Book meme 2022

How many books did you read this year?

I read 206 books in 2022.

34 biogrqphy (up from 18 last year)
6 children's (down from 18 last year)
1 cartoon collection (a new entry!)
151 fiction (up from 141 last year)
7 non-fiction (down from 12 last year)
8 young adult (down from 10 last year)

I think fewer children's this year because I moved away from home again and most children's books I read in paper form rather than ebooks. The near doubling of biography is because while I don't want to buy most modern biographies I'm quite happy to read them when they pop up on library ebooks.

Perhaps I should start breaking down my fiction categories. But what into? And who decides? When is a book a romance book and when is it litfic about relationships? I just had a go at the first twenty or so books in my list and didn't know what to put them as so I'm just not going to.

19% were by men, of which 4 (1.94% of total) were people of colour

81% by women and non-binary authors of which 22 (10.67% of total) were people of colour

Higher proportions of male writers this year (biographies again I think) and ethnic diversity back up to 2020 rates after a dip in 2021.

Did you reread anything? What?

I reread Two Weeks with the Queen by Morris Gleitzman. When I was going to see my nephews before moving to KL I decided to do a bookhunt instead of an egg hunt in the garden and bought up a lot of stock of children's books in charity shops. One of these was Two Weeks with the Queen, which I had read as a teenager and think it very much still holds up.

Also, I think I might have read Heat and Dust a very long time ago, because I definitely knew the abortion part of the plot already. Unless there's another book involving a twig. But it's possible I just read that excerpt somewhere else so I'm not counting it as a reread.

What were your top five books of the year?

Again, five is too few:

I Will Not Serve - Eveline Mahyere

Less known than the others, I think: convent schoolgirl falls in love with a nun, writes her letters (rather stalkerishly) and is very funny betweentimes. Translated by Antonia White, who knew a thing or two about convents.


Wheels Within Wheels - Dervla Murphy

There's No Such Thing as an Easy Job - Kikuko Tsumura

Seasons quartet - Ali Smith

Priestdaddy - Patricia Lockwood

Scholomance series - Naomi Novik

After Silence - Jessica Gregson

A Lady's Guide to Fortune-Hunting - Sophie Irwin

Jummy at the River School - Sabine Adeyinka



And these were not in the top books, but sufficiently interesting to merit mention:

The Windsor Diaries is by a cousin (I think? Or maybe just a suitably vetted child) of the Queen who spent a lot of time with them growing up. It is interesting because Howard is SO very self-absorbed and critical. The princesses don't dress nicely! She wasn't invited to somewhere she would have liked to be! Elizabeth is too childish! The war goes on in the background but you'd barely notice. Actually a very nice contrast to reading people's diaries and despairing at how erudite and engaged they are in comparison to low me.

I wasn't at all aware of Keisha the Sket when it was around (wrong age, wrong race) and it was fascinating to understand how it developed and got passed around: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/oct/31/keisha-the-sket-by-jade-lb-review-the-literary-version-of-the-black-nod . Even though I am now even more the wrong age this really gripped me and took me back to similar sorts of stories being shared and the condemnation/fascination of teenage girls' sexuality.

This is a spoiler, but Sunny is particularly good because ( I still write lj for the cut texts. )

Did you discover any new authors that you love this year?

I hadn't read Dervla Murphy before. I suspect that starting with her autobiography talking about her relationship with her parents rather than her actual travel writing is not the most conventional way into her writing, which therefore makes it perfect. I went on to read her Madagascar book, where she is mostly walking with her daughter, and also enjoyed that, though I would very much like to read an account of all this travel from said daughter's perspective.

Was there anything you meant to read, but never got to?

So much. I still had about 20 open tabs from last Yuletide sitting unread when I started looking at this year's. I have now closed them unceremoniously. I have a copy of Somerset Maugham's Malaysian Stories that I've carted through at least three countries, unopened. Towards the end of 2022 I signed up to whale weekly to try and read Moby Dick. I'm already behind by at least three emails, despite very much liking the sleepover with Queequeg.

Did you meet any of your reading goals? Which ones?

I wanted to "keep reading and keep enjoying it", which I managed, despite incursions of dastardly phone games. (I had to delete Twenty again.)

I decided to start reading the Booker winners, which I have done (see later in the meme).

I had thought that I would have had a lot more time for reading last year as we were scheduled for our cruise, but that didn't happen (despite, or because of, me saying in this very meme "I refuse to believe it will not happen"), so I didn't clear 250 books.

I had also thought that I would move all my unread books to KL with me but although I did move here, it wasn't as clear cut as I thought it would be and I decided not to ship anything over. I did get as far as buying a trunk and packing it, but unpacked it last time I was home.

What was your favourite book that has been out for a while, but you just now read?

I read 5 books that were published more than 100 years ago -

Girls Together - Louise Mack

Love Insurance - Earl Derr Biggers

The Girls of Rivercliff School - Amy Bell Marlowe

The School They Handed On - Sibyl B Owsley

Potterism - Rose Macaulay

In particular I enjoyed The Girls of Rivercliff School - available on Project Gutenberg and a lovely US boarding school story full of pluck and quiet dignity.

How many books did you buy?

I went down from buying 30 books on Kindle to six. And then fror Kobo I went from 69 to, err, 127. IN MY DEFENCE I have read most of them already and I have been stockpiling for cruises. About halfway through the year I bought the Kobo membership which occasionally gets me cheaper books.

Fewer hardcopy purchases this year probably as have not been around charity shops as much.

Did you use your library?

Yes, for lots of ebooks - around 65 this year. It's probably the best mechanism for getting me to read new authors. I frequently check to see if anything is in the new ebooks section and there are often authors I've never heard of, or books I wouldn't want to spend money on but am quite interested in. (Yes, I fully intend to borrow Spare from the library.)

If you are in the market for a new ereader then Kobo is the only one I know that connects directly to the Overdrive system most UK libraries use.

What’s the fastest time it took you to read a book?

An hour or so I'd have thought.

What reading goals do you have for next year?

As I HOPE that the cruises will go ahead, I would like to read more than 250 books. It's a meaningless number. It is better to read books slowly and leisurely and take them in. But I want to read everything.

What’s the longest book you read?

Not a clue. I am experimenting with logging books on Storygraph, which if I keep at it would mean I could answer this question for 2023 next time I meme.

What was your most anticipated release? Did it meet your expectations?

It was of course After Silence, and it very much did! Actually it might also be the longest book I read, certainly up there.

Once I finished the first two Scholomance books the third became very anticipated indeed and exceeded my expectations as I had not thought that it could possibly be as good as the in-school books AND YET.

For future releases, I am technically very pleased for Martha Wells that she is publishing the books she wants but WHERE IS NEW MURDERBOT.

Did you participate in or watch any booklr, booktube, or book twitter drama?

Not even aware if there was any - would like to know about it if so.

Any books that disappointed you?

What were your least favourite books of the year?

Floating Voter - Julian Critchley (turgid prose, almost complete lack of plot, racism shoe-horned in)

G - John Berger

Waiting for Jeffrey - Alan Coren (I normally really like Alan Coren's style of writing, but this was not one of his better collections)

Harrow the Ninth - Tamsyn Muir (but then to be fair I only read half of it as I can't cope with second person narrative and it might be fantastic if you can read all of it)

My Unapologetic Diaries - Joan Collins (dull, repetitive, where was the glossy scandal???)

How to Kill Men and Get Away With It - Katy Brent (seemed shallow, ill-plotted, derivative)

What genre did you read the most of?

Again, Storygraph would be able to tell me this. I imagine it's some definition of "women's fiction". I read more romanace and more SFF than I have previously done, I think, but not so much as to top the list.

Did you read any books that were nominated for or won awards this year (Booker, Women’s Prize, National Book Award, Pulitzer, Hugo, etc.)?

In my quest to read all the Booker winners I am up to 1980, when William Golding won for Rites of Passage. I've been stalled on the list for a month or so as I am waiting for the Midnight's Children e-book to be available in my library. (Hmm, I have checked my holds and apparently I STILL have to wait another seven weeks for it. Maybe I will crack and purchase.)

This is what I've read, though those in square brackets I read before this year.

Something to Answer For - PH Newby
The Elected Member - Bernice Rubens
[Troubles - JG Farrell]
In a Free State - VS Naipaul
G - John Berger
[The Siege of Krishnapur - JG Farrell]
The Conservationist - Nadine Gordimer
Holiday - Stanley Middleton
Heat and Dust - Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
Saville - David Storey
Staying On - Paul Scott
The Sea, the Sea - Iris Murdoch
[Offshore - Penelope Fitzgerald]
Rites of Passage - William Golding

There's still a big loss of empire theme running through many of them, and it will be interesting to see how that develops as I move into later books.

The only one I've disliked so far has been G (apart from the drawings of genitals), and I am getting something out of doing this even if I'm not sure what it is. Something additional, I mean, beyond the two obvious gains of "being able to say I've read all the Booker winners" and "potentially doing better in book quiz".

For non-Booker prizes:

Last Night at the Telegraph Club won a National Book Award

Gideon the Ninth and Harrow the Ninth were both Hugo nominees and Gideon was also a Nebula nominee

Dial A for Aunties was a Comedy Women in Print winner in 2021

Priestdaddy won the Thurber Prize for American Humor

Sorrow and Bliss was shortlisted for the Women's Prize

Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line won an Edgar Award the Lucy Cavendish College fiction prize and was shortlisted for the JCB prize

Ali Smith's Autumn was Booker shortlisted for the Booker, and Summer won the Orwell Prize

What is the most over-hyped book you read this year?

The Alan Rickman diaries. I was really looking forward to them, as I like Alan Rickman, he's been in really interesting things, and also I think unfairly I was thinking ooh I love Emma Thompson's Sense and Sensibility diaries, and he was in S&S, so surely I will like this. It was, as the New York Times said, "fantastically dull". I am sure that they meant something to him, and also that there will certainly have been things cut out, but I cannot for the life of me understand why they were published. (Based on what he/others say about his post-Potter wealth it seems unlikely that there would be financial issues for his widow, who could have sold one of their several houses if so.) There are some tiny little bits of interest, like what he thinks of Daniel Radcliffe's acting, but it's mostly just reeling off lists of who was at dinner parties, and Rickman whining that directors don't get him (when he's acting) that directing is hard (when he's directing), that no-one is as "curious" (as in interested) as he is, and that films are unaccountably edited not to be all about him. (I laughed out loud when he wrote that about S&S.)

( All the books I read in 2022. )