Monthly Archives: January 2023

2022 End of Year Book Survey

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Happy 2023, friends and family (and you too, faithful internet stranger… some days I feel like you’re the only one paying attention). In addition to my December round-up, I thought I’d try a bit of a retrospective post, so I found a survey on Perpetual Page Turner that seemed to work as a starting point… let’s see how this goes, shall we?

2022 Reading Stats

Number Of Books You Read: 53 (over goal of 48!) – 20,413 pages.
Number of Re-Reads: shockingly, 0. That almost never happens.
Genre You Read The Most From: Fantasy – which comes as a shock to nobody. Storygraph tells me it was my most-read by a good chunk – see stats below:

Best in Books

1. Best Book You Read In 2022? Dark Matter, by Blake Crouch. This one was recommended to me by my sister-in-law, who has excellent taste, so unsurprisingly I loved it.

2. Book You Were Excited About & Thought You Were Going To Love More But Didn’t? Turbo Twenty-Three by Janet Evanovich. I remember having a great time with the Stephanie Plum series when I was burning through it a few years back, but when I did my little binge this past year I started getting irritated with how the main character never seems to develop any sort of maturity or competence, and the stories re-tread the same tired old ground over and over.

 3. Most surprising (in a good way or bad way) book you read?  A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving. I was expecting to be a little bored, to be honest, which is why I didn’t get around to this one in 2021 when the “Read a book by John Irving” prompt was on the challenge. I got sucked in by the opening paragraph and was thoroughly entranced.

4. Book You “Pushed” The Most People To Read (And They Did)? Well, they haven’t read it just yet, but after gushing about how much I enjoyed The Rook by Daniel O’Malley, my sister-in-law and Linz both picked it up, so I guess that counts?

5. Best series you started in 2022? Best Sequel? Best Series Ender of 2022? The best series starter I picked up this past year has to be The Rage of Dragons by Evan Winter – it took me 32 days to finish it (May was a really slow reading month for me) but it was totally worthwhile. Jade War, #2 in Fonda Lee’s Green Bone Saga, was definitely my favorite sequel. I think the only series-ender I read in 2022 was Leviathan Falls by James S.A. Corey – which means it was the best, but honestly, I loved all of The Expanse so much that it would probably have been my favorite anyway.

 6. Favorite new author you discovered in 2022? New to me, I suppose, although I’ve been hearing great things for a while now… Neal Shusterman (thanks, Linz *wink*).

7. Best book from a genre you don’t typically read/was out of your comfort zone? The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. I am not a historical fiction buff (one way in which Linz and I are shockingly different), but my goodness I loved this book. No wonder it’s consistently on “best of” lists.

8. Most action-packed/thrilling/unputdownable book of the year? It may be recency bias, but I’d say The Rook. Dark Matter was also a page-turner.

9. Book You Read In 2022 That You Would Be MOST Likely To Re-Read Next Year? Josh & Hazel’s Guide to Not Dating by Christina Lauren. Still a sucker for friends-to-lovers romance tropes, and this one was hilarious and touching.

10. Favorite cover of a book you read in 2022? Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi. Which I picked up specifically because the cover jumped out at me during a random Amazon scrolling session. I mean, look at this baby. It’s even more striking in color.

11. Most memorable character of 2022? Jane Yellowrock, from Faith Hunter’s Jane Yellowrock series. Butt-kicking vampire hunting skinwalker, what could possibly be boring about that?

12. Most beautifully written book read in 2022? Hmmm…. I tend to read for plot and character and not pay a great deal of attention to the language used as long as it doesn’t detract from the reading experience. But of the books I read in 2022, I’d say A Prayer for Owen Meany and The Book Thief most often captured me with how things were worded and made me sit and appreciate the language.

13. Most Thought-Provoking/ Life-Changing Book of 2022? Definitely A Prayer for Owen Meany. After I finished it, I just sat there and soaked in the trajectory of the story, and the more I thought about it over the next several days, the more I appreciated it.

14. Book you can’t believe you waited UNTIL 2022 to finally read?  The Book Thief, for sure. I honestly had kind of thought I might have read it before I started keeping records, but once I picked it up I realized immediately that I could not have forgotten it.

 15. Favorite Passage/Quote From A Book You Read In 2022? The opening sentence of A Prayer for Owen Meany:
“I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice—not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother’s death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.“

16.Shortest & Longest Book You Read In 2022? The shortest was Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire, clocking in at 174 pages. The longest, City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert, at 688 pages.

17. Book That Shocked You The Most: Dark Matter. I spent so much of the book trying to figure out what was really happening.

18. OTP OF THE YEAR (you will go down with this ship!) Nikolai and Zoya from the King of Scars duology by Leigh Bardugo.

19. Favorite Non-Romantic Relationship Of The Year: The whole Kaul family from Fonda Lee’s Jade War, especially Anden and Hilo.

20. Favorite Book You Read in 2022 From An Author You’ve Read Previously: Jade War, if you count the fact that it’s the second in a series that I read the first of in 2021.

21. Best Book You Read In 2022 That You Read Based SOLELY On A Recommendation From Somebody Else/Peer Pressure/Bookstagram, Etc.: Dark Matter – again, my sister-in-law’s recommendations are never a disappointment.

22. Newest fictional crush from a book you read in 2022? Joshua Templeman from Sally Thorne’s The Hating Game? Yeah I don’t know. I rarely crush on book characters, the last one that really grabbed me was James Alexander Malcolm McKenzie Fraser, even before they cast Sam Heughan for the television adaptation.

23. Best 2022 debut you read? OK, I don’t believe a read any brand new 2022 debut novels – that I can think of, anyway. The best debut novel I read (published in 2019) was definitely The Rage of Dragons. Excellent first outing by Evan Winter.

24. Best Worldbuilding/Most Vivid Setting You Read This Year? The Martian, by Andy Weir. This also would be my second choice for book I can’t believe I waited until 2022 to read. It was fascinating.

25. Book That Put A Smile On Your Face/Was The Most FUN To Read? Again with the recency bias, but The Rook was so much fun. Along with the thrill ride, it was surprisingly hilarious.

26. Book That Made You Cry Or Nearly Cry in 2022? Oh, quite a few… but the most tears would have been reading Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher. It’s not at all surprising, considering the subject matter.

27. Hidden Gem Of The Year? Deadheading, by Paul Cristo. It’s like The Stand, if Stu Redman was holed up in his house playing video games during the superflu… although the main antagonist is a little less formidable than Randall Flagg. Very interesting post-apocalyptic survival story.

28. Book That Crushed Your Soul? If You Tell by Gregg Olsen. Some people should not be parents. That is all.

29. Most Unique Book You Read In 2022? The hardest question! I thought about The Book Thief, as Death being the point of view character was super unique… Or Shatter Me for the crazy stream of consciousness writing with crossed out thoughts… But I settled on Thirteen Reasons Why, because the way the story is told is so very creative.

30. Book That Made You The Most Mad (doesn’t necessarily mean you didn’t like it)? Turbo Twenty-Three, because Stephanie Plum made some disappointingly bad decisions.

A Quick Look Ahead

I decided not to spend the time answering questions about my plans for 2023… instead, I’ll leave you with this teaser of what’s on my TBR pile:

And with that, we are ready to dive in to the 2023 challenge! I should be back with an update on February 1st, barring illness, natural disaster, or an attack of the lazy. Care to share your best of 2022? How about what you’re looking forward to with 2023? Have you read any of the books listed or shown in my photo above? Do tell!