Books Read in 2023

This year saw a slight increase in the number of books that I read, and would even have been a few more if my reading hadn’t tailed off somewhat towards the end of the year. The total number of pages also increased again, and thus the average size of each book went up, once again passing the three hundred page mark.

The books that I read in 2023 were:

• Mrs McGinty’s Dead by Agatha Christie
• Lydia by Paula Gooder
• The Gap into Power: A Dark and Hungry God Arises by Stephen Donaldson
• That they all may be one by Stephen Tomkins
• Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator by Roald Dahl
• The Wheel Spins by Ethel Lina White
• Speedy Death by Gladys Mitchell
• The Floating Admiral by The Detection Club
• Bodies from the Library by Tony Medawar (ed.)
• Bats in the Belfry by E.C.R.Lorac
• The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
• Murder by Matchlight by E.C.R.Lorac
• The Sinking Admiral by The Detection Club
• Jonah: God of the Second Chance by Selwyn Hughes
• Antagonists in the Church by Kenneth C Haugk
• Murder in the Mill Race by E.C.R.Lorac
• BUT WHAT CAN i DO? by Alastair Campbell
• The Theory of Everything Else by Dan Schreiber
• May at 10 by Anthony Seldon
• Green for Danger by Christianna Brand
• The English Führer by Rory Clements
• The Man Who Died Twice by Richard Osman
• Killing Thatcher by Rory Carroll
• Five Go Adventuring Again by Enid Blyton
• The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie
• Politics on the Edge by Rory Stewart
• The Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie

Top Games 2023

Having finally brought my blog up to date with a belated post of my Top 50 games for 2022, I can now proceed with posting this year’s Top 50 list. As ever, I used the Pub Meeple Ranking Engine to enter all the games that I have played and then rank them through a series of one-v-one pairings in which you choose which game you prefer. The more games you choose to enter, the more selections you have to make for the engine to calculate the overall ranking list. However, having used their Ranking Engine a number of times now, I do find that it is, with perhaps a few minor exceptions, pretty accurate in terms of where games are ranked. My full list runs to some 455 games, so the actual ranking takes a good deal of time, and the list that I post here, and record elsewhere, is just the Top 50.

The facts of the 2023 list are:

• 13 games climbed up the list
• 19 games dropped down the list
• 1 game remained where it was last year
• 7 new games came onto the list
• 10 games returned to the list after one or more years’ absence
• the highest new entry was #2 – Whistle Mountain
• the greatest climber was #21 – Terraforming Mars, which rose 22 places
• the largest faller was #48 – Snowdonia, which dropped 37 places
• of the perennials that have been on the list since its inauguration, eight still remain, but one dropped off this year – On the Underground. One previous perennial, Fresco, returned to the list after one year off. As usual, the remaining perennials with be indicated on the list with an *.
• this year’s number one, Obsession, is the fourth game to reach that spot after One Night Ultimate Werewolf, Five Tribes, and Viticulture. It is also the first game to have risen more than one or two places to gain the top spot.

The Top 50 for 2023 is:

1. Obsession (up 9)
2. Whistle Mountain (new)
3. Five Tribes (down 2) *
4. The Prodigals Club (down 1)
5. Viticulture (up 2)
6. Bunny Kingdom (up 2)
7. Whistle Stop (down 2)
8. Suburbia (up 10) *
9. Black Orchestra (down 3)
10. Castell (down 6)
11. Glen More II: Chronicles (new)
12. Wingspan (down 10)
13. Castles of Mad King Ludwig (up 6) *
14. Village (down 1)
15. Concordia (down 1)
16. Great Western Trail (down 1)
17. U-BOOT: The Board Game (down 8)
18. Agricola (up 7)
19. Roll for the Galaxy (up 8) *
20. Airlines Europe (down 8) *
21. Terraforming Mars (up 22)
22. The Castles of Burgundy (no change)
23. Dominare (up 13)
24. Fresco (returned after one year)
25. London (down 4)
26. Evolution (returned after four years)
27. Power Grid (up 1) *
28. Courtier (up 13)
29. Elysium (returned after one year)
30. Mysterium (up 4)
31. Downforce (returned after two years)
32. Codenames Duet (returned after two years)
33. Medieval Academy (down 4)
34. Dixit (down 8)
35. So Clover! (new)
36. Stone Age (returned after one year)
37. One Night Ultimate Werewolf (returned after three years)
38. The Palaces of Carrara (new)
39. Firenze (returned after one year)
40. Stroganov (new)
41. Cascadia (new)
42. Hadrian’s Wall (new)
43. Yamatai (returned after two years)
44. Flamme Rouge (up 1)
45. The Little Prince: Make Me a Planet (returned after two years)
46. Warsaw: City of Ruins (down 13)
47. Keyflower (down 23) *
48. Snowdonia (down 37)
49. Time’s Up! (down 18)
50. Die Macher (down 27) *

Top Games 2022

This Top 50 list comes a year late. I did, in actual fact, rank my top fifty games as usual at the beginning of 2022 and record them on the spreadsheet that I keep for the purpose, but for some reason I never got around to actually writing and publishing my annual blog post on the topic. Then, as the year wore on, it seemed less and less sensible to post. However, now having completed my 2023 ranking and before I post that list, it seems a good time to redress the omission and post the list of my Top 50 games as it stood at the beginning of 2022.

The facts of the 2022 Top 50 list are:

• 17 games climbed up the list
• 16 games dropped down the list
• 4 games stayed in the same place – interestingly all four are in the top five
• 9 games are new to the list
• 4 games returned to the list – 2 after one year off, and each of the others after two and three years off respectively
• the highest new entry was #10 – Obsession
• the greatest climber was #24 – Keyflower which climbed 24 places
• the largest faller was #49 – Space Base which dropped 36 places
• 9 of the games that were on the very first list still remain on the list as perennials. 1 previous perennial dropped off the list: Fresco. A previous perennial, Medieval Academy, which dropped off the list last year was one of this year’s returning games. Perennial games are indicated in the list with an *.

The Top 50 for 2022 is as follows:

1. Five Tribes (no change) *
2. Wingspan (up 6)
3. The Prodigals Club (no change)
4. Castell (no change)
5. Whistle Stop (no change)
6. Black Orchestra (up 3)
7. Viticulture (down 5)
8. Bunny Kingdom (up 3)
9. U-BOOT: The Board Game (up 14)
10. Obsession (new)
11. Snowdonia (down 5)
12. Airlines Europe (up 3) *
13. Village (up 19)
14. Concordia (up 10)
15. Great Western Trail (down 3)
16. Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game (new)
17. Pandemic (up 14)
18. Suburbia (up 1) *
19. Castles of Mad King Ludwig (down 3) *
20. Pan Am (new)
21. London (down 11)
22. The Castles of Burgundy (down 15)
23. Die Macher (down 9) *
24. Keyflower (up 24) *
25. Agricola (up 4)
26. Dixit (up 2)
27. Roll for the Galaxy (up 13) *
28. Power Grid (up 5) *
29. Medieval Academy (returned after one year)
30. Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective (new)
31. Time’s Up! (down 4)
32. On the Underground (up 7) *
33. Warsaw: City of Ruins (up 5)
34. Mysterium (returned after two years)
35. Paris (up 15)
36. Dominare (down 14)
37. Jaws (returned after one year)
38. Dungeon Petz (new)
39. Grand Austria Hotel (new)
40. Chronicles of Crime (down 3)
41. Courtier (down 11)
42. Just One (new)
43. Terraforming Mars (down 18)
44. Ex Libris (down 27)
45. Flamme Rouge (new)
46. The Networks (new)
47. Mission: Red Planet (down 12)
48. Innovation (returned after three years)
49. Space Base (down 36)
50. Bang! The Dice Game (down 5)

Games Played in 2022

The number of games played in 2022 was a slightly fewer than in 2021. At the end of August it looked like I would play more, but the amount that I played tailed off from then until the holidays at the end of the year, so I finished having played 142 different games, just eighteen fewer than the 160 of 2021. Of these 142 games, 28 were new to me.

The number of plays was down quite a bit as well and more in line with that of 2016 rather than 2020 or 2021. This year I completed 975 plays of games, which compares to those other years thus – 2016: 985, 2020: 1140, 2021: 1171. Interestingly, as an average, both 2016 and 2022 work out as just about 7 plays of each game, whereas that of 2020 is at 6.5 and 2021 is closer to 7.5.

This year’s most played game was The Crew which was comprised of games of both of its versions, The Quest for Planet Nine and Mission Deep Sea. Although they are stand alone games, I have grouped them together for purposes of counting games played on this list as they are, by and large, the same game with just a few changes to the way the game is played.

The full list of games that were played ten times or more in 2022 is:

1. The Crew (149)
2. Qwantum (64)
3. Qwinto (46)
4. Twenty One (41)
5. Qwixx (27)
6. Pass the Pigs (26)
7. Fluxx (24)
8. Ripple Rush (24)
9. So Clover! (21)
10. Obsession (20)
11. Ganz schon clever (18)
12. Codenames Duet (18)
13. Lost Cities (18)
14. Connect 4: Shots (18)
15. Black Orchestra (16)
16. Cascadia (16)
17. Strike (16)
18. Hadrian’s Wall (15)
19. Wingspan (15)
20. Century: Spice Road (14)
21. Floriferous (14)
22. Cat Lady (12)
23. Noch Mal (11)
24. Similo (11)
25. Old London Bridge (10)
26. Ohanami (10)

Books Read in 2022

Once again my reading has been somewhat intermittent, and I have finished the year having read almost as many books as in 2021. However, the average size of those books has been somewhat smaller, returning to the same average size as that of 2020. Part of the reason for this has been the inclusion of a number of children’s books that I have read to our son, Alex, as these have, generally, been shorter books. It has been a pleasure to read these books to him, especially as some of them have actually been new to me and so I have been discovering them for the first time myself.

The books that I read in 2022 were:

• Where is God in a Coronairus World by John C Lennox
• In the Bleak Midwinter by Rachel Mann
• A Pocket Full of Rye by Agatha Christie
• Failures of State by Jonathan Calvert & George Arbuthnott
• The Passenger by Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz
• Go, Flight! by Rick Houston & Milt Heflin
• Murder: The Biography by Kate Morgan
• Lockdown by Peter May
• The Man in the Bunker by Rory Clements
• The Gap into Conflict: The Real Story by Stephen Donaldson
• The Magic Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton
• The Folk of the Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton
• Love Means Love by Daid Runcorn
• George’s Marvelous Medicine by Roald Dahl
• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
• The Impossible Office? by Anthony Seldon
• The Whistleblower by Robert Peston
• Dic Penderyn: The Man and the Martyr by Sally Roberts Jones
• Falling by T J Newman
• The Gap into Vision: Forbidden Knowledge by Stephen Donaldson
• The Giants and the Joneses by Julia Doaldson
• Murder Before Evensong by Richard Coles
• Agatha Christie: A Very Elusive Woman by Lucy Worsley

Games Played in 2021

2021 almost saw a record number of games played, with a total of 160 different games reaching the various tables that I managed to gather round and play games on. This was a few short of 2020’s high point of 173 games played. Of those 160 games, 29 were new to me.

I did, however, manage to play those games on more occasions in 2021 than in 2020. I managed to record a total of 1171 plays of games, which was a slight increase on the previous year’s 1140 plays.

This year’s most played game, by almost one hundred plays, was one of those new to me, and ranked up so many plays because each play of the game is, for the most part, very quick. That game was, The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine, which I played a total of 151 times. This consisted of one complete play through of the campaign and the beginning of another attempt.

The full list of games that were played ten times or more is:

1. The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine (151)
2. Qwantum (54)
3. Wingspan (50)
4. Lost Cities (47)
5. Twenty One (40)
6. Fluxx (40)
7. Doppelt so Clever! (38)
8. Qwinto (36)
9. Qwixx (30)
10. Ohanami (27)
11. Mandala (25)
12. Ganz Schön Clever (24)
13. Mountain Goats (22)
14. Pass the Pigs (21)
15. Pandemic: The Cure (18)
16. Pandemic Legacy: Season 0 (17)
17. Fungi (15)
18. Codenames Duet (15)
19. Infinity Gauntlet (14)
20. Harvest Dice (12)
21. Draftosaurus (11)
22. Sequoia (11)
23. Black Orchestra (10)
24. Small World (10)
25. Flame Rouge (10)
26. Point Salad (10)
27. Monza (10)
28. Dobble (10)

Books Read in 2021

Reading in 2021 went well up until mid-August, and then it went on something of a hiatus. In reality, a number of books were started and part-read after that point, but none of them were finished, so the the year’s total didn’t reach the amount that it, perhaps, should have done. However, the average size of books that I read was the highest it has been for ten years.

The books that I read in 2021 were:

• Six Minutes in May by Nicholas Shakespeare
• The Battle of Britain by James Holland
• Pottery Cottage by Alan R Hurndall
• Dead Man’s Folly by Agatha Christie
• The Shape of Water by Andrea Camilleri
• A Game of Birds and Wolves by Simon Parkin
• The Official History of Britain by Boris Starling & David Bradbury
• Simply Church by Sim Dendy
• The Glamour Boys by Chris Bryant
• Darkest Hour by Anthony McCarten
• Attention All Shipping by Charlie Connelly
• James Callaghan: An Underrated Prime Minister? edited by Kevin Hickson & Jasper Miles
• The Professor and The Parson by Adam Sisman
• The People v. O.J.Simpson by Jeffrey Toobin
• Hitler’s First Victims by Timothy W Ryback
• Henry Winstanley and the Eddystone Lighthouse by Adam Hart-Davis & Emily Troscienko
• Polly: The True Story Behind Whisky Galore by Roger Hutchinson
• The Madness of Grief by Richard Coles
• Appeasing Hitler by Tim Bouverie
• If This Is A Woman by Sarah Helm
• Heligoland: The True Story of German Bight by George Drower
• The Falklands War by Martin Middlebrook
• Dummy by Matt Coyne
• Music of Eternity by Robyn Wrigley-Carr

Top Games 2021

Once again, the beginning of a new year leads me to rank all of the games that I have played and come up with my Top 50. Like many people who do this, I use Pub Meeple’s ranking engine, which, for those that are interested can be found here. Depending on how many items you choose to rank, it can take a long time to complete, but it is a thorough application and it makes the task of ranking easier as you simply compare two items at a time.

This year’s facts of the Top 50:

• 15 games climbed up the list
• 17 games dropped down the list
• 1 game did not move
• 7 games are new to the list
• 10 games returned to the list, with most having been off the list for one year and one for two years
• the highest new entry is #4 – Castell
• the largest climber rose 32 places – Airlines Europe
• the largest faller dropped 23 places – Courtier
• 10 games have been on the list since it was inaugurated (these are indicated with an * in the list below), while two that had previously been evergreens dropped off – The Little Prince: Make Me A Planet and Medieval Academy
• my current (and returning) #1 has always been on the list and never out of the top 3
• last year’s #1 and new #2 has never been lower than #2 since entering the list is 2018

The Top 50 for 2021 is as follows:

1. Five Tribes (up 1) *
2. Viticulture (down 1)
3. The Prodigal’s Club (returned after one year)
4. Castell (new)
5. Whistle Stop (up 9)
6. Snowdonia (up 3)
7. The Castles of Burgundy (up 19)
8. Wingspan (down 4)
9. Black Orchestra (up 3)
10. London (up 3)
11. Bunny Kingdom (down 8)
12. Great Western Trail (up 27)
13. Space Base (down 8)
14. Die Macher (up 20) *
15. Airlines Europe (up 32) *
16. Castles of Mad King Ludwig (down 1) *
17. Ex Libris (returned after one year)
18. Bohnanza (up 20)
19. Suburbia (up 18) *
20. Firenze (up 9)
21. Hanamikoji (returned after one year)
22. Dominare (no change)
23. U-BOOT: The Board Game (down 13)
24. Concordia (returned after one year)
25. Terraforming Mars (up 23)
26. Stone Age (new)
27. Time’s Up! (returned after one year)
28. Dixit (down 7)
29. Agricola (up 7)
30. Courtier (down 23)
31. Pandemic (returned after one year)
32. Village (new)
33. Power Grid (down 2) *
34. Dead of Winter (returned after one year)
35. Mission: Red Planet (up 15)
36. Fresco (down 6) *
37. Chronicles of Crime (returned after one year)
38. Warsaw: City of Ruins (down 3)
39. On The Underground (down 14) *
40. Roll for the Galaxy (down 22) *
41. Fungi (returned after one year)
42. Gizmos (down 22)
43. Elysium (down 20)
44. First Class (new)
45. Bang! The Dice Game (returned after two years)
46. Tobago (down 13)
47. PitchCar (new)
48. Keyflower (down 6) *
49. Lost Cities (new)
50. Paris (new)

Games Played in 2020

As with the number of books read in 2020, the number of games played also increased. However, the increase in games played was significantly greater than that of books read. While it seems that many people were unable to play as many games due to being unable to gather together for corporate game playing, in my case being at home all the time, being forced to take a break from work at lunchtime and play games, and not having to go out for evening meetings meant that I played many, many more games this year; and, demonstrating the unusual circumstances of the year, 93% of the games played were two-player.

In total I played 173 different games (2019: 117) of which 30 were new to me. In total I played those games a combined total of 1140 times (2019: 498). For the second year running my most played game of the year was Fluxx, shared between ‘vanilla’ Fluxx, Math Fluxx, and Pirate Fluxx. These three versions of the game were played a combined total of 128 times.

The full list of games that received ten or more plays in 2020 is:

1. Fluxx (128)
2. Twenty One (71)
3. Draftosaurus (66)
4. Point Salad (38)
5. Lost Cities (38)
6. Similo (33)
7. Qwixx (31)
8. Coloretto (29)
9. Sushi Go Party! (25)
10. Hanamikoji (19)
11. Castell (18)
12. Biblios (18)
13. The Quacks of Quedlingburg (17)
14. Capital Lux (16)
15. Silver & Gold (16)
16. Mysterium (14)
17. Hanabi (14)
18. HexRoller (13)
19. Erster Obstgarten (13)
20. Robinson Crusoe (12)
21. Village (12)
22. The Little Prince: Make Me A Planet (12)
23. Just One (12)
24. Herbaceous (11)
25. Murder of Crows (11)
26. Hungry Hungry Hippos (10)

Books Read in 2020

2020 was a strange year in many ways and it was very difficult for many people, but the prolonged, enforced, period of time at home meant that reading took an upturn. Thus it was that this year saw me finish the greatest number of books for six years, almost double the total for 2019, and reaching a total of thirty.

Those books were:

• Airhead by Emily Maitless
• A History of Britain in 21 Women by Jenni Murray
• The Order of the Day by Eric Vuillard
• Taken at the Flood by Agatha Christie
• Jumble Sales of the Apocalypse by Simon Jenkins
• The Body by Bill Bryson
• The Sacred Diary of Adrian Plass: The Church Weekend by Adrian Plass
• Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy by Serhii Plokhy
• And God Created Cricket by Simon Hughes
• I Am A Church Member by Thom S Rainer
• The Lost Message of Paul by Steve Chalke
• The British General Election of 1997 by David Butler & Dennis Kavanagh
• When the Dogs Don’t Bark by Angela Gallop
• Murder in the Mews by Agatha Christie
• One Minute to Midnight by Michael Dobbs
• The Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie
• The Geneva Trap by Stella Rimington
• Unnatural Causes by Dr Richard Shepherd
• This House by James Graham
• The Central Park Five by Sarah Burns
• Lord Edgware Dies by Agatha Christie
• Saving Mona Lisa by Gerri Chanel
• Live from Downing Street by Nick Robinson
• Saboteurs by Michael Dobbs
• Why We Get the Wrong Politicians by Isabel Hardman
• Sultan of Swing: The Life of David Butler by Michael Crick
• God and the Pandemic by Tom Wright
• Ordeal by Innocence by Agatha Christie
• The Gospel of Eve by Rachel Mann
• The Man in Black by Dylan Rhys Jones