Best book you read in 2022

[Anonymouseposter]

What was the best book you read last year? I’m looking for ideas for what to read next. My favourite was American Dirt, I learned a lot and found it very gripping.

The Ink Black Heart, Piranesi, Still Life, A Little Life and Again Rachel were my 5 star 2022 reads.

I love this book so much. I still think about the characters.

Cloud Cuckoo Land was brilliant

Great circle
The whalebone theatre
The marriage portrait
Love marriage
Cloud Cuckoo Land
The Ink black heart

The Ink Black Heart. Possibly biased because I read it on a sun lounger on holiday.

The secret life of Addie La Rue

Half a Yellow Sun

This thread is going to cost me a fair bit of wonga

I read that. Really good.

The history of poisons - bloody amazing

Burial Rites by Hannah Kent and Shuggie Bain…lighter subject matter for 2023 needed

A Terrible Kindness Jo Browning Wroe. Written with great sensitivity and compassion.
I also read Shuggie Bain. I agree it is a brilliant book but it is so bleak,.

Do you mean a book published in 2022? I hardly ever read stuff that has recently been published (though I do want to read Otherlands, and also the trippy Merlin Sheldrake book about mushrooms).

I read quite a few classics last year – books I've had on my 'to-read' list for decades. Woolf's Orlando was the one I enjoyed most. I also loved Boswell's Life of Johnson and M.R. James' ghost stories (I'd recommend Mark Gatiss' brilliant documentary on M.R. James). Oh, and I read Wilde's De Profundis, which kind of disappointed me.

The only book published last year which I actually have on my shelves is Harold Bloom's Take Arms Against a Sea of Troubles. I'm reading it now and loving it.

To add another book not published last year which I read this year and had most impact on me was Sapiens. If others like me still haven't read it, definitely recommend.

(I'm not v good with fiction books - tend to not finish them.)

Great thread. I've had an awful reading year last year due to a lot of stress and exhaustion leaving me unable to focus. Going to use this as a kick start for 2023 as I feel like I lost something of myself with it.

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan. A wonderfully moving story. Short but beautiful.

Oh that book 🤦🏼‍♀️🤦🏼‍♀️🤦🏼‍♀️. I wish I'd never read it tbh.

Agreed. One of my faves from last year alongside The Push, Blood Orange and Still Life

Did you mean the invisible life of Addie la Rue?

Or have I missed another book in this saga?!

Top reads from last year were:

Still Life
A Man Called Ove
Ink Black Heart
Life After Life

2022 was the year I started reading again and was helped by the Borrow Box app where you can read e-books from your library for free! A great discovery.

If it's just something I read in 2022 the The Diary of Samuel Pepys.

I don't think I read anything published in 2022

Absolutely loved American Dirt (think I may have read it in 2021). I've since bought it as a gift for a lot of people! My favourite book I read last year was Pachinko. Fantastic. I also really liked Black Water Sister by Zen Cho and The Dry by Jane Harper. I didn't read enough in 2022...

@Reclining in case you don't know there is currently a drama series of this to watch on ITV X.

The Five by Hallie Rubenfold.
She explores the lives of Jack the Ripper's victims, although he is barely mentioned.
Which is as it should be.
She gives them life again, although their lives were hellish, giving them back their humanity.
It was January last year, and I read about 60 books altogether, but this is the one I can't forget.

I loved Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell

I've promised myself I'll make more time for reading this year so thank you for this thread and all the recommendations. Time to visit the library!

Time to visit the library!

Yay! I’m always banging on about the library. We must use them or we’ll lose them. Yes there are some recommendations I’m also going to make note of.