The books I read in 2022
Photo by Arif Riyanto
If you’ve been around these parts for a while, you may know that I went from 0-100, quite literally, on reading last year (and if you’ve not then hello! Lovely to have you here! Happy New Year to you and yours!)
Though I didn’t set myself a challenge this year — and therefore didn’t have to spend the last couple of days of it frantically cramming in short stories to meet an arbitrary target, no matter how good the books turned out to be — I’m happy to report that I still read 91 books. Not because more = better, but because I’m really proud of myself for keeping a habit that has stuck, and still consistently setting that time aside for myself even in a year where the world was opening up again.
My 91 books in 2022
As with last year, I can’t pick my favourites (though that won’t stop me asking other people the question when I interview them), but any with an asterisk are ones I particularly enjoyed.
The Glass Hotel - Emily St. John Mandel*
Nobody Will Tell You This But Me: A True (as Told to Me) Story - Bess Kalb*
The Idea of You - Robinne Lee
Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals - Oliver Burkeman*
The Embassy of Cambodia - Zadie Smith
I Am China - Xiaolu Guo
In The End, It Was All About Love - Musa Okwonga
Standard Deviation - Katherine Heiny
The Flames - Sophie Haydock
Queenie - Candice Carty-Williams
Anonymous Sex - Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan, Hillary Jordan
The Thursday Murder Club - Richard Osman
Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire - Akala
Consumed: The Need for Collective Change: Colonialism, Climate Change & Consumerism - Aja Barber
Gay Bar: Why We Went Out - Jeremy Atherton Lin
Blurb Your Enthusiasm: An A-Z of Literary Persuasion - Louise Willder
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants - Robin Wall Kimmerer*
The Lady from the Black Lagoon: Hollywood Monsters and the Lost Legacy of Milicent Patrick - Mallory O'Meara*
High Fidelity - Nick Hornby
The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less - Barry Schwartz (for a feature in VORACIOUS - which you can read here!)
Ask Again, Yes - Mary Beth Keane
Nina Simone's Gum - Warren Ellis
The Spectacular - Zoe Whittall
Somebody's Daughter: A Memoir - Ashley C. Ford
Love Marriage - Monica Ali
Luster - Raven Leilani
28 Questions - Indyana Schneider
Character Breakdown - Zawe Ashton
Black Cake - Charmaine Wilkerson*
Worn: A People's History of Clothing - Sofi Thanhauser
Disconnected: How to Stay Human in an Online World - Emma Gannon
Fault Lines - Emily Itami
Fake Accounts - Lauren Oyler
The First Woman - Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi
The Science of Storytelling - Will Storr
Uncanny Valley: A Memoir - Anna Wiener*
Gender Euphoria - Laura Kate Dale* (I also interviewed Laura for VORACIOUS - which, again, you can buy here)
Black Buck - Mateo Askaripour*
Outraged: Why Everyone Is Shouting and No One Is Talking - Ashley 'Dotty' Charles
Magpie - Elizabeth Day
Let's Talk about Love: Why Other People Have Such Bad Taste - Carl Wilson
Maybe in Another Life - Taylor Jenkins Reid
A Touch of Jen - Beth Morgan
Honor - Thrity Umrigar*
Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism - Amanda Montell*
Our Missing Hearts - Celeste Ng
People Person -Candice Carty-Williams
Careering - Daisy Buchanan*
Sista Sister - Candice Brathwaite*
Little Gods - Meng Jin
The Split - Laura Kay
The Power of Fun: Why fun is the key to a happy and healthy life - Catherine Price*
Shrill - Lindy West
The Walking People - Mary Beth Keane
One True Loves - Taylor Jenkins Reid
Yinka, Where Is Your Huzband? - Lizzie Damilola Blackburn
Olga Dies Dreaming - Xochitl Gonzalez
Fangirls: Scenes from Modern Music Culture - Hannah Ewens*
The Woman Next Door - Yewande Omotoso
She Found It at the Movies: Women Writers on Sex, Desire and Cinema - Christina Newland
Assembly - Natasha Brown
The Start Up Wife - Tahmima Anam*
New Yorkers: A City and Its People in Our Time - Craig Taylor
If I Had Your Face - Frances Cha
The Vacationers - Emma Straub
The Final Revival of Opal & Nev - Dawnie Walton*
No Big Deal - Bethany Rutter
Good Rich People - Eliza Jane Brazier
Funny You Should Ask - Elissa Sussman*
We Have Always Been Here - Samra Habib
The Island of Missing Trees - Elif Shafak*
I Came All This Way to Meet You: Writing Myself Home - Jami Attenberg
Another Life - Jodie Chapman*
Lessons in Chemistry - Bonnie Garmus*
Superior: The Return of Race Science - Angela Saini*
Velvet Was the Night - Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Mercury Pictures Presents - Anthony Marra*
Someday, Maybe - Onyi Nwabineli
The Multi-Hyphen Method: Work less, create more, and design a career that works for you - Emma Gannon*
Seven Days in June - Tia Williams*
Take My Hand - Dolen Perkins-Valdez
Soft Lad - Nick Grimshaw
The View Was Exhausting - Mikaella Clements, Onjuli Datta*
Fates and Furies - Lauren Groff
Hungry - Grace Dent
The Mismatch - Sara Jafari
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves - Karen Joy Fowler*
Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much - Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir
Delayed Rays of a Star - Amanda Lee Koe*
Obsessive, Intrusive, Magical Thinking - Marianne Eloise*
Olive Kitteridge - Elizabeth Strout
Some stats, for all you stats fans
63% fiction, 37% non fiction (more NF than last year)
Most books had 300-499 pages, with only 1 having 500+
I preferred medium-paced books (71%), with slow books comprising 24% and fast books comprising 6%
1 (The Multi-Hyphen Method) was a re-read
57% of the books came from the library, I bought 23% of them, 5% were ARCs in exchange for unbiased reviews, 2 were gifts from friends (thank you Beth and Rachel!) and 1 was a loan from a pal (thank you Charlotte!)
Courtesy of Storygraph, where I keep track of my reads (because Goodreads is unfortunately owned by Amazon), here are my top ‘moods’:
What did you read this year? Have you read any of the above? What would you recommend? Please do let me know!
p.s. if you buy a book through that bookshop.org.uk link, I may get a small percentage of the sale as it’s an affiliate link - so thank you in advance!