2022 was the first full year that I was retired from work and the notebook in which I recorded my reading was A5, softback, and lined. It had an elasticated closure, a ribbon to keep my place and a pocket for bookmarks. The cover has a design of blue and red and green triangles and it’s in front of me now because I have been able to use it for three years in a row as it had plenty of pages. This was a present when I left my job from my colleagues, along with many other things, and the person who chose it obviously understood my weakness for lovely stationery.
I read 350 books in the year and because 2022 marked my sixtieth birthday I attempted to read one novel from every year from my birth up until the present. I didn’t quite manage it in the year but I certainly read lots of interesting authors and some books were more challenging than I might have chosen otherwise. You can see my blog about this and a list of the books I read here. I eventually finished the challenge in the middle of 2023.
The first book that I read in the year was A Monstrous Regiment of Women by Terry Pratchett. This was a reread. I adore the Discworld books and this is definitely one of the better ones. It’s about women and equality and all sorts of other issues wrapped up in a story about the futility of war.
The last book I read in the year was also a fantasy. It was A Symphony of Echoes by Jodi Taylor which is one of her stories about time travelling historians. I have enjoyed these books which are often amusing but sometimes thought provoking. You can see what I thought of another title in the series here.
I bought considerably more books than I read in the year probably because I had more free time to visit charity shops. I got my non-fiction total up to 16% which was nearer to my target of 25% than I had achieved before. Yet again my main reading genre was crime which constituted 47% of the books read in the year.
I note that I read many long books in the year probably again because I had more time including A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara (see my review here), Written in my Own Heart’s Blood and Go Tell the Bees that I am Home by Diana Gabaldon (you can read my review of another in the series here), Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie (see my review here), American Gods by Neil Gaiman (see my review here) and England, Arise by Juliet Barker (see my review here) – some of these reviews crept into the next year but I read the books in 2022. They are all worth reading for various reasons but be prepared for many, many pages.
Here’s my review of 2022 written at the time and you can find my books of the year here, here and here.
Anne Is Reading 