Like everyone else, I usually call this list the "best of"--but I realized that was a bad choice of title because (1) I read a lot of books not published in 2022 and (2) I clearly have different tastes than critics so I may not know what is best but I do know what I like! So here are my favorites from just shy of 300 books read this year (many of them truly terrible mysteries I never mentioned on the blog).
Favorite Novel
True Biz, by Sara Novic, is a book I'm not seeing on any "best of" lists, but I thought it was compelling and deeply moving. It's the story of a 15-year-old deaf girl with a faulty cochlear implant, no knowledge of ASL, and parents deeply divided about how to give her a good future. The audiobook has a unique feature: when conversations in the book would have been signed, the author was actually signing in the background. Hearing the movement of her arms and smacks when one hand hit the other was a reminder that these conversations would have been silent. I loved that.
Honorable Mention: Our Missing Hearts, by Celeste Ng; Great Circle, by Maggie Shipstead; Olga Dies Dreaming, by Xochitl Gonzalez; The Anomaly, by Herve Le Tellier (best sci-fi/fantasy of the year by far, but I don't read enough to make it a category); Crossroads, by Jonathan Franzen; Klara and the Sun, by Kazuo Ishiguro; The Many Daughters of Afong Moy, by Jamie Ford (I know it's a lot, but they were all wonderful)
Favorite Short Story Collection
Festival Days, by JoAnn Beard, is a collection of stories that are not only enjoyable but memorable. The subject matter is sometimes grim but the stories still manage to be redemptive. One story in particular, about a woman who seeks help from Dr. Kevorkian, has come back to me numerous times throughout the year (I read the book in February).
Honorable Mention: Land of Big Numbers, by Ti-Peng Chen
Favorite Mystery/Thriller
I read so many bad mysteries that I can't choose between the two I thought were unusual and great this year (does that even make sense?).
Five Decembers, by James Kestrel, has a classic noir feel. Set in Hawaii and Asia during World War II, the book follows police officer Joe McGrady as he tries to solve the murder of two young people with powerful family connections in the U.S. and Japan.
Wrong Place Wrong Time, by Gillian McAllister, is a singular mystery in which the protagonist travels backwards in time to try to figure out what she needs to know to prevent her son from murdering a man. Beautifully constructed with many twists.
Favorite YA
Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson, is an incredible book about high school freshman Melinda, who has been abandoned by her friends because she called 911 from a summer party where she was assaulted. Through the process of making art and the support of her art teacher, Melinda finds the strength to take action. Melinda's voice is authentic and sad, but there is also humor in the book and the ending is upbeat. Teenage boys and girls should read and talk about this book.
Honorable Mention: They Both Die at the End, by Adam Silvera
Favorite Nonfiction
Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty, by Patrick Radden Keefe, is the book I couldn't stop talking about this year. It details the criminal perfidy of the Sackler family across three generations, demonstrating their complicity in the opioid crisis. Despite thinking I am a fairly well-informed person, I found this book shocking. The dilemma posed by the revelations of the family's criminality for the many institutions to which they had donated huge sums of money was another issue I knew a bit about but learned much more about from Keefe's discussion.
Honorable Mention: How the Word Is Passed, by Clint Smith; and Four Hundred Souls: A Community History, 1619-2019, edited by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain (these are both wonderful books that I just didn't talk about quite as much as Empire of Pain)
Favorite Memoir/Autobiography
I am making this a separate category this year instead of lumping in with nonfiction because I read a couple that I loved and wanted to highlight:
In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss, by Amy Bloom, is the moving and instructive story of her husband's decision to seek aided suicide when he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. She writes about each step in the difficult process with great insight and grace.
All In, by Billie Jean King. I always admired Billie Jean and thought I knew quite a lot about her, especially her career, so I was surprised at how much I learned about her work, not just as a tennis player but as an advocate for women, in sports and beyond. For me, the book made her a three-dimensional person, rather than an icon.
Honorable Mention: Going There, by Katie Couric
Poetry
I Hope This Finds You Well, by Kate Baer. Baer creates erasure poems from nasty responses to her work on social media, fan letters, promotional emails, congressional testimony, virtually any kind of source. And the poems are funny and often pack an emotional punch. Having tried doing erasure poems, I know creating works of this quality is really hard, and she does it so well.
Honorable Mention: What Kind of Woman, by Kate Baer; You Better Be Lightning, by Andrea Gibson
Favorite Passages
I find it informative to look over the quotes I have chosen as favorite passages throughout the year--the process may provide more insight into my state of mind than that of authors, but still. This year I was trying to impose some themes on the quotes I chose as favorite passages--the loss of connection, the power of words or story. But I think they were more random--perhaps a reflection of the state of my brain after nearly three pandemic years. But here is one worth thinking about:
Who we are and who belongs is the most fundamental question that we have ever asked or can ever ask. We are still struggling to get the answer to this question right. We are still coming up short.
--John A. Powell in an essay on Dred Scott from the book Four Hundred Souls
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