What I read in 2022
A lightly annotated list from Everyone is Still Alive to Winter Tales via Pont
When I brought out my The Book of Book Lists book in 2017, I made a New Year's resolution that for the first time I would make a note of all the books I read in 2018 (for pleasure - a list which included those I read/consulted for work purposes would have made it a much longer and quite different list). I’ve done the same thing every year since then and would recommend it - it reminds you what actually passed before your eyes over the previous 12 months and sometimes of titles you’d completely forgotten about.
Anyway, here is my list for 2022 (so far, I’ll probably sneak in a couple more before December 31 - George Mackay Brown’s ‘Winter Tales’ is literally by my elbow as I type) in the order in which I read them, with some occasional notes and my favourites marked with an asterisk. A very brief analysis indicates of the titles, shows:
a 28-49 female-male split
36 novels/short story collections
18 non-fiction titles (history, food, memoir, travel, books about books)
11 poetry collections
5 photo books
3 graphic novels/cartoons
2 that I didn’t finish (not just skipped a bit, properly gave up on)
1 play
Everyone is Still Alive by Cathy Rentzenbrink
Madrid de Blanco/Madrid in White by Maria Morenes *
Hertfordshire: The Buildings of England by Nikolaus Pevsner
The Talking Horse and the Sad Girl and the Village Under the Sea by Mark Haddon
Hurdy Gurdy by Christopher Wilson
The Anarchy by William Dalrymble * (an eye-opening account of the East India Company)
Lost Classics ed. Michael Ondaatje et al
Something so wild and new in this feeling by Sarah Doyle
The Light Years (Vol I, The Cazalet Chronicles) by Elizabeth Jane Howard * (I loved this pentalogy, although the final volume not as much)
Hadrian’s Wall by Chris Routledge
Marking Time (Vol II, The Cazalet Chronicles) by Elizabeth Jane Howard
Confusion (Vol III, The Cazalet Chronicles) by Elizabeth Jane Howard
On Reading by Marcel Proust
The Kids by Hannah Lowe
London in the Snow, introduction by Lucy Davies (published by Hoxton Mini Press, a publishers I only recently discovered but who have a fabulour catalogue)
The Lake Wobegon Virus by Garrison Keillor
Casting Off (Vol IV, The Cazalet Chronicles) by Elizabeth Jane Howard
All Change (Vol V, The Cazalet Chronicles) by Elizabeth Jane Howard
A Bunch of Sweet Peas by Henry Donald
The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark * (my friend Emma Wayland read Spark’s entire output this year and recommended this to me - it’s tremendous)
Pont (cartoons) by Pont (Graham Laidler) * (if you’ve not come across Pont, please hunt his work down, arguably the finest cartoonist of the 20th century)
Death of a Bookseller by Bernard Farmer
Not Sorry by Sarah Salway
The Machine Stops by EM Forster
The Fortnight in Summer by RC Sheriff * (one of those novels which when described sounds plotless and dull, but one of those ‘all human life is there’ pieces of excellence)
The Sea Raiders by HG Wells (short stories)
Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
The Gap in the Curtain by John Buchan
Welsh Food Stories by Carwyn Graves
Accidents of Fortune by Andrew Devonshire
Jane’s Country Year by Malcolm Saville
The Golden Flea by Michael Rips
Neck-Verse by UA Fanthorpe
Work From Shed by Hoxton Mini Press (a book I mentioned in a previous newsletter)
Osebel: Voices from a Swedish Village by Marit Kapla
The Lamplighters by Emma Stonex
The Continuity Girl by Patrick Kincaid (a novel which is centred on the making of one of my favourite films, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes)
Septology by Jon Fosse (unfinished - I couldn’t get into this at all, although I know others have enjoyed it hugely. It’s me, not him)
Magnetic Field: The Marsden Poems by Simon Armitage
Waterloo Sunrise by John Davis * (a smashing history of London in the 1960s and 1970s through a series of essays by my old university lecturer)
Pilgrimage by Peter Stanford
Summerwater by Sarah Moss * (I loved this)
Diplomatic Gifts: A History in Fifty Presents by Paul Brummell
Fleishman Is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner
Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill *
Index, A History of the by Dennis Duncan * (although a history of the index may not sound promising to you, it’s actually a treat and very readable)
The Emergency Poet: An Anti-Stress Poetry Anthology edited by Deborah Alma
Words and Pictures: Writers, Artists and a Peculiarly British Tradition by Jenny Uglow
Asterix et le Griffon Jean-Yves Ferri and Didier Conrad (via Goscinny and Uderzo)
Flashman and the Dragon by Georges MacDonald Fraser
Poet’s Pub by Eric Linklater
Flashman and the Tiger by Georges MacDonald Fraser
Low Tide by William Mayne
On Trains by John Betjeman, ed. Jonathan Glancey
Brendon Chase by BB (Denys Watkins-Pitchford)
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson * (marvellous)
Alexa, what is there to know about love by Brian Bilston
Making History: The Storytellers Who Shaped The Past by Richard Cohen
Deltas by Leonie Rushforth
Matrix by Lauren Groff
A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare *
Red Sky At Morning by Richard Bradford * (perhaps my favourite read of the year, a kind of Catcher in the Rye, but funny and with a likeable protagonist)
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion (enjoyed this more than I was expecting to)
Bibliomaniac by Robin Ince
The Address Book: What Street Addresses Reveal about Identity, Race, Wealth and Power by Deirdre Mask (didn’t finish this either, again, my fault as it’s very interesting)
Christmas Poems by UA Fanthorpe
Briggflatts by Basil Bunting (intriguing, especially with my Quaker background)
Bewilderment by Richard Powers
Snow Stopped Play: The Mysterious World of the Cricket Ground in Winter by Graham Coster
Cold Fish Soup by Adam Farrer (the best book about Withernsea out this decade)
The Shooting Party by Isobel Colegate * (pre-Gosford Park but along similar lines, really excellent writing)
The Mysterious Mr Badman by WF Harvey
After Prayer by Malcolm Guite (includes the best poem about garden offices ever written, Shed-Fever)
The Railway Children by E Nesbit (reread following a Backlisted podcast about it earlier in the year. I’m not sure if Father is innocent or guilty)
Serengeti Songs by Chris McCully (I’d never heard of Chris before, then an old school friend of mine mentioned he was at our school a few years ahead of us, and the same day I saw this in a bookshop by chance)
Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
The Box of Delights by John Masefield * (an annual reread, always tremendous)
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That’s it for this year. Large thanks for reading these newsletters (and particular thanks to the paid subscribers) - I hope you’ve found something interesting here and there. More thoughts, lists, and behind the scenes notes in January. In the meantime, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from me and my little Adana printing press.
Evening and bedtime mainly, but also a lot when I'm on holiday. Poetry books up the total, so do photo books, and quite a lot of the novels are quite slim! I do read quite fast, but I also watch almost no television. I'm. I'm torn about these kinds of lists because it can look a bit like bragging, but I'm interested to see what other people read so hopefully I don't look too much of a swaggering arse. Have you tried audiobooks? My wife is a big reader but over the last year has hugely got into them instead of traditional paper.
Fascinating as ever, thank you. I feel I need to ask - as a slow reader who can only dream of reading half that many in a year - when do you read? Perhaps I'm too given to checking emails/instagram when I have a moment...plus reading puts me to sleep if I'm even slightly tired.