My Top 21 of 2022

It is shocking to me that I actually got this written! I realize now that I spent more time on getting the illustrations to look just right than I did saying what most of the books are actually about, so I will attempt to blurb them and post a link at the end when I get around to it. But at least the headers look pretty!

Let’s start with my bread and butter, which is YA. All of my favorites were read in the service of the Mass. Teen Choice Book Award. I listened to Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas, Firekeeper's Daughter by Angeline Boulley, Little Thieves by Margaret Owen and  Not So Pure and Simple by Lamar Giles on audio.  I started the first two before and they just didn’t grab me in print , but on audio they were amazing. Little Thieves was fantasy and not my usual cup of tea but again the audio performance hooked me. I am not picking favorites, but I will say that I would have loved Not So Pure and Simple in any format. What the hell, I am picking favorites. It was my favorite YA of the year!

Lamar Giles also wrote my favorite horror book of the year (okay the only horror book I read, but I loved it) in The Getaway. Excuse Me While I Ugly Cry is a delightful realistic fiction book about a girl who makes lists and lies to her parents. Wow, did that bring back my adolescence for me! 

I read a lot of graphic novels, memoirs and nonfiction this year but only two made me weep in public while I read them - The Golden Hour by Niki Smith is probably more middle grade than YA, but it was spectacular. And Ain’t Burned All the Bright is only 10 sentences long, but it hit me as hard as anything else I read this year.

For adult books, let’s start with the ones that everyone loved. 

My book club girls made me read Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid, they all read it for their summer reading selection and adored it. I listened to it in the car and found myself actually going the speed limit just so I could hear more of the story. I also listened to Red, White and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston which I had tried to read in print and given up on. Well, shut my mouth, because the audio was adorable. 

I remember reading Amor Towles Rules of Civility at Disney World way back when it first came out and wishing for the lines to be a bit longer just so I could read more. (Okay, that is a lie, but it really made the waiting more pleasurable.) I lost my mind recently when I found out that A Gentleman in Moscow is being made into a Showtime series starring Ewan McGregor. But his newest The Lincoln Highway was even better than those two. It was my first summertime novel and it just carried me away. Nina Prose’s The Maid was hugely popular when it came out, and I finally got around to it this summer, too. 

Some possibly lesser known novels I loved were The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi, When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill and This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub which could be considered science fiction. Or maybe fantasy. Do dragons count as fantasy if they are a metaphor for feminists? You wouldn’t think giant monsters and repetitive time travel would be the sort of thing that would make me weep. Well you would be wrong! I also loved Bloomsbury Girls in spite of not having read, and having no intention of reading, The Jane Austen Society. But it took place in a London bookstore after WWII so I adored it. The setting reminded me of 84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff which is one of my all time favorites. 

I read far more memoirs this year than I usually do. I listened to Will Smith, Randy Rainbow, Simu Liu, Molly Shannon, Harvey Fierstein, Tom Felton, and Hannah Gadsby read their stories and I really enjoyed all of them. But the two memoirs that I actually read in print were so good that I actually read them in print! I have adored Ann Hood since I read Somewhere Off the Coast of Maine over and over as a college student instead of the books I was supposed to be reading for school. Fly Girl, her story of being a stewardess was an absolute delight and also far more moving than I would have expected. All About Me by Mel Brooks was a no brainer. I knew I would love it the minute I heard it was coming out. Other than my dad, no other person has had more of an impact on my sense of humor than Brooks. My first PG movie? Young Frankenstein! My first R movie? History of the World Part Two! His book did not disappoint. 

I also read two graphic memoirs that were off the charts spectacular.Keiler Roberts shares her journal with the world through her cartooning and while I absolutely loved her newest The Joy of Quitting, the last page of My Begging Chart made me laugh louder than anything else I read this year. She writes about motherhood and disability and friendship and marriage with complete honesty.  Ducks is Kate Beaton’s memoir of when she went to work in the Canadian oil fields to pay off her student loans. It was my favorite book written for adults that I read this year. 

And finally, honorable mention goes to The Easy Way to Stop Smoking by Allen Carr. I listened to it VERY LOUDLY at 2x the speed and it was basically a middle aged Englishman SCREAMING at me about how stupid smoking is. Well, I listened to it in August and haven’t smoked a butt since, so I am a big fan. 

My first books this year are both fantastic - I just started Tiffany Jackson’s The Weight of Water on audio and it is scaring the hell out of me already. And Steve Martin’s graphic memoir Number One is Walking - illustrated by Harry Bliss - is simply adorable. I’m looking forward to another year of great books!

If you want to read some little blurbs of the books - you can read them here - http://deepvalleyconfidential.blogspot.com/2023/01/my-wee-book-blurbs-of-2022.html