What have been your standout books of 2022?

[TattiePants]

I have a ridiculously long TBR pile but always on the lookout for new book / author suggestions. I’ve had a pretty good reading year and haven’t had any complete duds. My favourites have been:

Still life - Sarah Winman
The Crow Road - Iain Banks
The Island of Missing Trees - Elif Shafak
Pachinko - Min Jin Lee
All the Broken Places - John Boyne
Hungry - Grace Dent
My Name is Lucy Barton - Elizabeth Strout
Clothes, clothes, clothes…. - Viv Albertine

My favourite books this year were (not all were published this year but I read them this year):
Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr
Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
The Kingdoms by Natasha Pulley
The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O'Farrell
Shrines of Gaiety by Kate Atkinson
The Ink Black Heart by Robert Galbraith
This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub
The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot by Marianne Cronin
The Alice Network by Kate Quinn
The Maid by Nita Prose
The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz
The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict
We Were Liars by E. Lockhart
Firekeeper's Daughter by Angeline Boulley

Great list OP. Definitely adding some of these to my tbr. My favourite book so far was Trespasses by Louise Kennedy. It's set in Northern Ireland in the Seventies and its a wonderfully crafted and written love story.
My other mentionables this year are The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O'Farrell, The Escape Artist by Jonathan Friesland and I'm currently reading Free by Lea Ypi which is incredibly interesting.
Hope you get some nice cosy reading time over the hols.

I forgot about Small Things Like These, I read it a couple of weeks ago when it was snowing and loved it. Also loved the Alice Network. I’ve read most of Kate Atkinson’s and Maggie O’Farrell’s books but was holding out for their latest in paperback, I might have to succumb!

Off to look up the others on Goodreads.

My standout for the year is Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead.
Follows the life of two women: one a pilot growing up in the Depression, one an actress due to play the first in a movie now.
It was one of those books that makes me want to Google the pilot to find out more about her as the story was so fascinating, but I have to remind myself it's a novel and she didn't exist.

Frostquake - Juliet Nicholson
His Bloody Project - Graeme Macrae Burnett
The Locked Room Ellie Griffiths
Forever Young - Haley Mills
How To Kill Your Family - Bella Mackie
The Stopped Heart - Julie Myerson
Sun Damage Sabine Durrant
A Slow Fire Burning - Paula Hawkins
Shrines of Gaiety - Kate Atkinson
The Ink Black Heart - Robert Galbraith

Mine were:
The Fell by Sarah Moss
The Instant by Amy Liptrot
Alison by Lizzy Stewart
Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason

I liked The Fell as well. Otherwise this year Hamnet and On Beauty for fiction, Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe and Selfie by Will Storr in non- fiction.

Mine were:

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
A Terrible Kindness by Jo Browning Wroe
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

And the whodunits by Anthony Horowitz, so entertaining

Oh and yes to the Great Circle - brilliant!

I loved half of a yellow sun, his bloody project and lessons in chemistry. Great Circle and Sorrow & Bliss are both books I want to read.

Lessons in chemistry was fabulous - lots of purchases of that made for family and secret Santa!

Currently half way through Apples Never Fall by Liane Moriarty and findIng it a great story with excellent characters.

A terrible kindness
The school for good mothers

Still Life was my summer read 😍. Sooo good. Following for more recommendations... currently reading Hamnet

A Place of Execution: Val McDermid
Death And The Penguin: Andrei Kurkov
The Woman in White: Wilkie Collins
A Gentleman in Moscow: Amor Towles.

There are others that I really liked, but these stand out.

Chouette - Claire Oshetsky

YY to Still Life and Hungry.

I loved Sankofa as well.

Ooh yes chouette has really stuck with me

Another one who loved A Terrible Kindness .My favourite book of the year. She's an interesting speaker as well.
Other standouts have been
An Experiment in Love Hilary Mantel
Vaxxers Sarah Gilbert and Catherine Green
Utopia Avenue David Mitchell
A Midwinter Break Bernard Mclaverty
Diary of an Ordinary Woman Margaret Forster
The House of Fortune Jessie Burton
The Rose Code Kate Quinn

Same for me! I still think about this novel a lot, and I read it several months ago. Stunning work.

I have read two outstanding books this year - Booth by Karen Joy Fowler and William Boyd's The Romantic. Both have stayed with me.

At the moment I'm part way through Bournville and then will start Marina Hyde's What Just Happened. I have also ordered Colm Toibin's A Guest st the Feast.

On the basis of this thread I have ordered Trespass and Lessons in Chemistry.

My favourite books this year (not all published in 2022):

The Perfect World of Miwako Sumida by Clarisa Goenawan

Allegedly by Tiffany D. Jackson

Milkman by Anna Burns

The Secret History by Donna Tart

Violeta by Isabel Allende

The Secret Lives Of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw

Daisy Jones And The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Pérez

This Charming Man by Marian Keyes

Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata

Sorry, meant have ordered A Terrible Kindness (not Trespass).

I haven't read much this year but these are my stand-outs, all non-fiction:

Baggage - Alan Cumming
The A-Z of Well-being - Will Young
Putting the Rabbit in the Hat - Brian Cox

I'm Sorry You Feel That Way by Rebecca Wait (so, so funny, especially if you come from a slightly dysfunctional family)
Shrines of Gaiety by Kate Atkinson (amazing as ever)

Devotion by Hannah Kent
I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb
Red Dust Road by Jackie Kay
White Woman on a Green Bicycle by Melissa Roffey, also by her The Mermaid of Black Conch