BEST AND WORST 2022 EDITION

This was part of the last of "Questions" for the year, but here's a chance to go at it again. It's one of my favourite topics every year.



Start making your list for 2022 and share it below. As always, any format works: charts, graphs, quilts, towers, and just plain lists - anything you can imagine.

This is always painful. To single out the "the best" from the best. Ask me tomorrow and the list will be different.

BEST
The Winter Soldier by Daniel Mason (fiction, 2018)
Willnot by James Sallis (fiction, 2016)
Dottie by Abulrazak Gurnah (1990)
Sweet Darusya: A Tale Of Two Villages by Maria Matios (fiction, 2019, trans.)
Absolution by Olaf Olafsson (1994, fiction)
Touch: A Novel by Olaf Olafsson (2022, fiction)
The Reparateur of Strasbourg by Ian R. MacLeod (2013, UK, novella, dark fantasy)
The Bad Immigrant by Sefi Atta (Nigeria, 2022)
Monastery by Eduardo Halfon (2014, trans. from the Spanish;
Booth by Karen Joy Fowler (2022, fiction)

SHORT FICTION
Stone Tree: Stories by Gyrdir Elfasson (Icelandic, 2003, T. 2008)
Verge: Stories by Lidia Yuknavitch (2020, US)
Women and Other Animals by Bonnie Jo Campbell (short fiction, 1999, US)

NONFICTION
The Sewing Girl's Tale: A Story of Crime and Consequences in Revolutionary America by John Wood Sweet (nonfiction, 2022, USA)
The Nature of Oaks: The Rich Ecology of Our Most Essential Native Trees by Douglas Tallamy (nonfiction, 2021)
She Has Her Mother's Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity by Carl Zimmer (nonfiction, 2018, USA)

Have included any standout genre fiction in the fiction list above. Also could not single out one or two of the poetry volumes I read. Apples and oranges, if you know what I mean.

If I read a book in the next week that deserves a place on this list, I'll edit the list.

**Sorry, I have no WORST list. Life is too short.

Best of the Best: I Will Never See the World Again by Ahmet Altan (memoir, Turkey)
Best Nonfiction (not memoir): The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict by Martin Bunton (Very Short Introduction)
Best Biography:Agent Sonya: Moscow's Most Daring Wartime Spy by Ben Macintyre
Best Memoir: Born a Crime by Trevor Noah (South Africa)
Best Holocaust Memoir: Romek's Lost Youth by Ken Roman (Poland)
Best Graphic Novel: Dare to Disappoint by Özge Samancı (memoir, Turkey)
Best (and only) Science Fiction: Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir (US)
Best Children's Picture Book: 999 Tadpoles by Ken Kimura (Japan)
Bombs: The Kill Artist and China Rich Girlfriend

Best Fiction (in order read):
An Unnecessary Woman by Rabih Alameddine (Lebanon)
The Colonel by Mahmoud Dowlatabadi (Iran)
The Bad Immigrant by Sefi Atta (Nigerian American)
Burnt Shadows by Kamila Shamsie (Pakistan)
Anxious People by Fredrik Backman (Sweden)
Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami (Japan)
The Blue Sky and The Gray Earth by Galsan Tschinag (Tuvan/Mongolia)

Tricky to break things down, as ever. I’d like to list about a hundred books I enjoyed, but that won’t help anyone, and I’m on the iPhone so it would be more than tedious to type, so I’m going for the arbitrary categories again:

— Best Polish historical novel: The books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk
— Best LGBT history: Homintern by Gregory Woods
— Best Victorian industrial novel to have popularised a new given name: Shirley by Charlotte Brontë
— Best East German restaurant behind-the-scenes novel: Kruso by Lutz Seiler
— Best town-planning history: 1000 Jaar Amsterdam by Fred Feddes

— Worst North Korean lesbian romance : Eine Liebe in Pjöngjang by Andreas Stichmann

Feeling judgmental, so, within each category, these are in order, best at the top

Best non-fiction

- A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders
- Finding the Mother Tree by Suzanne Simard (a distant 2nd, for science-y interests)

Best classics, in order

- The Lais of Marie de France (Penguin: translated by Glyn S. Burgess & Keith Busby)
- Persuasion by Jane Austen
- Summer by Edith Wharton
- The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio (Penguin: transl. G. H. McWilliam)
- Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
- The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton

(Surprise non-entries - Shakespeare's Sonnets and few longer Whartons, all of which I liked a lot. Also I read some of Shakespeare's lesser-read plays, and, except Coriolanus, enjoyed them a lot too - even King John)

Best slightly older, so not really contemporary, fiction, in order

- Memento Mori by Muriel Spark
- The Complete Stories of Clarice Lispector
- By Night in Chile by Roberto Bolaño
- The File On H. by Ismail Kadare
- Anniversaries by Uwe Johnson

Best contemporary fiction, in order

- My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout
- The Colony by Audrey Magee
- An Island by Karen Jennings
- Bewilderment by Richard Powers
- Second Place by Rachel Cusk
- No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood
- The Story of My Teeth by Valeria Luiselli
- Afterlives by Abdulrazak Gurnah
- Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies by Maddie Mortimer

(note that all but two are on, or part of a series associated with, the 2021 and 2022 Booker longlists)

2022 Favorites (all in the order I read them)

Contemporary Fiction:
My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh - dark, funny, sarcastic, contemporary novel
The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak - historical fiction taking place in Cyprus during the war between Turks and Greeks in the 1970s plus a sentient tree
Companion Piece by Ali Smith - smart and insightful, slightly weird and experimental but still relatable
The Colony by Audrey Magee - takes place on a remote island off the coast of Ireland during the Troubles, explores what happens to this isolated island when the outside makes its way in
Haven by Emma Donoghue - monks living on an isolated, inhabitable island for Christ (or for personal glory/hubris??)
The Frozen Thames by Helen Humphreys - lovely series of vignettes about the times the Thames has frozen over
Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan - perfectly constructed novella about a man who opens his eyes to his town and his past leading up to Christmas

Nonfiction:
Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe - scathing look at the opioid crisis and the role of pharmaceutical companies, for better or worse you'll never blindly trust prescriptions or the FDA again
The Mother of all Questions by Rebecca Solnit - essays about womanhood by one of the best essayists out there

Older books and Classics:
Tea at Four o’Clock by Janet McNeill - quiet book about what happens to a middle-aged woman who finally gains her freedom
Asphodel by H.D. - lesser known novel, WWI stream of consciousness with beautiful color, think Virginia Woolf
The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope - stand alone that focuses on the timeless theme of the misbehavior of the very wealthy and privileged
Middlemarch by George Eliot (reread)
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen (reread)

I didn't read enough to make an extensive list, but these were my best books of 2022:
- The Years by Annie Ernaux
- Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr
- The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak

And this one I enjoyed the least:
- A Ghost in the Throat by Doireann Ní Ghríofa

I read 88 books, mostly fiction. I want to thank Paul for the Asian Challenge, which made my reads so interesting this year, Several books in this list are directlly due to that year long read around the continent

FICTION (not in any particular order)

all 5*

the five thousand and one nights

the silence of shehezerade

Damnificados

a thousand ships

my fathers notebook

glass hotel

the dictionary of lost words

companion piece

the great passage

autumn

My Brillant Life

our missing hearts

galatea

House of Illusion Paul Auster

wizard of loneliness

Setting free the kites

zorrie

wrong end of the telescope

when women were dragons

NON FICTION 5*

sovietistan

terry pratchett a life with footnote

memories moscow to the black sea

a history of reading

burning questions

HONORABLE MENTION
4*

Islands of missing trees

the children of jocasta

she who became the sun

sea of tranquility

packing my library

DISAPPOINTMENTS

the midnight library
my uncle napoleon
monkey king
klara the sun
the marriage portrait

Here goes...

2022 favourites

Fiction:
The Perfect Nine: The Epic of Gĩkũyũ and Mũmbi by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
South Riding : an English landscape by Winifred Holtby

Favourite illustrated children's book:
You're Safe With Me by Chitra Soundar

Favourite non-fiction:
Nagori: La nostalgie de la saison qui vient de nous quitter by Ryoko Sekiguchi (a re-read)

2022 worst disappointments

Fiction:
Un loup est un loup by Michel Folco
Né d'aucune femme by Franck Bouysse
Papa est au Panthéon by Alix de Saint-André
The Wave by Todd Strasser

Non-fiction:
De l'enfant à l'élève: Une approche philosophique de la littérature de jeunesse à l'école élémentaire by Julien Ledoux

And in the *What was this?* category:
Rabalaïre by Alain Guiraudie

Best..hmm- in no order
Fiction
The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O'Farrell
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker
Fight Night by Miriam Toews
The Maid by Nita Prose
The Good Lord Bird by James McBride
The Netanyahus An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family by Joshua Cohen
Matrix by Lauren Groff
Ghostlight by Kenneth Oppel

Non-Fiction
The Gilded Page The Secret Lives of Medieval Manuscripts by Mary Wellesley
People Love Dead Jews by Dara Horn
Pandora's Jar Women in the Greek Myths by Natalie Haynes
Painters Eleven The Wild Ones of Canadian Art by Iris Nowell
Last Call at the Hotel imperial The Reporters Who Took On a World at War by Deborah Cohen
Flower Diary In Which Mary Hiester Reid Paints, Travels, Marries & Opens a Door by Molly Peacock
When I Grow Up The Lost Autobiographies of Six Yiddish Teenagers by Ken Krimstein

Books that I didn't like....
I'll let those be anonymous- some one out there probably likes them!

Here are my best reading experiences of 2022. Some were enjoyable, some were educational though depressing (New Jim Crow/Caste/Color of Law in particular).

Fiction:
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
Our Lady of the Flowers by Jean Genet
The Sellout by Paul Beatty
Going to Meet the Man by James Baldwin
Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
The Family Moskat by Isaac Bashevis Singer

Current Events/Sociology/Narrative Non-fiction:
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
Caste by Isabel Wilkerson
Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe

History:
American Republics: A Continental History of the United States, 1783-1850 by Alan Taylor
The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein

Memoir/Biography:
The Reluctant Mr. Darwin: An Intimate Portrait of Charles Darwin and the Making of His Theory of Evolution by David Quammen
The Boys of Summer by Roger Kahn
John Heartfield: Laughter is a Devastating Weapon by David King and Ernst Volland
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet A. Jacobs

Honorable mention (both fiction):
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
Homecomings by C.P. Snow
A Man Without Breath by Philip Kerr (the best mystery of the year for me)

A note that I am currently 150 pages short of finishing The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution by C.L.R. James. If I get it finished before the end of the calendar year, it will go on my Best Histories list, above.

The Black Jacobins would make it 16 books listed here, plus three honorable mentions, out of 53 books read. I read plenty of other good books, but these are at the top of the heap for me.

Well, I'm likely to only finish one more book by the end of the year, and while it's interesting, I don't think it's going to make the Best Of list. So let's see what I have...

BEST BOOKS OF 2022 (defined as the books I gave at least 4.5 stars to):

The Forest Unseen: A Year's Watch in Nature by David George Haskell
Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai
Conversations with People Who Hate Me: 12 Things I Learned from Talking to Internet Strangers by Dylan Marron
Several People Are Typing by Calvin Kasulke
If This Isn't Nice, What Is? by Kurt Vonnegut
Oddball: A Sarah's Scribbles Collection by Sarah Andersen
The Office of Historical Corrections by Danielle Evans
Beyond Earth’s Edge: The Poetry of Spaceflight, edited by Julie Swarstad Johnson and Christopher Cokinos
The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2017 edited by Charles Yu
On the Clock: What Low-Wage Work Did to Me and How It Drives America Insane by Emily Guendelsberger
Swamplandia! by Karen Russell

Wow, that's a pretty nice collection of books, and there are more on that list than I'd expected.

MOST DISAPPOINTING (books I rated 2.5 stars or less):

Night of the Kraken by Jonathan Green
Dead on Deadline by Laura Bricker
Highway of Eternity by Clifford D. Simak
Please Report Your Bug Here by Josh Riedel
Nyxia by Scott Reintgen
Wolves of the Calla by Stephen King
In the Unlikely Event by Judy Blume

OK, some of those were very disappointing, but at least it's a smaller list than the really good ones!

The best of 2022

Unprotected: a Memoir by Billy Porter
Heaven by Mieko Kawakami
Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout
My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout
The Colony by Audrey Magee
Foster by Claire Keegan
Liberation Day: stories by George Saunders

>13 dianeham: I didn’t put Oh William! On my list, but I thought about it. If I had, we would have three books in common on these lists. 🙂

It's apparent that I'm not going to finish the current book before 2022 staggers off the stage. There's 300+ pages left, and it is not a quick read. So here's the Year In Review... (drumroll please)

I read 123 books in 2022, with roughly a 75/25% split between fiction and nonfiction. The total is up a bit from 2021, when I read 118 books. The fiction/nonfiction split that year was 85/15%% so non-fiction is slightly up this year, pretty well back to the norm.

Top reads, in alphabetical order –
The Family Roe – Joshua Prager
Hawaii – James Michener
The Kennedy Enterprise – David Gerrold
Montana 1948 – Larry Watson
The Vanishing Sky – L. Annette Binder

Honorable Mention
The Blessed – Remy Apepp (an LTER)
The Chili Queen – Sandra Dallas
Dear Fahrenheit 451 – Annie Spence
The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet – Becky Chambers
This Tender Land – William Kent Krueger

Overall, I had 6 DNFs this year, which is a little below average.

Sandra Dallas and Diney Costeloe tied for top-read authors this year, with three titles each, though Costeloe also accounted for one of my DNF books.

Hall of Shame award goes to Cleopatra’s Eternal Journal, an LTER that didn’t live up to a promising idea (and also doesn't show up in the Touchstones).

Best Wishes to all for a wonderful reading year in 2023!

>14 dchaikin: I’ll have to pay close attention to what you like.

I finished Agent Sonya: Moscow's Most Daring Wartime Spy by Ben Macintyre with five hours to spare. It was fantastic and will definitely make my Best of list. Editing my post above >3 labfs39:

>17 labfs39: Noted! That sounds like a fun one.

I always love reading these year end lists, as they usually have some ideas for the next year, plus and minus. I also love the way people frame their descriptions. I'm not feeling that imaginative right now, so going with straight lists:

Best ReReads:
A Tale of Two Cities
Jude the Obscure

Best Victorians:
As above with the addition of
Lady Anna by Anthony Trollope

Best Fiction in Translation:
Phenotypes by Paulo Scott Brazil
Rickshaw Boy by Lao She China
The Colonel by Mahmoud Dowlatabadi Iran

Best Other Fiction:
Foregone by Russell Banks
The Birds Fall Down by Rebecca West

Best NonFiction:
Surfacing by Kathleen Jamie
The Floating Brothel by Sian Rees
Mantel Pieces by Hilary Mantel
Islands of Abandonment by Cal Flyn

That seems like a lot, but overall it was a good reading year.

Biggest disappointment:
The Girl from Venice by Martin Cruz Smith usually a good author for relaxation reading

Most LTer's here have more books on their best of lists than I even read in 2022 ;-)

As I like to do, I'm giving you the books that made the biggest impressions on me, and not necessarily the ones I rated the highest or lowest.

Most memorable, in a good way:

A King Alone, Jean Giono - This was a difficult book, but had strong atmosphere of the snowy, isolated Alps of centuries ago. I hope I reread this one day

The Darkest Day, Hakan Nesser - I got swept up in the family drama with some Scandi-crime thrown in

Last Night in Nuuk, Niviaq Korneliussen - a short, rather depressing book, but I was fascinated about life for indigenous 20-somethings in current day Greenland

Autopsy of a Boring Wife, Marie-Renee Lavoie - I had fun with this one, and I enjoyed the modern day Quebecois setting. I recommended this to my book club, and we had a fun meeting discussing it

Fresh Water For Flowers, Valerie Perrin - I enjoyed getting lost in this little French village of a novel

* * * * *

Most disappointing (I try not to spend time with books I don't like, but sometimes I push on through)

Orkney, Amy Sackville - it wasn't the book I hoped it would be, and also it wasn't very good. But I had fun writing a scathing review. Maybe that's why I stick with some of these stinkers

The Other Bennet Sister, Janice Hadlow - Jane Austen pastiche is often not very good but this one came highly recommended. Nope

>20 Nickelini: But I had fun writing a scathing review. Maybe that's why I stick with some of these stinkers

LOL

>20 Nickelini: As I like to do, I'm giving you the books that made the biggest impressions on me, and not necessarily the ones I rated the highest or lowest.

Exactly as it should be.