What I read in 2022

I feel like, lately, I get to the end of every year thinking, ‘Well, that one was the hardest of my life.’ Then, somehow, the next one manages to be harder. And yet, I’m still here.

Still freaking here.

I read 29 books this year. Moving out of town in 2023, so I expect to have more reading time since I’ll be on the train more often…Not so much history this year, and I’m sad about it. But some wonderful Zola!

Faves in bold.

• The Cabinet by Un Su Kim (a little bit of weird magical realism – atmospheric)
• Wicca Made Easy by Phyllis Curott
• The Mermaid of Black Conch by Monique Roffey (simply stunning! Romance, magic, race, class, gender conflict, history and mythology collide on a Caribbean island)
• Real Easy by Marie Rutkoski (a gripping mystery set in a 1990s strip club)
• My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell (the teacher-student ‘romance’ under the spotlight)

• Tribes by David Lammy
• Pachinko by Mi Jin Lee
• Wishcraft by Sakura Fox
• Hot Stew by Fiona Mozley (a stylish look at Soho life through the eyes of its multifaceted residents)
• London by Peter Ackroyd (this actually took me over a year to read in dribs and drabs. Ackroyd is just the master of the meandering wander through history)
• Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas
• After the Rain by Alex Elle
• Nox by Anne Carson
• Free by Lea Ypi (fascinating non-fic about the end of communism in Albania through a young girl’s eyes)
• Terraformed by Joy White
• Vita Nostra by Maryna and Serhiy Dyachenko (Dark Academia to the max. Sasha is whisked away to a mysterious university where all is not as it seems)
• Pandora by Susan Stokes Chapman
• The Kill by Emile Zola (lush, lush, lush. A rich conman with a horny son marries a hot 19-year-old. What could go wrong?)
• The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki (I absolutely adore Ruth Ozeki. This one is lyrical and poignant. A young boy struggles to cope after the death of his father)
• Hollow Heart by Marie Rutkoski
• Rule of Wolves by Leigh Bardugo
• Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner (touching and lovely memoir of a Korean-American woman’s relationship with her mother and life between two cultures)
• The Upper World by Femi Fadugba (this one made my heart ache for all my former pupils in Croydon)
• The Fat and the Thin by Emile Zola (an escaped convict makes a new home among the market traders of Paris)
• The Tao of Love and Sex by Jolan Chang
• Quantum Networking by Sam Rossi and Andrea Pickens
• Existential Kink by Carolyn Elliott
• Babel by R.F. Kuang (this one has so much acclaim and I can see why. It is a very interesting book and I had a lot of thoughts about it. Much to love. But there were also things holding me back from marking it as a fave. I would very much like to discuss it with fellow alumni)