As of today, I’ve read 124 books this year.
Before 2022 officially ends, I’m likely to finish a few more, but given that the days are short and I desire to do nothing more next week than to lounge in my pajamas eating cheese, I’m releasing this update today.
If you hang around these parts, you may be aware that until mid-2019, my reading landscape held somewhat broader vistas.
My life has shifted significantly since that time, and though I’m still reading the same amount (if not more), much of my reading energy is now currently invested behind the scenes in developing unpublished manuscripts.
Not that reading 124 books in a year is anything to sneeze at.
But I digress.
I’m not a huge fan of those book lists with the word best in the title—“Best Books of the Year,” and the like.
I’m of the opinion that there are no real “best” books.
There are only books that are best for each of us at a particular moment in time.
Books that meet us where we are and stay with us long after we’ve turned the last page.
That’s what you will see listed below.
Of the 124 books I’ve finished this year, these are the 10 that met me, stood out, and stuck with me.
Gone to the Woods: Surviving a Lost Childhood by Gary Paulsen
Many of us grew up reading Paulsen’s middle grade survival tales. For a time, Hatchet was required reading for most American public school fifth-grade reading curriculums—and with good reason.
As it turns out, there’s a reason why Paulsen writes so convincingly of survival.
In this simple memoir, Paulsen bends his characteristic style to his own story.
Writing in the third person and referring to himself only as “the boy,” Paulsen outlines a grim, high-stakes childhood that held rare flashes of warmth and grace.
This memoir will haunt me, and I mean that in the best possible way.
Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner
Crying in H Mart is one of the most moving memoirs I read this year.
It’s perhaps worth reading for the first chapter alone, which had me immediately invested in the author’s raw grief surrounding the loss of her mother.
I read this book cover-to-cover during one of those weird, long international travel days that last more than 24-hours, and I do believe that experience enhanced my enjoyment since Zauner’s tale also spans the globe. (She and her mother travel to Korea and back throughout the narrative.)
I love how Zauner carries the emotional thread through the entire book, fusing her relationship with her mother to the foods they loved to share.
The first chapter in particular made me hungry. It also made me want to cry. If this vibe suits your mood, you couldn’t choose a better book.
The narrative does wander a bit toward its conclusion, but never mind. Memoirs can be hard to land, particularly when you don’t have a lot of distance yet from the phase of life you’re writing about, but the emotional heft more than made up for any quibbles I had on that front.
Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
Good gracious, did this novel wreck me.
I bought into the premise in a big way, and I was fully invested in Elinor Oliphant and her need to heal. To learn how to love and be loved.
This is a book about how friendship can save your life. About how we all need each other.
Though the characters made me sad, the story ultimately left me feeling hopeful.
Eleanor Oliphant deserves the world.
No Cure for Being Human: And Other Truths I Need to Hear by Kate Bowler
This was some of the most compelling non-fiction writing I encountered this year.
I’d recommend No Cure for Being Human for the style alone, but as an added bonus, Bowler takes readers inside the experience of what it feels like to be seriously ill and come to grips with your own mortality.
Not everyone who experiences deep pain and suffering knows how to put their thoughts into words. Kate Bowler does, and that’s a gift.
If you love someone who’s ill, this book could help you navigate connecting with them as they wade deep waters.
Book Lovers by Emily Henry
I read this one way too fast.
Book Lovers is definitely Henry’s best romcom to date—if a bit spicier than I generally read.
Other than that, the plot seemed custom made for someone like me, given that it’s set in the world of writing and publishing and that our lead couple is obsessed with books.
The jokes, y’all.
The deliciously nerdy jokes.
I loved the dynamic between the central pairing, and their development was pitch perfect.
The stand-out quality, however, is definitely the dialogue.
Fighting Words by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley
Kimberly Brubaker Bradley’s books The War That Saved My Life and The War I Finally Won are among some of the best middle grade fiction novels I’ve read, and although different in tone and setting, Fighting Words ranks right up there with them.
I read this whole book in a single day, totally engrossed.
It’s both funny and terribly sad.
Somehow Bradley takes a story featuring sexual assault, abuse, foster care, incarceration, meth lab explosions, suicide, homelessness, and fractured families and turns it into something warm and hopeful.
Absolutely recommended.
Where the Light Fell: A Memoir by Philip Yancey
This one really got me. Especially the way Yancey talks about his childhood fears and experiences. Somehow, he sets me in that same childlike mindset, and I feel his sorrows and disappointments.
His tragic pet stories almost did me in.
The saddest arc in the whole book, however, is that of Yancy’s family relationships.
But as much as I shake my head over his mother, I recognize her from my own childhood. My own mother was very different from the author’s, but I encountered women like her in Christian fundamentalism. It’s hard to read accounts of how she treated her sons, but easy to see how she got there, given what she believed, and how she managed to rationalize her behavior in her own mind.
Despite high praise and strong recommendations from other reading friends, I cracked the cover with skepticism.
I emerged feeling as if I’d been given a gift.
For me, this proved the right book at the right time.
Where’d You Go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple
I’m not sure what was going on in my reading life back when this book was released in 2012 and took book clubs by storm, but never mind.
Here we are.
I finally read it this year after many, many recommendations, and it was probably the most fun I had reading a book in long time.
From the first mention of Shakleton, I knew I would like it, but things just went up from there.
I wasn’t quite ready for the novel to be so non-linear and epistlatory, but once I got in the groove, I was hooked.
Then Bee waltzed away with my heart.
Bless her earnest little self.
Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience by Brené Brown
The ability to name and differentiate different emotions is the first step toward dealing with them, maturing emotionally, and connecting well with others—not to mention writing meaningful stories with real, relatable characters.
I read Atlas of the Heart straight through, but I anticipate coming back and sipping from different sections as needed.
Facing the Mountain: A True Story of Japanese American Heroes in World War II by Daniel James Brown
Daniel James Brown never fails to engage my emotions and pull me through his narratives.
Facing the Mountain proved no exception.
Like the rest of his books, this one had me fully immersed and invested in everyone’s lives and stories right from the first scene.
Given the subject matter, it was mostly all sad.
But still, very important.
Thanks for sticking with me even though I sent out fewer essays in 2022 than I originally planned.
I’ve been drafting a full-length novel this year, and as a result, my public writing output has suffered.
Here’s to turning things around in 2023.
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