2022 reading in review

[sixthlight]

 

2022 was just…a weird, weird year (as if any of these Plague Years have not been), and that had a real hit on my reading. I had a hard time getting into books I wanted to read, I had a hard time deciding what I wanted to read, there were a lot of times where reading felt like a chore and yet not reading didn’t feel like an escape either. Nevertheless! I still read a bunch of things I really liked and that will stick with me - I just suspect that none of them will be re-reads for a while. In that spirit: my top recs of the year. 

Non-fiction

The top five non-fiction books I read were Orwell's Roses (Rebecca Solnit), This is How the World Ends (Nicole Perlroth), Feathers (Thor Hanson), Plastic Fantastic (Eugenie Samuel Reich), and The Dawn of Everything (David Graeber and David Wengrow). It’s a pretty eclectic set - climate essays, cybersecurity, the detailed history of a biological structure, the structure of a scientific fraud, and the question of how we understand our cultural history - but there was something meaningful to take away from all of them, plus they were all extremely well-written. 

Honourable mentions
The Great Pretender (Susannah Cahalan), deconstructing a famous psychology 'experiment'; Too Much Money (Max Rashbrooke), on inequality in Aotearoa New Zealand; Bi (Julia Shaw), on the history of bisexuality. 

Fiction (series starters)

Turns out I didn’t start a lot of new series this year! The two absolute standouts were The Obsidian Tower (Melissa Caruso) - a political-epic fantasy trilogy which is now complete - and A Free Man of Color (Barbara Hambly) - a historical mystery series in 1830s New Orleans which is ongoing but episodic. 

Fiction (series continuations)

Jade Legacy (Fonda Lee), The Untold Story (Genevieve Cogman), and The Thousand Eyes (A K Larkwood) all stuck the landings on their respective series, but particular credit to The Thousand Eyes which made me like the first book much better in retrospect. And of course Nona the Ninth (Tamsyn Muir) completely unhinged me in the best way. A FREEZING WORKS IN GREYTOWN. 

Fiction (stand-alones)

Machine (Elizabeth Bear) is not technically stand-alone but only tangentially connected to the other book in its setting; love a space hospital. Last Exit (Max Gladstone) and Water Horse (Melissa Scott) were both profoundly good and hopeful in the face of despair. 

Honourable mentions
Princess Floralinda and the Forty-Flight Tower (Tamsyn Muir); The Priory of the Orange Tree (Samatha Shannon); Amongst Our Weapons (Ben Aaronovitch); the Tensorate novella quadrilogy (Neon Yang). All solid but did not push the boat out for me in quite the same way. 

Comments

[profiterole_reads]

The Thousand Eyes was excellent! <3