If you follow along on Instagram or Goodreads you get frequent updates on the books that I am reading and what I think of each one. I like to use the blog as a place to share the best of the best, the finest books, the real standouts. That’s why I’m excited to share all of my top reads from 2022 with you so that you can incorporate the ones that catch your eye to you reading list for 2023.
As a recap, in 2022 I read 50 books and 19,162 pages – this is the most I’ve read in any year since I started tracking! One of the reasons I like to track my reading and write reviews is because I don’t remember the details of books after I finish them. It’s like I live in the book while I am reading it, totally absorbed, and then as soon as it’s done I allow the details to leave my mind and jump into the next world and characters. Taking the time to write and share a review helps me to appreciate what I’ve read and hopefully be able to recall it at least a little after the fact.
This book was picked out for me as part of the New York Public Library’s Shelf Help program. I loved it! The novel is set in the 60s in Brooklyn and follows a cast of characters who are all impacted from a shooting that happens in the first few pages. There are gangsters, church leaders, drunks, drug dealers (some people who fall into multiple categories) who all live in neighboring areas and are impacted by the shooting. I love reading books where characters have accents and where there are multiple stories that overlap with one another. There was intrigue and art theft and somehow it still felt like a light, fast paced read. Highly recommend.
My mother loaned me this book and cited it as one of her favorites from her 20s. Wow. It was excellent!
The novel follows a painting throughout history in reverse chronological order. It’s a fictionalized Vermeer that ends in the hands of a school teacher and starts in Vermeer’s own home with a special model.
Because it’s about a Dutch master this is right up my alley, but regardless of subject matter I thoroughly enjoyed the novel’s structure – traveling in time each chapter with a different set of characters.
There were so many meaningful moments and appreciation of art. I completely loved this one!
I loved this novel! And thank goodness, because most of the books I read this month were misses. The Nest is the name a set of four siblings assign to the inheritance that they have been banking on their whole lives. They had to wait until their youngest sibling turns forty to receive the inheritance and by the time that happens there is very little money left because of one sibling, Leo.
There is the perfect amount of main and supporting story lines to keep the pace fast and interesting. The fact that it is set in New York City is always a plus for me and I thought the writing was very enjoyable and easy to read.
Edith Wharton never disappoints. This novel follows Lily Bart, a woman in her late 20s trying to make it in Gilded Age New York society. She is beautiful and charming and tragically without money. Despite many opportunities to catapult her way into a comfortable and rich life by marrying, she can never seem to bring herself to act in her own “best” interests.
Wharton explores how the values we’re raised with are not always the ones that we can live with and gives us a look into the harsh society that made up the upper class in New York in the Gilded Age.
I adored this book. We follow the narrator, Francie, from age 5 up through her teenage years at the turn of the century in Brooklyn. I loved the New York setting, I loved the child narrator, I loved how nothing but everything seemed to happen.
You get to meet her extended family and learn about the challenges of poverty, but also the uplifting moments that make up everyday life. The prose was beautiful and it was a novel that I didn’t want to end.
This was a sweet and thought provoking book told from the perspective of a young girl (I love books with children’s perspectives) who goes to an unconventional school in Japan. Each chapter is an anecdote about her experience and I thoroughly enjoyed the writing style and subject matter.
I learned after reading the book that the author is a famous tv personality from Japan and she wrote this book as an homage to the school master she learned so much from. This is a great book to be totally transported.
When I first read John Steinbeck in high school (Grapes of Wrath), I fell in love with his characters, his descriptive scenes, and the stories of hardship that he writes. Now, years later, I finally picked up East of Eden and fell in love even more.
This book follows families over multiple generations that interweave with one another (this is my favorite type of story structure) in the United States and makes use of many biblical references. I loved the message of the novel, which I interpreted to be all about free will, and the way the characters interact and the way Steinbeck describes their thinking is captivating. I highly recommend this book!
You can check out my best books of 2021 if you’re looking for more inspiration!
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