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Original poster

Best book you read in 2022

112 replies

Anonymouseposter · 16/01/2023 14:14

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.

OP posts:
EspeciallyDetermined · 17/01/2023 22:41

Fiction - Young Mungo (I would put Shuggie Bain and American Dirt as = top for 2021).

Non-fiction - My Name is Why by Lemn Sissay and Making It by Jay Blades. I read a lot of memoirs and these two really stood out last year

moggerhanger · 17/01/2023 22:44

Double Cross by Ben Macintyre. All about the D-Day spies - how we managed to pull it off I have no idea, the whole thing was bonkers. A fascinating read and it would make a brilliant film.

Quinque · 17/01/2023 23:03

Small Pleasures by Clare Chambers.

VanillaImpulse · 17/01/2023 23:19

Still Alice by Lisa Genova - a book showing a young character with dementia creeping in and how it affected her life. Really interesting to see it from the dementia sufferers point of view and also for it to happen to a younger person with a job. Read it in days.

walnutmarzipan · 18/01/2023 09:14

VanillaImpulse · 17/01/2023 23:19

Still Alice by Lisa Genova - a book showing a young character with dementia creeping in and how it affected her life. Really interesting to see it from the dementia sufferers point of view and also for it to happen to a younger person with a job. Read it in days.

I've not read the book but I've seen the film. Must be extra difficult to go through something like this at a young age.

LifeInAHamsterWheel · 19/01/2023 16:36

I loved "American Dirt", "Hamnet" and "The Hearts Invisible Furies" although I read them before 2022 so not sure they count for the purpose of this thread? As an aside I also really enjoyed "The Outside Boy" by Jeanine Cummins and I love all of Maggie O'Farrell's books (her non-fiction "I am, I am, I am" is just brilliant too) but I have to say I don't like any other John Boyne books apart from The Hearts...

Books I read last year that I would absolutely recommend:

"The Pull of the Stars" and "Slammerkin" both by Emma Donoghue
All the "Thursday Murder Club" books, by Richard Osman
"A Terrible Kindness" by Jo Browning Wroe
"Station Eleven" by Emily St. John Mandel
"Project Hail Mary" by Andy Weir

DoNutSweatTheSmallStuff · 21/01/2023 20:36

I enjoyed Hamnet.

Really want to read American Dirt now!

daffodilandtulip · 22/01/2023 16:15

How to disappear
Last house on the street
The couple at number 9

Clawdy · 23/01/2023 08:32

Shadow Girls by Carol Birch. Spooky and brilliant.

cravingtoblerone · 23/01/2023 08:34

Best fiction:
Secret History Donna Tartt (not a new release obviously but had been on my read list for ages)

Non-Fiction
Mudlarking my Lara Maiklem. Brilliant stuff.

Hellohah · 23/01/2023 20:48

I don't give books 5 stars often (only got 11 of them on my goodreads list) but my 4*s last year were ...

The Ink Black Heart
Lost for words
Jamaica Inn
We Begin at the End
Daisy Jones and the Six
A Gentleman in Moscow
American Dirt
Small Pleasures

Lisarinnaslipss · 23/01/2023 20:55

The night circus, a really interesting fantasy novel, and fantasy isn't usually my thing.

TheGander · 25/01/2023 19:02

Small pleasure by Clare Chambers for sheer enjoyment.
Shuggie Blaine has stayed with me. I’m not in a hurry to read young Mungo though.
Return to Rheims by Didier Eribon- some commonality with Shuggie Baine. In fact gay survivor of dysfunctional sub proletarian childhood seems to be a genre in European literature at the moment, and rightly so.

SummaLuvin · 25/01/2023 19:29

Piranesi for me. So interesting and ethereal, completely sucks you into another world.

Funnily enough the 2021 version of this thread convinced me to read American Dirt which I really didn't connect with like alot of others, didn't even make my top 5 last year. Similar with Hamnet, I read so many glowing reviews but really didn't rate it.

Original poster
Anonymouseposter · 29/01/2023 12:01

SummaLuvin I wasn’t keen on Hamnet either. The writing was vivid but there was too much poetic license for me, a bit like the film, Emily. I did find American Dirt very gripping though.

OP posts:
Goingundergroundagain · 06/02/2023 13:29

Great thread! Here's mine in no particular order

The Somnambulist by Essie Fox
The Black Magician Trilogy Books by Trudi Canavan
Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt

KevinsChilli · 06/02/2023 16:19

Four Winds and The Stranding were mine, American Dirt not far behind.
A Little Life was the worst one I read last year.

KevinsChilli · 06/02/2023 16:19

Anonymouseposter · 29/01/2023 12:01

SummaLuvin I wasn’t keen on Hamnet either. The writing was vivid but there was too much poetic license for me, a bit like the film, Emily. I did find American Dirt very gripping though.

I was disappointed with Hamnet too!

Original poster
Anonymouseposter · 11/02/2023 19:30

Not my number one choice but I did enjoy The Sealwoman’s Gift by Sally Magnusson. I didn’t know that Icelanders had been taken as slaves until I read this. It’s a novel based on historical fact.

OP posts:
Abracadabra12345 · 11/02/2023 20:16

Somebody I used to know (Wendy Mitchell), a re-read, a memoir of the author’s experience of living with dementia. Just astonishing

Sitting at the Feet of Rabbi Jesus, seen from a Jewish perspective and so interesting

Another Time, Another Place (Jodi Taylor)

Abracadabra12345 · 11/02/2023 20:17

I’ve downloaded several books after reading this thread - thank you!

Jenniferturkington · 15/02/2023 21:28

On the back of this thread I have just read We Begin at the End, and Cloud Cuckoo Land. I enjoyed both of them very much.

TheGander · 16/02/2023 17:42

Anonymouseposter · 11/02/2023 19:30

Not my number one choice but I did enjoy The Sealwoman’s Gift by Sally Magnusson. I didn’t know that Icelanders had been taken as slaves until I read this. It’s a novel based on historical fact.

Not a lot of people know that right up until the 19th century, pirates based in North Africa or turkey would go around the Mediterranean, and up the Atlantic including England and Ireland ( and occasionally as far as Iceland) to raid villages and grab people for the slave markets of Morocco, Algiers and Tripoli. The only way out was to convert to Islam thus ensuring freedom, or get your folk back home to raise a ransom.

Skulldrudgery · 16/02/2023 17:48

I read Station Eleven in 2022. Can’t stop thinking about it even now. Late to the party , written 2017 but became popular in 2020.
Amazing book.

MrsDanversGlidesAgain · 16/02/2023 17:50

VickerishAllsort · 16/01/2023 22:09

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.

Stunning book - the amount of research she did for each woman and the placing them in society so you can see that each step they take leads a little bit further down and the impossibility of pulling themselves up again once that spiral had started. I liked as well that there was absolutely no mention of the crimes or what was done to them - they are front and centre of the narrative.