A 2022 list in mid-March, why not?
Another year (and a couple months), another Goodreads goal attained. I read 101 books in 2022, and in 2023, I've given up reading goals. Not entirely -- there are books I want to read, but I'm not aiming for a number.
A book-related goal achieved: visiting the George Peabody Library in Baltimore.
Getting to 100 last year was all fun and games until about November, when I started worrying about reaching the goal.
"You could always quit," I told myself. "You're the only one who cares."
"Yes, but I care a lot and if I accomplish nothing else this year, at least I'll accomplish this goal."
Around that time, I also reviewed the list of books I'd read, and spotted at least one title I had no recollection of reading. A quick search brought back the plot, but this year, I want to be more intentional with my choices. Being "more intentional" has so far meant abandoning five books. Maybe removing this numerical goal will push me back to the final (for now) LBJ Robert Caro book.
Reading 101 books did help me get a clearer picture of my reading wheelhouse, as the Reading Glasses podcast hosts call it. What gets me to pick up a book? Birds, nature, a woman on a journey, multigenerational stories, a protagonist excelling at an unexpected skill -- and maybe that skill is magic -- and books prominently featuring food, especially a connection between food and family.
Books I read in 2022 that fell into these categories:
Late Migrations by Margaret Renkl - personal essays with lots of nature
All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders - birds, two characters excelling, one in engineering, one in magic. Also there's an AI. And a love story.
The Thirty Names of Night by Zeyn Joukhadar - birds, magical realism, multigenerational story told by a Syrian American trans protagonist. This was one of my favorite books last year.
Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin - cooking essays written by a woman whose voice reminded me of my grandmother's dry wit.
Empire of Wild by Cherie Dimaline - woman on a journey to reclaim her husband from some supernatural evil.
The entire A Court of Thorns and Roses series by Sarah J. Maas - women on journeys, some excelling at magic or fighting, also they're faeries. Sexy faeries.
This year, I’ve fully moved my book tracking from Goodreads to StoryGraph. Search and filtering work so much better than Goodreads, and my lists transferred easily from Goodreads to this new platform. I pop into Goodreads to see what folks are reading, because I have one contact on StoryGraph at the moment.
Anyway, here's the full 2022 list, the dates I finished them, and an asterisk for the ones I most enjoyed (there's a spoiler for Red, White, and Royal Blue, which was book #33):
1 The Secret to Superhuman Strength, Alison Bechdel, 1/1/22
2 The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, and the Horse, Charlie Mackesy, 1/2/22
3 Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha, Tara Brach, 1/8
4 Beach Read, Emily Henry, 1/11
5 Late Migrations: A Natural History of Loss, Margaret Renkl, 1/13*
6 Empire of Wild, Cherie Dimaline, 1/17*
7 Everyone Knows Your Mother is a Witch, Rivka Galchen, 1/23
8 The Flat Share, Beth O’Leary, 1/26
9 Three Girls from Bronzeville, Dawn Turner, 1/28
10 Crying in H Mart, Michelle Zauner, 2/5
11 Mad Men Unbuttoned, Natasha Vargas Cooper, 2/6
12 Feral Creatures, Kira Jane Buxton, 2/14 - another book about birds. This book follows ST, the foul-mouthed crow from Hollow Kingdom, which I might reread this year because I want more time with Ghengis Cat and Winnie the Poodle.
13 ¡Hola Papi! How to Come Out in a Walmart Parking Lot and Other Life Lessons, John Paul Brammer, 2/16
14 People We Meet on Vacation, Emily Henry, 2/19
15 Evvie Drake Starts Over, Linda Holmes, 2/22
16 Hop! Joshua Barkman, 2/26 - a little graphic novel about two crows.
17 A Song Below Water, Bethany C Morrow, 2/28
18 Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear, Elizabeth Gilbert, 3/5
19 Minor Feelings: An Asian-American Reckoning, Cathy Park Hong, 3/11
20 Behold the Dreamers, Imbolo Mbue, 3/19
21 The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, Aimee Bender, 3/27
22 Something from the Oven: Reinventing Dinner in 1950s America, Laura Shapiro, 4/2
23 A Court of Thorns and Roses, Sarah Maas, 4/5
24 Laziness Does Not Exist, Devon Price, 4/9* - I often think of about Price writing, "The Duolingo owl will not kill you in your sleep," as I do one Duolingo lesson right before bed to maintain my streak.
25 The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy, 4/14
26 A Court of Mist and Fury, Sarah Maas, 4/17
27 A Court of Wings and Fury, Sarah Maas, 4/22
28 A Court of Frost and Starlight, Sarah Maas, 4/24
29 Hamnet, Maggie O’Farrell, 4/27
30 A Court of Silver Flames, Sarah Maas, 5/1
31 The Other Black Girl, Zakiya Dalila Harris, 5/7
32 How Our Lives Become Stories, Paul John Eakin, 5/12
33 Red, White, and Royal Blue, Casey McQuiston, 5/15* - Casey McQuiston gives me a blue Texas I'll probably never see and that win made me cry.
34 Touching the Rock, John Hull, 5/15
35 The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion
36 The Great Believers, Rebecca Makkai, 5/29*
37 My Bondage and My Freedom, Frederick Douglass, 5/29
38 The Stationery Shop, Marjan Kamali, 6/4
39 Fun Home, Alison Bechdel, 6/4
40 Annihilation, Jeff VanderMeer, 6/6
41 Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates, 6/12
42 Whip Smart, Melissa Febos, 6/15
43 Authority, Jeff VanderMeer, 6/15
44 Writing Down the Bones, Natalie Goldberg, 6/18
45 Writers and Lovers, Lily King, 6/20
46 The Yellow House, Sarah M Broom, 7/1
47 Don’t Ask Me Where I’m From, Jennifer De Leon, 7/3
48 The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music, Dave Grohl, 7/4
49 When We Were Magic, Sarah Gailey, 7/8
50 Bird Brother: A Falconer’s Journey and the Healing Power of Wildlife, Rodney Stotts & Katie Pipkin, 7/16*
51 Catfish and Mandala, Andrew X. Pham, 7/16
52 Acceptance, Jeff vandermeer, 7/19
53 The Immortalists, Chloe Benjamin, 7/25
54 The Lemon Tree, Sandy Tolan, 7/30
55 Real Life, Brandon Taylor, 8/1
56 The Thirty Names of Night, Zeyn Joukhadar, 8/8*
57 Paper Girls, vol 1, Brian k Vaughan , 8/12
58 Somebody’s Daughter, Ashley C Ford, 8/13
59 The Future of Another Timeline, Annalise Newitz, 8/15
60 Paper Girls, vol 2, Brian k Vaughan, 8/19
61 Paper Girls, vol 3 Brian k Vaughan, 8/27
62 Paper Girls, vol 4 Brian k Vaughan, 8/27
63 Paper Girls, vol 5 Brian k Vaughan, 8/28
64 Paper Girls, vol 6 Brian k Vaughan, 8/28
65 LaRose, Louise Erdrich, 9/4*
66 Putting the Rabbit in the Hat, Brian Cox, 9/5
67 Give Me Your Hand, Megan Abott, 9/6
68 Happy-Go-Lucky, David Sedaris, 9/9
69 Spinning Silver, Naomi Novik, 9/12*
70 Another Brooklyn, Jacqueline Woodson, 9/18
71 The Witch Elm, Tana French 9/25
72 The Field Guide to the North American Teenager, Ben Philippe, 9/27
73 You Never Forget Your First: A Biography of George Washington, Alexis Coe, 10/1
74 Harrow the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir, 10/8
75 The Sympathizer, Viet Than Nguyen, 10/9
76 Eat, And Love Yourself, Sweeney Boo, 10/10
77 Homicide and Halo-Halo, Mia P. Manansala
78 Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen, Laurie Colwin, 10/17*
79 Pet Sematary, Stephen King, 10/23
80 Flyaway, Kathleen Jennings, 10/24
81 Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany, Bill Buford, 10/30
82 Nona the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir, 11/3* - I understand about half of what's going on in these books and I'm still entirely enthralled by them. Who's dead? Who's alive? Who's who? What happened? When do we get the final book?
83 Black Cake, Charmaine Wilkerson, 11/7*
84 The Paris Apartment, Lucy Foley, 11/12
85 On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, Stephen King, 11/16
86 Book Lovers, Emily Henry, 11/17
87 Queenie, Candice Carty-Williams, 11/20
88 The Guncle, Stephen Rowley, 11/25
89 Today Will Be Different, Maria Semple, 11/27
90 Dirt: Adventures in Lyon as a Chef in Training, Father, and Sleuth Looking for the Secret of French Cooking, Bill Buford
91 A Snake Falls to Earth, Darcie Little Badger
92 All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr, 12/9
93 Home (Binti 2), Nnedi Okorafor, 12/10
94 The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson, 12/15
95 I Kissed Shara Wheeler, Casey McQuiston, 12/15
96 Hide, Kiersten White, 12/17
97 Circe, Madeline Miller, 12/21
98 All the Birds in the Sky, Charlie Jane Andrews, 12/25
99 The Night Masquerade (Binti #3), Nnedi Okorafor, 12/26
100 Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood, Trevor Noah, 12/28
101 The Most Natural Thing, David Keplinger, 12/31