2022 Book Awards

by nance In Books Leave a comment

I’m a little late getting these up this year but still wanted to document 2022. I didn’t quite reach my reading goal of 90 books but I came close with 84! Here are my top ten picks for the year plus a best in show.

With the exception of Inciting Joy and Bittersweet, these didn’t release in 2022. It’s just when I happened to read them.

Best in Show

The Rural Life by Verlyn Klinkenborg. This was enchanting. Lovely prose and meaningful observations. There’s a section for each month of the year and I thought I would take it slow, maybe read each section during the corresponding month over the course of the year, but I enjoyed it so much I couldn’t help reading the whole thing through in January. Here’s a brief line from March, chosen because it’s March now and this is how it currently feels to me:

The lump of firewood beside our house has finally thawed, and an ant – the true harbinger of warm weather – made its way across the bedroom wall and down the page of a book a few days ago. If this time of year is rich in anything, it’s rich in expectancy. Everything in nature seems ready to stir, and yet the only thing visibly stirring so far is daylight itself, which is steadily undoing winter.

Verlyn Klinkenborg

Top Ten

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Unpassing by Chia-Chia Lin
Inciting Joy by Ross Gay
The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles
Billy Summers by Stephen King
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
Bitter-sweet by Susan Cain
The Artful Edit by Susan Bell
The Push by Ashley Audrain
Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell