Some 2022 Reading Superlatives

Longest book read this year: To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara (720 pages)

Shortest book read this year: Everything’s Changing by Chelsea Stickle (37 pages)

Authors I read the most by this year: Nicola Colton (4), Jakob Wegelius (3), Tove Jansson and Sarah Ruhl (2)

 

Publishers I read the most from: (Besides the ubiquitous Penguin and its many imprints) Canongate, Carcanet and Picador – which is part of the Pan Macmillan group.

 

An author I ‘discovered’ and now want to read everything by: Matthew Vollmer

 

My overall top discovery of the year: The Murderer’s Ape by Jakob Wegelius

My proudest non-bookish achievement: Giving a eulogy at my mom’s funeral (and even getting some laughs).

 

The books that made me laugh the most: Revenge of the Librarians by Tom Gauld, Undoctored by Adam Kay, Forget Me Not by Sophie Pavelle, Blurb Your Enthusiasm by Louise Willder

 

The books that made me cry the most: Foster by Claire Keegan, The Hero of This Book by Elizabeth McCracken

Most useful fact gleaned from a book: To convert a Celsius temperature to Fahrenheit, double it and add 30. It’s a rough estimate, but it generally works! I learned this from, of all places, The Hero of This Book by Elizabeth McCracken.

 

Best book club selections: The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown, Falling Angels by Tracy Chevalier, Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

Best first line encountered this year: “First, I got myself born.” (Demon Copperhead, Barbara Kingsolver)

 

Best last lines encountered this year:

• “Darling, that’s what life’s for – to take risks.” (Up at the Villa, W. Somerset Maugham)
• “The defiant soul of the city doesn’t die. It stays alive, right below the surface, pressing up against the boot heels, crouched like the life inside an egg, the force that drives the flower, forever reaching for its next breath.” (Feral City, Jeremiah Moss)
• “Until the future, whatever it was going to be.” (This Time Tomorrow, Emma Straub)

 

A book that put a song in my head every time I picked it up: Heaven Is a Place on Earth by Adrian Shirk

Shortest book title encountered: O (a poetry collection by Zeina Hashem Beck), followed by XO (a memoir by Sara Rauch)

 

Best 2022 book title: I Want to Die But I Want to Eat Tteokbokki by Baek Se-hee (No, I haven’t read it and I’m unlikely to, not having had great luck with recent translations of work by Japanese and Korean women.)

 

Favourite title and cover combo of the year: Briefly, A Delicious Life by Nell Stevens

Most fun cover serendipity: Two books I read in 2022 featured Matisse cut-outs.

Biggest disappointment: The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki ( for me)

 

Two 2022 books that everyone was in raptures about but me: Trust by Hernan Diaz and Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver (both for me)

A 2022 book that everyone was reading but I decided not to: The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell – since I thought Hamnet her weakest work, I’m not eager to try more historical fiction by her.

 

A 2022 book I can’t read: (No matter how good the reviews might be, because of the title) I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy

 

The worst books I read this year: The Reactor by Nick Blackburn, Treacle Walker by Alan Garner, Anthropology by Dan Rhodes, Bonsai by Alejandro Zambra (1-star ratings are extremely rare from me; these were this year’s four)

 

The downright strangest book I read this year: The Magic Pudding by Norman Lindsay