The Books I Read in 2022.

Last year was the first year in a long time that I actually completed, and surpassed, my reading goal for the year. Albeit that goal was a mere 10 books across the year - I had a bit of a busy year last year, what with finishing and graduating university and starting to work full time - I managed to read 12 books. According to Goodreads, that is 3’991 pages ~ and I even managed to enjoy the majority of them as I *apparently* gave an average of 4.6 stars in ratings,

Therefore I have decided to write a compilation of the books I read. This is mainly so I don’t forget which books I have and haven’t read. So. Here goes.

1. Everything I Know About Love by Dolly Alderton

This book was recommended to me by one of my best friends, Ellie. She and I usually read a lot of the same books, so I had an inkling of a feeling that because she enjoyed this one, that I would. And I was not disappointed in the slightest. The story is about Alderton’s experiences from childhood up until her thirties. It is a very personal and honest telling of life as a woman, and provides a beautiful and thought provoking look into family, friendships, heartache and personal identity.

I think it hit home for me, especially, because I am a woman in my twenties living in a big city and trying to make it in a creative industry. It felt like talking to a friend or a big sister ~ even though I’m not sure what that feels like because I don’t have one. Anyway. The book makes you feel like maybe, just maybe, everything might be okay.

2. Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

Much like everyone else I know, I am on booktok. And that is how I found Before the Coffee Gets Cold. I didn’t have many expectations going into this book, I just thought that from the cover it looked really wholesome ~ and I was right. The story is set in a cafe in Tokyo, in which the coffee shop offers its customers the chance to travel back in time. This journey does not come without risks of course, the customer must sit in a particular seat, they cannot leave the cafe and they absolutely must return to the present before the coffee gets cold. Clever.

I really enjoyed that each chapter within the book followed a different visitor. Each of them have very different reasons for time-travelling into their past ~ but most of them centre around love in some way. It’s very sweet and tragic at the same time. The book is very character driven, and the magical realism was unlike anything I’ve ever read.

3. The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

I found the premise for this book very attractive. I love the idea that there is a library that contains this endless number of books, and each book is a story of another reality that all depends on the choices made in a persons life. It begs the old question, is the grass really greener on the other side? Would a person truly choose a different life for themselves if they could? That is where Nora, the books protagonist, finds herself. She is faced with the possibility of changing her life for a new one, potentially by following a different career path, undoing relationship breakups, following a childhood dream. She has to figure out what makes her life living in the first place.

Now. I really wanted to like this one more than I did. Although like I have said the premise for this book is exceptional, I just couldn’t get over the fact that this is a woman’s experience that is being written by a man. So it felt very unauthentic. Like how in some films a “woman in crisis” is a woman going off the rails, very emotionally unstable etc etc and it just isn’t *right*. This is a story about a woman who is at her absolute limit and is gripped by depression and decides to end her life, and was written by a man. And it was obvious.

As well as this, reading this book almost felt a little like reading a self-help manual full of inspirational messages that could easily be printed on a tacky jumper one would find in Primark or on a cushion in a middle-aged woman’s conservatory. Which really ins’t what I signed up for when I bought it.

4. The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak

This was the first of a few books I read on holiday in the Dominican Republic last year. I absolutely adored this story. I had never read a book set in Cyprus before, nor did I know a lot about the civil war in Cyprus between the Turkish and the Greeks. So that part I found very interesting as I actually learnt a lot.

Aside from this, I had never read a book before that had chapters from the POV of a tree ~ I was unsure at first how this would work with the rest of the story. But the way Shafak wrote those chapters, with the story being knitted together by the tree, was so so clever and really completed the narrative. I never would have imagined I would fall in love with a fig tree, however, after reading this book, I was proved wrong.

5. Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney

Another of the books I read on holiday. I had high expectations for this after reading Rooney’s other novel Normal People in 2020 ~ so the bar was high. For me, I didn’t respond to this book very well. I read it quickly, but I didn’t find myself amazed by the story or the characters ~ I found them quite unlikeable and hard to have any empathy for them. What’s more, I particularly didn’t like the book’s central character Frances. In all honesty, it might be the least romantic book I’ve read in a long time which isn’t great when the book is about relationships.

To summarise, not horrendous but I don’t think I would read it again or watch the TV show that was made of it.

6. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid

To no one’s surprise I have this one five stars. I adored this book. It was the first book by Jenkins Reid I had read so didn’t know what to expect, other than I knew a lot of people enjoy her books. This book touches on really important topics such as race, sexuality in general but also female sexuality, misogyny and conforming to societal norms ~ it is powerful.

I thought the ending was incredible, and pulled together the already excellent story so well. I’d recommend this to anybody.

7. Out of Love by Hazel Hayes

Out of Love tells the tale of a bittersweet romance, and it is really cleverly told in reverse. It was such a creative way of reviewing the anatomy of a toxic relationship by moving backwards. As a reader, we get to witness the breakup of an unnamed protagonist and Theo and we learn, through time jumps, why the relationship ultimately didn’t work out. The book finishes with the relationship’s bright and hopeful beginning, and I actually really enjoyed this way of storytelling as I hadn’t read a book that had done this before. It kept it very interesting for me. It may sound like a sad romance between two people that are clearly not good for one another, but a lot of it is a character study ~ a book about people. This book has conversations that centre around mental ill-health, race, sexuality and what it is like for the protagonist to date someone who’s family had more conservative views.

One thing I will say about this book is that it is the author’s first, and it was obvious through the writing. However, I would definitely read more from Hayes in the future.

8. Small Pleasures by Clare Chambers

This book follows Jean Swinney, a journalist who is disappointed in love, on the brink of turning forty and living with her (horrendously difficult) mother. Her life turns around when a young woman, Gretchen, writes to the newspaper Jean works at claiming that her daughter is the result of a virgin birth. Jean immediately begins to investigate this story ~ it becomes so much more than that. Gretchen becomes a friend, her daughter Margaret becomes almost a surrogate daughter to her, and Jean accidentally falls in love with Gretchen’s husband Howard. This is a story about how quickly and unexpectedly life can change ~ and it is incredible. It might be my favourite of the year, if I had to pick one of course.

The story is so much more than a secret romance. I can’t explain it without spoiling. But, even now, months after reading this book, I still find myself thinking about Jean. I loved her so much. I loved that she is real and painfully human ~ it is almost like you can feel her pain. She’s also very funny. A real portrayal of a real woman. She has been written with such depth, and I lapped it up. Chamber’s writing is descriptive and visual, yet so simple. Her writing carried me through each of the character’s backstories and into the new relationships Jean develops.

Love you Jean <3

9. Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason

This book was charming and irreverently funny but also heart wrenchingly sad, moving and hard-hitting. The story centres around mental illnesses and the debilitating effects that it can have on a person’s life. At the beginning, we follow Martha, a woman whose husband Patrick has just left her right after her birthday. We are then transported to Martha’s life as a teenager, meeting Patrick for the first time and through every up and down that came after that. The story is a lot about their relationship and I was hooked in it immediately.

But, for me, a lot of the story’s importance was about Martha’s relationship with her mother. I read a lot of reviews of this book when I was trying to collect my thoughts on it, and many of them didn’t particularly mention the mother-daughter relationship dynamic they had. In short, they have a very difficult relationship as her mother is narcissistic and is not sympathetic towards at all towards Martha and her mental ill-health. Their strenuous relationship was so real, was very well written and had a lot of depth to it.

I also liked how Mason never actually tells the reader what mental health diagnosis Martha receives, and leaves it up for interpretation by writing a long dash. It reminded me how much stigma there still is around mental illnesses, and how people are quick to judge those with mental health conditions and almost nosey by wanting to know what is “wrong” with someone (DISCLAIMER: in speech marks as there is nothing wrong with those who have mental health conditions).

Mason writes at the end:

"The medical symptoms described in the novel are not consistent with a genuine mental illness. The portrayal of treatment, medication and doctors’ advice is wholly fictional.”

And although it is fictional, it is so real.

10. My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh

I actually ended up writing a review for this book on Goodreads which is something I never do. I wrote:

“Like nothing I have ever read. My favourite line was: ‘the notion of my future suddenly snapped into focus: it didn’t exist yet. I was making it, standing there, breathing, fixing the air around my body with stillness, trying to capture something - a thought, I guess - as though such a thing were possible, as though I believed in the delusion described in those paintings - that time could be contained, held captive.’

Now I am aware that this isn’t *really* a line as such, however it resonated with me then and it still does now.

11. Daisy Jones and The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid

I finally decided to read this book after having it on my shelves for about two years, and I really enjoyed it. I especially enjoyed the clever format of the book as it is written as an interview between a reporter and the members of a band. The switching of perspectives at the beginning I found a little difficult to visualise, but once I settled into the writing style it was like watching Modern Family where the characters have their confessional parts woven into the actual episodes.

The story is set in the 1960s/1970s in the age of rock’n’roll, and although it’s not definite, feels like it takes inspiration from Fleetwood Mac. It follows the highs of a band at it’s peak, and ultimately what lead them to their demise, from multiple perspectives. The women in this book were particularly incredible ~ I liked that there were three very different women central to the story, which I think definitely aided in the realism of it. Even the different relationship dynamics between all of the women in the story also weaved a very interesting tale.

This book explores the dark and devastating nature of addiction and how it is almost glamorised, especially in the time period the book is set. The story of Billy and Daisy’s respective addictions uncovers truths about substance abuse, whilst also carries an air of hope for recovery simultaneously.

A final note: I do not know how Jenkins Reid wrote so much original music for this book. It is incredible, I felt like I could almost hear it in my head as I was reading. It really made me feel like the band was real.

12. Mrs Death Misses Death by Salena Godden

This one was recommended to me by Kirsty of The Boozy Book Club (@theboozybookcluboriginal on instagram) when I visited her pop-up shop in Edinburgh. I instantly felt I could trust Kirsty’s recommendation, so decided to give it a try ~ and I really enjoyed it. It’s quite different to other books I have read because there was a lot of poetry dotted throughout the novel which I did like, to my surprise (as I’m not a poetry person). The combination of poetry and prose together makes the book very engaging and aids in the intense topics it touches on.

The book is a short novel, but hugely moving, and sometimes I did find parts quite difficult to read because of the subject matter. As can be seen from the title, this is a book about death. 2022 was a hard year for me, having lost my Grandad Terry and my dogs Millie and Archie, so grief was something I felt a lot of. Because of this, the book was sometimes hard to read, but it did make me view death a little differently and help me in my grief.

In this book, Godden discusses things such as real-life serial killers and their victims, the Grenfell disaster, mental health, the Black Lives Matter movement, police brutality, racism. In no way does the author glamourise it as such, instead they remind the reader that these things have happened. Which I think is incredibly important, and takes a lot of skill to do well.

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So that is my 2022 in books. I am looking forward to all of the books I will read in 2023 ~ especially now I have a lot more time for reading!

My goal for this year is 15 books ~ and as I write this on the 26th of January, I have already read 3 books. So I am hopeful I can pass this goal with ease!