2022 Booklist

In summary, I read 72 books in 2022- the highest number since 2014. I have officially reached pre-child reading levels. I feel that must mean I've been neglecting other aspects of my life. But oh well, because what a lot of good books I've gotten to read! 

Longest book All Clear by Connie Willis. I love her time travel books and read her duology set in WWII in England, Blackout and All Clear, this year. She does write pretty chunky books! Great if you love immersive and detailed historical settings, but can mess with the pacing. She maintains the tension throughout the whole 800 pages of All Clear (and Blackout as well), though. Shortest book Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire is a brief novella based on a school for children who have been to fairytale worlds and then returned, and have to cope with the real world. A fascinating concept, and I've been wanting to read it for a while, though in the end I had mixed feelings about it. It's a strange book that does interesting things with a great idea though, so worth a read.

Oldest book Counterfeit by Sonia Cole, from 1955 (I think). This is a book I picked up from a library cull a few years back, and finally got around to reading. It's non-fiction and looks at fakes and counterfeits throughout history, with an  archaeological/art history/paleontological perspective. I liked the idea but the treatment is a little brief, more a collection of anecdotes than a book at times. It's also the most obscure book I read this year, not even appearing in Goodreads. Newest book Hard to pick but at time of writing (vs time of reading) it would have to be Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik, published late in September. I was so keen to get my hands on this- the last book in the Scholomance series about a somewhat malign magic school- and it delivered!

Most books by one author Frances Brody wins here with 11- because I read almost all of her Kate Shackleton series over the course of the year. Set in the 1920s in Leeds, it's a modern attempt at Golden Age murder mysteries. I really enjoy it, it strikes a good balance for me and doesn't feel too anachronistic, engages with social and political issues of the time and has a likeable heroine. 

Reading themes: After resolving to read more mysteries at the end of last year, I really knocked it out of the park- more than a third of the books I read were mysteries of some variety. As well as the Kate Shackleton series I read Dervla McTiernan's Cormac Reilly series, after seeing it recommended somewhere as a comp for Tana French's Dublin Murder Squad books (and after seeing them everywhere for the last couple of years). I think that's a good recommendation, it's a fairly dark, tense series set in Ireland among police. Less supernatural hints and more police corruption. I enjoyed these. Then there were Richard Osman's latest Thursday Murder Club series, with their octogenarian crime solvers- these are always very fun. A middle grade mystery and a YA series, both set in boarding schools (Friday Barnes and the Truly Devious series). 

I ended up reading a bunch of books about the pandemic this year- more of these seem to be coming out lately, but some have been around for a surprisingly long time. Summer by Ali Smith, the last in her seasonal quartet, The Fell by Sarah Moss, one of my favourite contemporary authors, The Sentence by Louise Erdrich and The Sea of Tranquility by Emily St John Mandel. All of these were really good in different ways, though I am increasingly feeling that Ali Smith is not for me. I loved the idea of the seasonal quartet and the experimentation of it, but I found it a bit patchy. I love Sarah Moss at her best, but I was a little disappointed by Ghost Wall and took a while to get around to her similar length novellas, Summerwater and The Fell. But these are really good, both inhabiting a number of perspectives around a single moment. In The Fell we see a single mother who breaks quarantine to go for a walk alone during the height of the pandemic. I think it captures a lot of the tensions and the vibe of the time really well. Louise Erdrich was a new to me author this year who I really enjoyed- the two books I read of hers were very different but both good. The Sentence is about a year in the life of a formerly incarcerated indigenous bookshop employee in the US, who is being haunted by the ghost of a former customer. That year happens to be 2020, and the book takes in the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests, as well as the personal life of its main character. I found it strangely paced at times- but in a way that is kind of true to the experience of living through 2020- as though it was written very close to the events and changed to reflect them as they went along. But my favourite would have to be Sea of Tranquility by Emily St John Mandel, it feels raw but adds a few hundred years more of human history to place the pandemic in perspective. A sci-fi version of our current reality, with some time travel thrown in (also a theme in my 2022 reading). I really loved this. If you're feeling like reflecting on the times we're living in, any or all of these 4 would be a decent place to start.

A small theme early in the year- books about dictionaries. I finally read two quite hyped books: The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams and The Yield by Tara June Winch. The Dictionary of Lost Words is about the daughter of one of the compilers of the OED, and the 'words' she purloins as they work, and also about the place of women and their invisibility in history, and The Yield is about an indigenous woman returning from overseas to deal with the death of her beloved grandfather and his legacy, which includes a Wiradjuri/English dictionary, as well as the complicated family/place history. I felt overall that The Yield did a lot more with the dictionary concept, the way it worked the Wiradjuri dictionary into the text, the story reflected the words, and the words told the story was very well done. It's also a very moving story. I was a bit disappointed in The Dictionary of Lost Words, which ended up feeling like a very straightforward historical fiction. Although a good story too. If you have to read one book featuring a dictionary this year I would go with The Yield.

This post is getting really long and I haven't even gotten to favourite books yet! I'll try to keep it snappy. Sea of Tranquility, as I've already mentioned, was amazing, maybe my top book of the year? I really enjoyed Golden Enclaves, I thought it was a very satisfying end to a great fantasy YA trilogy. Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Louise Erdrich are both authors that I really enjoyed discovering this year, after hearing about for quite a while. I read two books by each of them and they both demonstrated a lot of range in those two books, so I'm keen to read more. Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line by Deepa Anappara deserves a mention- this told a really dark and upsetting story with amazing freshness and panache, through inhabiting its child characters so well. It's really stayed with me. I knew going in that it was a dark story but I thought it was fantasy so be warned it's not fantastical. It has stayed with me though and I think more people should read it! Shout out to The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab, which I thought was really original. Also I couldn't put it down. I knew going in that it had a great premise- a character who is cursed to live forever but never to be remembered- but it lived up to its premise in spades. A pleasant surprise for me because I didn't love Schwab's Shades of London series. Also honourable mention to Black Water Sister by Zen Cho- a really good urban fantasy. And the last book I read this year, Ducks by Kate Beaton, is an amazing graphic memoir of a fairly bleak time in her life, working in the Oil Sands in Alberta, Canada, with a lot of complexity and nuance.

There were a few books that I read that were disappointing- top of the list to Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty. It was well reviewed on the Get Booked podcast, but I found the writing style to be pretty awful. Interesting premise and fast-paced, but the characters and writing were just very poor. Some other books were patchy or mediocre but I'll leave them alone and leave you with my full list of books read for the first time in 2022! For the first time I've incorporated books read to the kids, where I've read the whole thing rather than swapping with Andrew, and for chapter books only (or I the list would be swamped with picture books!). Really this just adds up to the Mabel Jones series by Will Mabbitt, which we really enjoyed.

Saga Land- Richard Fidler, Kari Gislason

Anxious People- Fredrik Backman

Blackout- Connie Willis

The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets- Eva Rice

The Light of the Midnight Stars- Rena Rossner

All Clear- Connie Willis

Friday Barnes: Girl Detective- R.A. Spratt

The Dictionary of Lost Words- Pip Williams

Every Heart a Doorway- Seanan McGuire

Truly Devious- Maureen Johnson

The Vanishing Stair- Maureen Johnson

The Hand on the Wall- Maureen Johnson

The Girl on the Train- Paula Hawkins

The Yield- Tara June Winch

Love and Other Puzzles- Kimberley Allsop

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet- Becky Chambers

The True Queen- Zen Cho

The Man who Died Twice- Richard Osman

Everyone Brave is Forgiven- Chris Cleave

Six Wakes- Mur Lafferty

I Think of You: Stories- Ahdaf Soueif

Dying in the Wool- Frances Brody

Elizabeth is Missing- Emma Healey

Velvet was the Night- Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Summer- Ali Smith

A Medal for Murder- Frances Brody

Fleishman is in Trouble- Taffy Brodesser-Akner

The Night Watchman- Louise Erdrich

Murder in the Afternoon- Frances Brody

Death of an Avid Reader- Frances Brody

Mexican Gothic- Silvia Moreno-Garcia

A Woman Unknown- Frances Brody

Murder on a Summer's Day- Frances Brody

Love Stories- Trent Dalton

A Death in the Dales- Frances Brody

The Sentence- Louise Erdrich

Death at the Seaside- Frances Brody

Akata Woman- Nnedi Okorofor

Death in the Stars- Frances Brody

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue- V.E. Schwab

A Snapshot of Murder- Frances Brody

Growing Yourself Up: How to Bring Your Best to All of Life's Relationships- Jenny Brown

The Ruin- Dervla McTiernan

She is Haunted- Paige Clark

The Body on the Train- Frances Brody

The Scholar- Dervla McTiernan

Summerwater- Sarah Moss

The Fell- Sarah Moss

The Good Turn- Dervla McTiernan

Mabel Jones and the Doomsday Book- WIll Mabbitt

The Vanishing Half- Brit Bennett

Sea of Tranquility- Emily St. John Mandel

The Unlikely Adventures of Mabel Jones- WIll Mabbitt

Time and Time Again- Ben Elton

Counterfeit- Sonia Cole

A Burning- Megha Majumdar

The Golden Enclaves- Naomi Novik

Calypso- David Sedaris

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo- Taylor Jenkins Reid

The Bullet That Missed- Richard Osman

Royal Holiday- Jasmine Guillory

Such a Fun Age- Kiley Reid

Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line- Deepa Anappara

The Younger Wife- Sally Hepworth

Black Water Sister- Zen Cho

Mabel Jones and the Forbidden City- Will Mabbitt

Let the Great World Spin- Colum McCann

Death Wears a Mask- Ashley Weaver

The October Man- Ben Aaronovitch

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow- Gabrielle Zevin

Death on the Trans-Siberian Express- C.J. Farrington

Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands- Kate Beaton