My year in books 2022

[callmemadam]

This year I’ve done a lot of re-reading, especially of children’s series fiction. I haven’t always bothered to write about these. I was watching Between the Covers one day when Stephen Mangan said that it really annoyed him when people said they’d been ‘re-reading’ such-and-such a book. To him it sounded like boasting. What utter rot.

I keep a monthly record of everything I’ve read and categorise the books. In spite of this, when I come to add up the totals at the end of the year, my sums are never right, so you’ll have to take any figures as approximations.

This year, I read 194 books. There was a much better balance than usual between books by men and those by women; hardly anything in it. Here’s some I particularly enjoyed; reviewed books linked.

Modern fiction
Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
The Noise of Time, Julian Barnes
Small Things Like These, Claire Keegan
En Voiture, Simone!, Aurélie Valognes. Very popular in France, Valognes writes light, entertaining books. Published in English as Will You Ever Change?

Classic fiction re-read: take that, Mangan!
Middlemarch, George Eliot
Dombey and Son, Charles Dickens
The Daisy Chain, Charlotte M Yonge

Non-fiction, (some re-reads)
The Diaries of Chips Channon Volume II, edited by Simon Heffer
Dickens, Peter Ackroyd
The Mystery of Charles Dickens, A N Wilson
Some Stuff I’ve been Reading, Nick Hornby. Funny and perceptive.
George Orwell: A Life, Bernard Crick
The Palace Papers, Tina Brown. This was a surprise; I didn’t expect to enjoy it as much as I did.
Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, Simon Sebag Montefiore