the real Doctor.

To be clear, I’m all for Doctor Who pushing the boundaries and changing rules. I just feel that a certain lack of judgment was shown here.
« Hide Spoiler

I was super excited to watch the Christmas Day special because I fell in love with the new Doctor immediately. Unfortunately, someone live-tweeted it in detail and spoiled it completely for me. I’ve yet to find the enthusiasm to watch it again. Hopefully, it will return soon.

I caught up with the third and final season of Pretty Hard Cases, a hilarious crime drama that I highly recommend to everyone. It’s so good, and I don’t think many people know about this one. The third season took a different route with one of the main characters being in a different relationship than the previous seasons, which I wasn’t a big fan of, to be honest. It made sense plot-wise wise and the overall plot was brilliant, but yeah, I preferred who she was with before. I liked how the show ended, I’m just sad to see this one go.

I’m beginning to run out of crime shows to watch, hence all the TV movies recently, and so I’ve been giving some shows that I’ve previously passed on a chance. One of these is The Closer, a show that has always looked very serious to me, and that’s why I avoided it in the past. It was out when I was in my early 20s, and I’m finding that a lot of older shows like this I passed up at the time and when I go back to them now I really enjoy them.

Anyway, The Closer is not at all a serious show in the way I expected. It does deal with some serious topics, but it was way more funnier than I expected. I can also see why it was nominated and won so many awards. Some award-winning shows I watch and don’t see what all the fuss was about, but this one, yeah, I get it.

The main character, Brenda Lee, comes in as a higher rank than the surrounding men, and she’s also the sort to rub people the wrong way. At first, they hate her, mocking her strong accent, trying to get her fired and some of them are very misogynistic. As the seasons go they start to recognise that she was given the job because she’s damn good at what she does, and quirks and all, accept her. One of the characters that at first appeared to be a stereotypical misogynist and ended up being one of my favourite characters. He, like all the characters, was multi-layered, and I liked how real the characters and relationships were.

The great thing was that most of the characters continued to the spin-off show, Major Crimes, which is essentially the same show just without the main lead, Brenda Lee played by Kyra Sedgwick. The team is led by a character that I liked a lot in The Closer, and I love that we get to see more of her.

Here are the books I read in December 2023:

• The Charmed (Fae of the Crystal Palace #1) by Kylie Fennell
• The Chalice of the Gods (Percy Jackson and the Olympians #6) by Rick Riordan
• Boys in the Valley by Philip Fracassi
• The Whispering Dark by Kelly Andrew
• Daughter of Darkness (House of Shadows #1) by Katharine and Elizabeth Corr

Now that The Book Bloggers’ Novel of the Year Award (BBNYA) 2023 has been completed I can also confirm that I previously read a few other books! Incidentally, the three books listed below that I read for the final won first, second and third place. 

• Perception Check by Astrid Knight (1st Place)
• A Rose Among Thorns by Ash Fitzsimmons (2nd Place)
• The Reanimator’s Heart by Kara Jorgensen (3rd Place)

Comics I finished reading in December 2023 were:

• Star Wars: Darth Vader Vol. 8: Dark Droids
• Star Wars: Dark Droids: D-Squad
• Star Wars: Dark Droids
• Batgirls Vol. 2: Bat Girl Summer
• Batgirls Vol. 3
• Batman/Catwoman
• Monkey Prince Vol. 2: The Monkey King and I

I was winding down my reviews this month, so there were only a handful this month; two ARC reviews I was catching up on and two personal reviews I wanted to get out. 

Here are the book reviews I posted in December 2023:

[rcno-book-listing ids=”32797, 32811, 33153, 32463″ wc=250 readmore=”Read my review”]

I was hoping to have time to do an end-of-year reading survey or a post sharing my favourite books from this year. I haven’t had the time, and I don’t want to go into the new year with a backlog of things. Instead, I’ve decided to include a list in this post.

So here are my top reads from 2023, which were very difficult to narrow down as there were so many good books this year!

[rcno-book-listing ids=”29684, 29874, 30731, 30650, 30939, 31045, 31321, 31473, 32254, 32106, 32514, 32559″ wc=250 readmore=”Read my review”]

Originally my GoodReads reading challenge was set at 250 books, however, I read less comics this year and that meant that I wasn’t able to reach that goal. I changed it to 230 in December which was more reachable and ended up falling one book/comic short /facepalm. You can view my entire 2023 GoodReads reading challenge here.

I made it to two therapy meetings in December, which along with the usual Holiday errands made for a busier month than usual. We don’t celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday, it’s just a family get-together with presents and a nice dinner. It’s us and Chris’ mum, and this year we had her new adopted dog with us which made things a bit more hectic. His name is Noodles, and at two and a half years old he is very energetic. We tried to introduce the cats to him, and that didn’t work out very well. George was terrified of him, while Milo was quite happy to ignore Noodles, just hissing at him when he came near but the dog wouldn’t stop barking at him. We gave the cats a room each as they fight if left unattended, and gave them lots of love later on.

My gift haul was very bookish and Star Wars themed this year, as you can see in the photo above. I made the mistake of missing the first book (A New Hope) in the From a Certain Point of View series off my wish list so I’ll need to pick that one up myself. The other book series is the new release of my favourite book series, The Kushiel Legacy by Jacqueline Carey. I used to have a full copy of the trilogy and then I made the mistake of lending some of it to a friend. I never saw it again and it was difficult to get hold of them. Chris knew how much those books meant to me and I’d asked specifically for them.

As for 2023 as a year, it didn’t go as planned and that was a good and a bad thing. I wrote a goals list for 2023 in January and I don’t need to check it to know I failed most of it spectacularly. I struggled a lot this year due to my costochondritis becoming a permanent condition rather than temporary as suggested by the consultant in October 2022. I kept expecting it to go away eventually and when it didn’t, I had to approach my GP to ask for help with the pain and I didn’t have high expectations of getting much help due to being an asthmatic. In a surprise twist, I did, and while I still get some flare-ups the pain has been more manageable.

A lot of this year was spent accepting some new things that I had learned about myself and beginning to unravel years of masking and being told that I was something I was not. I had an amazing therapist who helped me work through a lot of stuff and that gave me a great foundation to keep building on throughout the year. 

In short, 2023 was difficult at times and unpredictable, but I’m heading into 2024 surprisingly optimistic.

Thank you for reading my final monthly update of the year and for joining me throughout 2023. I hope you’ll continue to do so next year. Happy New Year everyone!

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