Books I read in 2022...
and looking forward to 2023!
I don’t usually share much publicly about the books I’m reading, but earlier this year I started writing short reviews of books I’ve loved on Instagram and people have responded well to them. It seems like people are always looking for a good suggestion.
I’ve kept track of what I read since 2013 when I joined Goodreads. Before that, whenever someone asked me what I’d read recently, I’d draw a complete blank. I read constantly but could often not remember what.
(*Side story: When I was about 25, my mother told me about a book she’d recently read. She was about halfway through when she realized she’d already read it. I was merciless! How could you read half a book and not realize you’d read it before?? Well, let’s just say I understand that better now. I did once come to the end of a book—the end—and when the plot twist was revealed, I realized I had actually read the whole thing before. So, sorry mom—for that and I’m sure many other things!)
I stopped recording my reads online in 2021. Now I prefer to list the books I’ve read by hand.
As a rule, I only list the books I finish. If I don’t finish a book, even if I made it though a good chunk of it, it doesn’t make it on the list. (I probably DNF as many books as I finished this year.) So I won’t list my favorite of the books I’ve read; suffice it to say, if I finished it, I liked it!
I finished 44 books this year, which is more than last year, when I only finished 25—although one of them was War and Peace. I’m not sure why I read more this year—maybe because I wasn’t actively working on my own book. I also folded in more audio books this year, which may have bumped up that figure. In any event, here are the books I finished this year, in the order I read them. Some are rereads. Feel free to ask my about any of them and I can say more about them!
Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen
Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe
Fight Night by Miriam Toews
I Came All This Way to Meet You by Jami Attenberg
Lights All Night Long by Lydia Fitzpatrick
Oh William by Elizabeth Strout
Notes on an Execution by Danya Kukafka
The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel
Vladimir by Julia May Jonas
The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen
Unfollow Your Passion by Terri Trespicio
Real Life by Brandon Taylor
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
The Final Revival of Opal & Nev by Dawnie Walton
My Salinger Year by Joanna Rakoff
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane
Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance by Alison Espach
Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday
Either/Or by Elif Batuman
Conversations With Friends by Sally Rooney
Euphoria by Lily King
Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr
Hurricane Girl by Marcy Dermansky
The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing by Melissa Bank
Neon in Daylight by Hermione Hoby
Fellowship Point by Alice Elliott Dark
I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
Counterfeit by Kirsten Chen
My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh
Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason
The Lobotomist’s Wife by Samantha Green Woodruff
The Divines by Ellie Eaton
Lost and Found by Kathryn Schulz
Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss
Signal Fires by Dani Shapiro
We All Want Impossible Things by Catherine Newman
Meredith, Alone by Claire Alexander
They’re Going to Love You by Meg Howrey
All-Night Pharmacy by Ruth Madievsky (comes out in July 2023)
A Heart That Works by Rob Delaney
A Visit From the Good Squad by Jennifer Egan
Foster by Claire Keegan
Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh (halfway through; might make it on the 2023 list)
My family and I spent a few days in upstate New York last week at an AirBnB. Whenever we travel this way, we pack our own breakfast food so we can lounge around in the mornings having our coffee and toast; it’s more cost effective than going out for breakfast as a family of five and we don’t have to wait for our teenagers to wake up to have our coffee. But on our first morning at this house, we found they didn't have a coffee maker. After some pre-coffee grumbling, we drove into town and picked up coffee to go, along with a box of breakfast goodies. We did the same thing every morning and it was great! Bringing in breakfast made it feel like a real vacation, proving once again that it’s the little shifts that make the difference.
2023 is almost here, and my book is coming out in a few short weeks! Here’s an accounting: I started writing the book in 2015, finished it in 2020, sold it in 2021 and it will publish in 2023. It takes tiiiiiiiiime. Looking forward to sharing more publication news with you in the next few months. In the meantime, thanks for reading and happy new year!