Books Read in 2022

[blogcutter]

As I did for 2020 and 2021, I once again kept track of the books I read in 2022. Once again, in defiance of all my librarian training, I have not listed them by author or title, but rather in the order in which I read them. I did, however, make one concession to categorization this year: I wrote "NF" beside all the works of non-fiction. As you will see from the list, about a third of the titles I read were non-fiction, many of them memoirs.


1. Eight Detectives - Alex Pavesi
2. Around the World in 80 Days - Jules Verne
NF 3. Bodies - Susie Orbach
4. The School for Good Mothers - Jessamine Chan
5. The Maid - Nita Prose
NF6. The Shitstorm that was 2020 - Jon Sinden & Mark Lim
NF7. The Hot Mess that was 2020 - Jon Sinden & Mark Lim.
8. Murder at the Seaview Hotel - Glenda Young
NF9. Secrets of the Sprakkar: Iceland's extraordinary women & how they are changing the world - Eliza Reid
NF10. The World of All Creatures Great & Small - James Steen
11. A Shetland Winter Mystery - Marsali Taylor
12. The Abortion: An Historical Romance 1966 - Richard Brautigan
NF13. Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word
14. The Christie Affair - Nina de Garment
15. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
16. The Girl Behind the Wall - Mandy Robotham
17. Something Lost: a mystery novel - Pat Duffy Hutcheon
18. Pluck - Donna Morrissey
NF19. The Informer: Confessions of an ex-terrorist - Carole de Vault with William Johnson
20. Looking for Jane - Heather Marshall
21. The Break - Katherena Vermette
22. A Thousand Steps - T. Jefferson Parker
NF23. Run Towards the Danger - Sarah Polley
24. Crispr'd - Judy Foreman
NF25. The Five Clocks - Martin Joos
26. The Strangers - Katherena Vermette
NF27. Forever Young - Hayley Mills
28. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd - Agatha Christie
NF29. The Case for Basic Income - Jamie Swift & Elaine Power
30. The Man in the Brown Suit - Agatha Christie
31. A Man Can Build a House - Nathalie Sedgwick Colby
32. Omand's Creek - Don Macdonald
NF33. Even the Sidewalk Could Tell - Alon Ozery
NF34. Beyond the Gender Binary - Alok Said-Menon
35. Hitman's Daughter - Carolyne Topdjian
NF36. The Film Club: A true story of father & son - David Gilmour
37. Miss Graham's Cold War Cookbook - Celia Rees
38. Light a Penny Candle - Maeve Binchy
39. Murder in an Irish Village - Carlene O'Connor
40. The Happy Prince & Other Stories - Oscar Wilde
41. Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats - T.S. Eliot
42. Queer Whispers: Gay & Lesbian Voices in Irish Fiction - edited by Jose Carregal (intro: Mary Dorcey)
NF43. We Don't Know Ourselves: a personal history of modern Ireland - Fintan O'Toole
NF44. Ireland, A Bicycle and a Tin Whistle - David A. Wilson
NF45. Country Girl: A Memoir - Edna O'Brien
46. Yeats is Dead: mystery by 15 Irish writers (editor Joseph O'Connor; benefit for Amnesty International)
NF47. Reel Ottawa: a memoir - Dan Lalande
48. A Noise from the Woodshed - Mary Dorcey
49. Dubliners - James Joyce
50. Curtain Call at the Seaview Hotel - Glenda Young
NF51. Sorry for Your Trouble: The Irish Way of Death - Ann Marie Hourihane
52. Romping Through Ulysses - Niall Laverty & Maite Lopez-Schroder
53. Deadly Director's Cut - Vicki Delany
54. Running Out of Road - Cath Staincliffe
55. Cascade - Rachel A. Rosen
56. Clouded Vision - Linwood Barclay
57. Metronome - Tom Watson
58. Bill Bergson and the White Rose Rescue - Astrid Lindgren
59. Donna Parker, Special Agent - Marcia Martin
60. I Married A Dead Man - Cornell Woolrich (William Irish)
NF61. Dublin's Literary Pubs - Peter Costello
NF62. Growing Up Trans: In our own words - edited by Lindsey Herriot and Kate Fry
63. Where The Crawdads Sing - Delia Owens
64. The Sleeping Car Porter - Suzette Mayr
NF65. The Myth of the Wrong Body - Miquel Missé
66. The Foghorn Echoes - Danny Ramadan
NF67. A People's Senate for Canada - Helen Forsey
68. The Part-time Job / Murder Most Foul - P.D. James
69. The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry - Gabrielle Kevin
NF70. Not One, Not Even One: memory of life-altering experiences in Sierra Leone - Nancy Christine Edwards
71. A Line to Kill - Anthony Horowitz
NF72. 1963: The Year of the Revolution: How youth changed the world... - Robin Morgan & Ariel Leve
73. Dandelion - Jamie Chai Yun Liew
74. Blind Date - Brenda Chapman
75. 54 Pigs - Philipp Schott
NF76. Saving Us: A Climate Scientist's Case for Hope & Healing in a Divided World - Katherine Hayhoe
77. The Wonder - Emma Donoghue
78. A Vicky Hill Exclusive! Hannah Dennison
79. Precious Little - Camille Fouillard
NF80. Trafficked - Sophie Hayes
81. Hope for the Innocent - Caroline Dunford
NF82. Wired for Music - Adriana Barton
83. Pawn to Queen: a Chris Prior mystery - Pat Dobie
84. A World of Curiosities - Louise Penny
85. Murder After Christmas - Rupert Latimer
NF86. Rewired: Protecting Your Brain in the Digital Age - Carl D. Marci
87. The Disappearance of Adele Bedeau - Graeme Macrae Burnet
88. Murder Most Royal - S.J. Bennett
89. A Spoonful of Murder - J.M. Hall
NF90. Becoming Eve: My journey from ultra-Orthodox rabbi to transgender woman - Abby Chava Stein
91. The Accident on the A-35 - Graeme Macrae Burnet

So that's my list. A handful of serious books, a couple of classics I've either been meaning to read for ages (or was prompted to re-read for various reasons). A few are kids' books. I don't think there were any really long books I read this year. Lots of crime fiction. Many are recent best-sellers.

Comments

[cmcmck]

90 sounds intriguing!

One of the best serious pieces of research on trans womanhood back in my early days was Anne Bolin's: 'In Search of Eve' so clearly the same thing occurred to both writers.

[blogcutter]

It was indeed a fascinating book, not so much for the trans story but the incredibly isolated (as well as gender-segregated) lifestyle the author led as a boy and a young man (at least socially) during the first two decades of her life (and she's still a young woman - we're talking 1990s and early 2000s New York State here!) She was one of 13 children, she married at 18 and sired a son and her formal education was nearly all in Hebrew and Yiddish, studying the Torah in excruciating detail but barely any of the traditional academic subjects one would expect in the modern world.

It was also a frustrating book because for me at least, it ended way too soon. All of the transgender journey is packed into the last chapter. We learn that she divorced her wife, that only two of her siblings are still communicating with her, and that she graduated from Columbia University. I really wanted more details as to how she accomplished all that and how life was for the divorced wife and the rest of the family, although I understand the author's probable need for reticence about all that.

[sabotabby]

Look at you go! I'm impressed.

[blogcutter]

Thank you, although the reason I manage to spend that much time reading is almost wholly down to the fact that I'm retired and live a fairly typical Canadian middle-class lifestyle. Unlike you, I haven't read or published any books over the past year, nor have I held down a full-time teaching job!