2022 in Books

The last year has not been a great year for reading for me. I finished 41 books in 2022, which is certainly a respectable number of books, but I had many false starts and long spells of no reading. (I didn't finish a single book between October 3 and December 9!)  During the latter half of the year, I blamed my poor reading on my impending move, which happened in mid-December but was in the works since July or August. My problems really began before then, so I can't blame the move for everything. January started off strong. I think the stumbles started in March or April, and they continued throughout the year. I allowed myself to fall out of my daily reading habit and I often found I wasn't in the mood to read. And then I kept feeling that I had selected the wrong book. The end result, though I haven't kept count, is that I believe I read an unusual number of very short books last year, which I read in the space of a day or two while on more days than not I didn't read at all. 

In the order that I finished them, the books I read in 2022 were:

• The Man of Feeling, by Javier Marías
• One Last Stop, by Casey McQuiston
• The Spectre of Alexander Wolf, by Gaito Gazdanov
• My Life as a Fake, by Peter Carey
• Childhood, by Tove Ditlevsen
• My Sister the Serial Killer, by Oyinkan Braithwaite
• Youth, by Tove Ditlevesen
• Dependency, by Tove Ditlevsen
• Affections, by Rodrigo Hasbún
• American Spy, by Lauren Wilkinson
• Last Night in Nuuk, by Niviak Korneliussen
• The Sheltering Sky, by Paul Bowles
• Gods of Jade and Shadow, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
• The Story of My Teeth, by Valeria Luiselli
• In the Distance, by Hernan Diaz
• Big Sky, by Kate Atkinson
• Garden by the Sea, by Mercè Rodoreda
• Home Reading Service, by Fabio Morábito
• Loving Day, by Mat Johnson
• Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows, by Balli Kaur Jaswal
• Justine, by Iben Mondrup
• Persuasion, by Jane Austen
• The Kiss Quotient, by Helen Hoang
• Lucky Breaks, by Yevgenia Belorusets
• The Trees, by Percival Everett
• Tremor of Intent, by Anthony Burgess
• Rattlebone, by Maxine Clair
• The Dutch House, by Ann Patchett
• The Mysterious Affair at Styles, by Agatha Christie
• Breasts and Eggs, by Mieko Kawakami
• Saint Sebastian's Abyss, by Mark Haber
• Oliver VII, by Antal Szerb
• Go, Went, Gone, by Jenny Erpenbeck
• Happiness, as Such, by Natalia Ginzburg
• Not One Day, by Anne Garréta
• Rum Punch, by Elmore Leonard
• The Moon and the Bonfires, by Cesare Pavese
• Minor Detail, by Adania Shibli
• Martha, Jack & Shanco, by Caryl Lewis
• So You Don't Get Lost in the Neighborhood, by Patrick Modiano
• Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in the Piazza Vittorio, by Amara Lakhous

And the stats:

For the second consecutive year (and second year ever), more than half the books I read last year were by women. Apart from the U.S., which only accounts for 8 of the books I read last year, I read books from 18 countries including 5 new ones (marked in bold): Australia, Bolivia, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Greenland, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Nigeria, Palestine, Russia, Singapore, Spain,  Ukraine, and Wales. This is worse than last year on both counts. Two of the books I read (Persuasion and Tremor of Intent) were rereads. The only nonfiction books I read were the three Tove Ditlevsen volumes. 

Some years I just know what my favorite book of the year was. This is not one of those years. I think the honor goes to The Trees. In the Distance would be the other contender. Other notable mentions include Garden by the Sea, which I loved almost as much as A Broken Mirror – one of my favorite books read in 2018; The Spectre of Alexander Wolf and Justine, both of which had twists that have really stayed with me; The Story of My Teeth, which I'm really glad I decided to try after not really enjoying the previous Valeria Luiselli book I read; and Not One Day, which was just unexpectedly beautiful and gave me a new way of thinking about writing.