With El Niño slated to drop a warm, wet winter on most of the US in the coming months, everybody's going to need something good to read while the weather outside is frightful. Engadget's well-read staff have some suggestions: our favorite books of 2023! We've got a phenomenal assortment of genres and titles for you this year, from horror and true crime to rom-coms and fantasy adventures, here to provide months of entertainment for even the most voracious reader. I love horror movies but horror novels are kind of hit and miss for me. I was immediately pulled into Final Girl Support Group, though, which does a lot of winking and nodding at classic slasher flicks while creating a completely unique story. Grady Hendrix's novel doesn't satirize the final girl, but imagines what life might be like for them after the end of their movie. Each of the main characters is (loosely) based on the final girl of a classic slasher, though their storylines don't feel contrived or predictable. It reads like a fast-paced thriller but, like so many of the best horror movies, it's also a poignant reflection on trauma.

After I watched Men, I went to see what others had to say about it, and the first place I went to was a recorded conversion about the film on Diregentleman's channel. Toward the end of the conversation, Henry Galley says Men further diminished Garland's previous two films. Personally, I didn't get that in regards to Annihilation, but Ex Machina, on the other hand, I hadn't seen before. I did not watch Garland's directorial debut in 2014. And my reason is that I have been obsessed with pop culture about robotic A.I. ever since I was a kid from Astro Boy (circa.

Horror movies frequently feature a "final girl," a female character who survives to the end of the movie when most--or all--of the other characters do not. Stephen Graham Jones, author of My Heart Is a Chainsaw, is a big fan of the final girl trope. "The final girl is to the slasher as the silver bullet is to the werewolf, as daylight is to the vampire, as a headshot is to the zombie," Jones says in Episode 482 of the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast. Geek's Guide to the Galaxy host David Barr Kirtley says that final girls tap into our natural tendency to root for the underdog. "It's more of an accomplishment for a young woman to defeat the bad guy than if it's some experienced, buff soldier," he says.