2022: another year working mostly from home, another year of finding time to read in places/times other than my commute—although I probably did travel more by subway in 2022 for work and non-work reasons than I did in 2020 or 2021.
I read 42 books in 2022, with the genre breakdown as follows:
Middle-grade and YA: 9 books. Highlights included the humor and excitement of Nightbirds on Nantucket by Joan Aiken, the sweetness of The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street by Karina Yan Glaser, and the atmosphere and emotion of Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo. I also appreciated reading Marguerite Henry’s King of the Wind as an adult/having been to Wandlebury Country Park, where the Godolphin Arabian’s grave is.
Non-fiction: 10 books. I often love books with a travelogue element that also are doing something else/have a bigger scope, so it is not surprising that I loved The Old Ways by Robert Macfarlane and Underground by Will Hunt. James Baldwin’s writing is precise and powerful and I loved The Fire Next Time. And while I was not totally smitten by the style or structure of Nineteen Reservoirs by Lucy Sante, I am still very glad I read it because I learned a bunch from it, and because it prompted me to learn some family history as well. (I’m pretty sure my great grandpa worked on the Ashokan Reservoir.)
Fiction for grown-ups: 23 books. Of course I loved Ali Smith’s Companion Piece, because I generally love Ali Smith. Other highlights included The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares (which made me fondly remember reading Piranesi by Susanna Clarke in 2020), Scattered All Over the Earth by Yōko Tawada (which has a very fun and twisty plot and lots of interesting things to say about language and culture and identity) and An I-Novel by Minae Mizumura (which touches on similar themes, actually, though the structure and style are very different).
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