Every Book I Read in 2022, Ranked: The Very Best Books, Honorable Mentions, and Everything Else, Too

Okay, readers, gather round: we’ve got a behemoth of a books post coming your way. (I can think of no better way to end my blogging sabbatical, yes?)

To end 2022 with some bookish pizzazz, I’m shaking my bookish reflection up this year. I’m not only sharing my very favorite books I read in 2022; I’m also sharing every single book of the 75 I read this year and how I would rank them.

Below, you’ll find each book I read sorted into genre, then ranked in order of my favorite to least favorite. The very best ones are highlighted at the top, so don’t miss those as you skim. It’s been a pretty solid reading year, and I want you to get the absolute most book recommendations to start 2023’s hibernation season right!

Also note that if I finished a book and it made it to this list, I at least somewhat enjoyed it. I’m not afraid to abandon books that are dragging me down. (Case in point, I abandoned 25 books this year – my most ever, I think? I’m not including those titles below.)

Okay, enough intro – fire up your library holds list, your Kindle, or your Bookshop account, and let’s get cracking!

Fiction

The Best of the Best

1. I Capture the Castle – Dodie Smith. This book follows Cassandra, who lives in a dilapidated castle with her quirky, broke family. Cute new boys move in next door, and cue Pride-and-Prejudice-but-in-1934 vibes. I said aloud to no one, “Gosh, I love this book,” multiple times while reading this. (Plus, it’s by the author who wrote One Hundred and One Dalmatians. Weird but true.)
2. Anxious People – Fredrick Backman. This book is the most charming hostage situation book you’ll ever read. Plus, once you finish it, you’ll want to reread everything to figure out how Backman pulled off multiple surprising reveals (and made you fall in love with initially unlikeable characters). If you enjoyed A Man Called Ove, this will be exactly up your alley.
3. The House in the Cerulean Sea – T.J. Klune. This book took me forever to finish because I absolutely did not want it to end. (Should I restart it right now? Possibly.) In it, Linus Baker inspects homes for magical children. He is so effective at his job that he is sent on special assignment to an island in said cerulean sea, and hijinks ensue. I initially avoided this book because I thought there was no way it could live up to the hype, but it does. IT DOES.
4. The Maid: A Novel – Nita Prose. And now, the most charming murder mystery book you’ll ever read. Molly works devotedly as a maid at a hotel. When she finds a dead man in a hotel suite that she cleans, she sets out to solve the mystery before she’s the one who’s declared guilty. Molly struggles to read social cues, which adds a unique layer to the narration, and you’ll absolutely adore her from the first pages.
5. Remarkably Bright Creatures – Shelby Van Pelt. This book told through multiple perspectives, and one of the narrators is an octopus. If that intrigues you, you’re 99% certain to enjoy this book. (The other narrators are grieving elderly woman and a 30-year-old man-boy who is struggling to pull his life together. That’s all you need to know.)
6. Love and Saffron: A Novel of Friendship, Food, and Love – Kim Fey. This epistolary novel about a 1960s newspaper columnist and the pen pal who introduces her to new foods is absolute delight. (Garlic? Revolutionary!) If you liked The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie society, this is exactly up your alley.

Honorable Mentions

• The Guncle – Steven Rowley. Two children’s mother dies and their father goes to rehab, so they spend a summer living with their washed-up actor uncle. The premise sounds tragic, but the book is not at all. Rather, it’s funny and charming and tender, and you’ll love every single character.
• The No-Show – Beth O’Leary. Beth O’Leary is the author of The Flatshare, one of my favorite romantic comedies I’ve ever read. I likewise greatly enjoyed this book, in which three women are stood up on Valentine’s Day and have to untangle why.
• Lessons in Chemistry – Bonnie Garmus. Don’t let the cover deceive you – this isn’t exactly fluffy chick lit. Elizabeth Zott is a chemist attempting to build a career in the sexist world of 1960s science, and this novel follows her struggles in both her personal life and career. There’s tragic death, assault, and endless prejudice, but this book doesn’t feel too heavy thanks to a little humor and Elizabeth’s delightful found family.

All the Rest

1. The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot – Marianne Cronin. A teenager in the hospital befriends an elderly woman, and together they tell the story of their combined 100 years. The characters are all so loveable, but don’t read this on an airplane. The copious crying was a situation.
2. Glittering Images – Susan Howatch. If you are in the narrow demographic that enjoys fictional priests in the Church of England behaving questionably, ecclesiastical gossip, and psychological analysis, you won’t be able to put this book down. You’ve gotta be able to handle a little steam and a little theology – if you’re one of the seven other people in the world who’s down for that, this book is twisty and fascinating.
3. Circe – Madeline Miller. This book tells the story of Circe, the witch who has a fling with Odysseus. I’m here for Greek myths being retold through a female’s perspective (if you are too, check out Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey), and the story was well written.
4. Iron Lake – William Kent Kruger. A great wintery Minnesota mystery if you’re into the vibe of Louise Penny’s Three Pines series (but I have FEELINGS about one of the events near the end. If you’ve read it, you know the one).
5. Into the Drowning Deep – Mira Grant. A researcher heads into the ocean to find out what horrors lurk there and killed her sister. Mermaid horror is not my typical genre (understatement) and I didn’t 100% buy the ending, but this one was fun and very engrossing.
6. The Shell Seekers – Rosamund Pilcher. Rosamund Pilcher writes the ultimate comfort reads. I enjoyed this one, which tells the story of an elderly woman’s life and a painting completed by her father, but I didn’t adore it quite as much as Pilcher’s Winter Solstice.
7. The City We Became – N.K. Jemisin. This book is the weird but engrossing story of an alien entity taking over the spirit of New York City. Five people who personify each borough must band together to save it. The premise of this story was intriguing, and the execution *almost* lived up to it.
8. Ask Again, Yes – Mary Beth Keane. This story, about a childhood tragedy and how it impacted two best friends, is beautifully written and complex. You’ll love it if you like dysfunctional family stories and reading about trauma responses. But fair warning, if you need a little hope in your books, you won’t really get it until the last 20 pages.
9. The Women in Black – Madeleine St. John. This book follows three women who all work in a fancy department store in Sydney, Australia. If you like a charming book that tap-dances through some life events without a ton of drama or angst, this is a fun, quick read for Christmas break.
10. The Ten Thousand Doors of January – Alix E. Harrow. This book has an interesting premise – doors opening into new worlds! – and is a great read if you love fantasy intermixed with historical fiction. The plot’s pacing is a little unbalanced, but I still thought it was worth reading for the ending.
11. Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding. The movie version of this was quite faithful to the book: the plot is basically the same, as is the plucky, slightly ridiculous humor. Trigger warning if you struggle with any food stuff, as Bridget talks incessantly about dieting.
12. Love and Other Words – Christina Lauren. Two childhood best friends haven’t talked to each other in years, but run into each other at a coffee shop. Dual perspectives untangle why their relationship fell apart. Too much teenage sexual discovery for me, but if you don’t mind that, this is a read-in-one-weekend kind of romance.
13. What We Were Promised – Lucy Tan. I thought this book, about a Shanghai family’s secrets, would be a more serious, mysterious Crazy Rich Asians. It was fine, but I was hoping for something frothier from the premise.
14. Finlay Donovan is Killing It – Elle Kosimano. If you’re down for a somewhat ridiculous premise – a crime writer discusses her next novel at Panera and gets mistaken for a hit woman – and up for suspending disbelief for a while, this is a diverting read.  
15. Book Lovers – Emily Henry. It was fine. It really was. But I apparently just don’t love Emily Henry’s writing or find the relationships in her books at all realistic? (She says of a romantic comedy – maybe it’s just not my genre).
16. Nora Goes Off Script – Annabel Monaghan. Whelp, another romantic comedy. So many people love this book, too. I thought the premise was cute and the story addictive, but in the end it just wasn’t that satisfying.
17. A Week in Winter – Maeve Binchy. If you’re in a reading mood that requires a cozy story that takes place in a renovated Irish B&B, this is a sweet pick.
18. The Snow Child – Eowyn Ivey. A beautiful story about a snowman who turns into a child, but too much underlying dread and not as much charm and magic as I was expecting.

Classics

1. Persuasion – Jane Austen. I reread this to pregame for the Netflix Jane Austen adaptation. The movie was eh; the book was, once again, delightful. More emotional and angsty than Jane Austen usually is, but with the same excellent payoff.

(Side note: apparently I could stand to read more classics in 2023, as this was the lone classic I read this year.)

Middle Grade and YA

The Best of the Best

1. Starfish – Lisa Fipps. This book, about an overweight young girl and the terrible bullying she faces (sometimes from her own family), made me cry multiple times. But the ending is so full of hope.
2. The Beatryce Prophecy – Kate DiCamillo. I want to be Kate DiCamillo when I grow up. She talks to kids about hard, scary things and gives hope without diminishing the difficulty. This book, about a girl who is destined to save a kingdom, is so dear. Bonus points for the feisty goat.

Honorable Mentions

• The Vanderbeekers of 141^st Street – Karina Yan Glaser. You’ll want to hug this family, whose kids band together to keep from being kicked out of their rental. Another great Christmas break read.
• The Penderwicks – Jeanne Birdsall. A charming troop of girls and their father go to a vacation house for the summer and create all sorts of hijinks with the family who owns the property. Adorable.
• To Night Owl from Dogfish – Holly Goldberg Sloan and Meg Wolitzer. I’m a sucker for epistolary novels, so this book was delightful. Told through emails, this book follows two middle school girls whose fathers fall in love. The girls are not having it, which makes for a great Parent Trap-esque story.

All the Rest

• Barakah Beats – Maleeha Siddiqui. This book follows a young Muslim girl who starts public middle school in 7^th grade and accidentally ends up in the school’s most popular band. The only problem is that her parents are against music. This was a lot of fun and good for discussion with my tutoring student.
• With the Fire on High – Elizabeth Acevedo. In this book, a teenage mom with a culinary gift navigates high school and family. I love Elizabeth Acevedo, and everything about this story should have landed for me. But apparently I can’t do teenage romances anymore? If you haven’t taught teenagers for too long, you’ll probably love this.
• Three Keys – Kelly Yang. The sequel to Front Desk, this is a story of an immigrant family who owns a hotel and their middle school daughter’s fight for immigrant rights. I also read this with a tutoring student, and we both enjoyed it.
• Take Back the Block – Crystal D. Giles. This is a sweet, empowering story of a kid fighting for his neighborhood. Another one I read with a tutoring student.
• I am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter – Erika Sanchez. I thought this was going to be a mystery. It was not. (It was an exploration of teenage grief and depression, if you’re interested in that.)

Poetry

1. What Kind of Woman – Kate Baer. Kate Baer is a poet who’s made a name for herself with her relatable Instagram poems. Her reflections on motherhood and marriage were beautiful and incisive.
2. Texts from Jane Eyre – Mallory Ortberg. Okay, this isn’t poetry, but I’m not sure where else to put a coffee table book with text exchanges between fictional characters. It was funny, but it starts to feel repetitive if you read too many in a row, and a significant number of the references went completely over my head.

Memoir/Biography

The Best of the Best

1. Bomb Shelter: Love, Time, and Other Explosives – Mary Laura Philpott. I bought this book as soon as I finished it because I knew I would want to reread it. This memoir continues Philpott’s reflections on family life and the accompanying love and loss. It’s tender and memorable and beautifully written.
2. Untamed – Glennon Doyle. This is another book I’ll be buying. Doyle explains how society has tamed and trapped women and the story of how she broke free in very unconventional ways. Not every piece of advice in this book works for me, but it’s a powerful story with lots of poignant insight.

Honorable Mentions

• These Precious Days – Ann Pachett. This is a lovely, lovely collection of essays. The longest one follows Pachett’s friendship with Suki, Tom Hanks’ assistant, and it is tender and beautiful. I will return to this one.
• I Heard You Paint Houses: Frank “The Irishman” Sheeran and Closing the Case on Jimmy Hoffa – Charles Brandt. A great rec from my brother, this is the true story of a lawyer interviewing a legendary hit man for the Mafia. The biography took a while to get going, but once it did it was jaw-dropping. Don’t miss the epilogue and afterward where the author confirms all the stories with additional research.
• The Year of Biblical Womanhood: How a Liberated Woman Found Herself Sitting on Her Roof, Covering Her Head, and Calling Her Husband “Master”  – Rachel Held Evans. The late, great Rachel Held Evans attempts to literally live by the rules for biblical womanhood. This book is clever and funny, and even Held Evans seems surprised by the insights she takes away.
• The Matriarch: Barbara Bush and the Making of an American Dynasty – Susan Page. Never did I think I’d be interested in a biography of Barbara Bush, but I picked this up after a friend in my book club recommended it. What a complex woman and multifaceted life. I couldn’t help but keep telling Adam unsolicited tidbits about the Bush family while reading, and I now think about Barbara more than I ever anticipated.
• Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving and Finding the Church – Rachel Held Evans. If your relationship with church feels a little complicated, this book is a kind, understanding companion.

All the Rest

• Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America – Gilbert King. This is a multilayered story about a Florida rape case and Thurgood Marshall’s career. This isn’t for the faint of heart, as the story is horrifying AND there is a complex web of characters to keep track of. However, I did sit up and say, “What?!?!” aloud at one point, so if you want an unbelievable true story, this fits the bill.
• Taste: My Life Through Food – Stanley Tucci. This food memoir is such fun and is guaranteed to make you crave good pasta. (If you’re a grammar nut like me, though, you may be distracted by his overuse of passive voice. Otherwise, a delight.)
• Three Girls from Bronzeville – Dawn Turner. A fascinating, heartbreaking story of three girls who grew up in a Chicago neighborhood and whose lives took very different turns. Not an easy read, but a powerful one.
• Open Book – Jessica Simpson. I listened to most of this on audio while on a road trip, set it down for almost a year, then finally finished it via actual book. If you’d like a book that feels like long-form People magazine, this is a good one, especially since Jessica Simpson reads the audiobook herself. Plus, you’ll never look at John Mayer the same way again.
• I Guess I Haven’t Learned that Yet: Discovering New Ways of Living When the Old Ways Stop Working – Shauna Niequist. Shauna untangles her feelings about an unnamed Bad Thing that Happened and her family’s uprooting and move to New York City. Many women in my circles who are Shauna Niequist stans, but I just didn’t love this one. It felt like she ignored the elephant in the room (a family scandal that’s relatively well-documented online) and really needed more time before she could write in a way that didn’t feel evasive.
• A Very Punchable Face – Colin Jost. This memoir *is* very funny, but I really wanted to hear more about how on earth Colin ended up married to Scarlett freaking Johannson. If you’re an SNL superfan, you still might enjoy this.
• Picnic in Provence – Elizabeth Berg. This book follows an American expat’s life in a French village and the food she cooks. It’s quiet and sweet and will make you hungry.
• The Wreckage of My Presence – Casey Wilson. This comedian’s memoir is funny and enjoyable (but as I can’t remember any specific stories from it, apparently it wasn’t that memorable).
• No Cure for Being Human: And Other Truths I Need to Hear – Kate Bowler. I really like Kate Bowler, but I didn’t find this book to have many new ideas from the podcast interviews she’s done or her previous work.
• Supper of the Lamb: A Culinary Reflection – Robert Farrar Capon. A chef and Episcopalian priest waxes poetic about food and eating together. There are some gendered references that did not age well, but if you’re into the spirituality behind good food, this might work for you.
• My Mother was Nuts – Penny Marshall. If you enjoyed Laverne and Shirley, this might be a fun behind the scenes peek at Penny Marshall’s life. Plus there’s a lot of entertaining name-dropping. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, skip this one.
• That Sounds Fun: The Joys of Being an Amateur, the Power of Falling in Love, and Why You Need a Hobby – Annie F. Downs. I expected this to be self-help about how to actually have more fun, but it was more of a memoir about Annie’s life and discovering her own need for fun. I occasionally listen to and enjoy Annie’s podcast, but this didn’t quite land for me.
• Fierce, Free, and Full of Fire: The Guide to Being Glorious You – Jen Hatmaker. I typically think Jen Hatmaker is hilarious. But I didn’t enjoy this one. It had so many loving references to her husband, whom she divorced shortly after the book released, that it made me sad, and her attempts at self-help felt like she was repeating other people’s research in a less helpful way. I skimmed for the funny stories.
• Find Your People: Building Deep Community in a Lonely World – Jennie Allen. While the premise of this book is good (practical support for making friends), I found the ideas repetitive and not actually that helpful. This is one of those books that I thought would have made a better blog post than book.

Self-Help and Other Nonfiction

The Best of the Best

1. The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity – Julia Cameron. I’ve seen this book recommended by scores of writers, and for good reason. What a book. This is actually a twelve-week “course” for any artist of any stripe to reawaken their creativity. If you’re open-minded about Cameron’s ideas and do your homework, it actually works. I’ll absolutely reference this one in years to come.
2. Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art – James Nestor. This book explores how we breathe and the author’s experiments to do so better. Sounds boring, but it’s absolutely not, and I think about this book’s ideas every single time I work out.

Honorable Mentions

• Deep Work – Cal Newport. If your brain feels broken and you can’t focus anymore, this book has numerous great tools and ideas to get your concentration back. Cal Newport really needs to include more positive examples of women in all of his books (including the below), but I think the tips are still worth reading.
• So Good They Can’t Ignore You – Cal Newport. Newport explores how “find your passion” isn’t great career advice and what to do instead. He’s a little curmudgeon-y, but I still found the ideas incredibly helpful, enough so that I think this would be an excellent graduation gift for any college graduate.
• Laundry Love – Patric Richardson. Richardson calls himself the Laundry Evangelist, and this book is his treatise on how to do laundry properly. While reading this is possibly the most Enneagram 1 thing I did all year, I did find it immensely helpful. Fair warning, the book structure isn’t set up for the easiest reference (it could use an index), but I used sticky tabs on notable pages, and I’ve looked things up multiple times.

All the Rest

• Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead – Brene Brown. I’ve read and listened to A LOT of Brene Brown, so I’d already heard most of this information. But if you’re new to her research on shame and vulnerability, this is a great place to start.
• Writing Down the Bones – Natalie Goldberg. A solid book about writing and its benefits with some helpful writing exercises (but The Artist’s Way was better).
• Organizing for the Rest of Us – Dana K. White. I read this in one sitting on a plane. Dana of the blog “A Slob Comes Clean” does have some very solid ideas about exactly *how* to bring order to your space, especially if usual organizing books and tips don’t work for you. (I mean, I imagine this is true – I read organizing books for fun, so…) I’m working on internalizing her “better is good” attitude toward cleaning, and it’s helping me actually stay on top of the dishes for once in my entire actual life.
• Decluttering at the Speed of Life – Dana K. White. If you need someone to hold your hand and give you a step-by-step, no-nonsense way to think about decluttering, this is your book. This is a solid process that I imagine would be massively helpful if you feel like you can’t make any decluttering headway. (Again, my word is only so helpful here as I also, ahem, watch decluttering videos for fun, too…)
• The Power of Ritual: Turning Everyday Activities into Soulful Practices – Casper ter Kuile. From the host of Harry Potter and the Sacred Text, this book explores how traditional religious practices can benefit the nonreligious. I wasn’t exactly the target audience, but he did have some interesting ideas about what makes something sacred.
• Adorning the Dark: Thoughts on Community, Calling, and the Mystery of Making – Andrew Peterson. Peterson explores creativity and faith and…that’s really all I remember about this one. I think there are more helpful offerings in this space.
• If You Want to Write – Brenda Ueland. Another book about writing. This one was an option on one of my college writing class syllabi, but it was pretty rambling and feels dated (especially in some problematic racial references).
• 168 Hours: You Have More Time than You Think – Laura Vanderkam. This book had some interesting ideas about time management, but lots of the author’s advice seems unrealistic for most people. Plus, it made me bitter about the time that I have to spend time on household maintenance, and that’s no bueno.
• Paperback Crush: The Totally Radical History of 80s and 90s Teen Fiction – Gabrielle Moss. This book walks through the typical tropes explored by 80s and 90s teen series (you know, the pink paperbacks where installments numbered into the hundreds). This felt sort of like a non-academic lit review – the one thing that will stick with me after reading it is the reference to the Pony Pals, a series about horses that I loved as a 7-year-old (and that my parents completely mocked).

Now it’s your turn – what are YOUR best books from this year? Tell me everything in the comments.

P.S. I still stand by my favorite books from 2021, 2020, and 2019, too!