Clare L. Deming

Every year, I start out with a list of books I’d like to read. Inevitably, that list evolves as the year progresses, and I never get to read everything I had wanted. But however it turns out, I like to look back at what I did read during the past year. Here is my graphic showing all 39 books I read in 2022:

I became too busy to get all the reviews written that I had planned to. But overall, here are my favorite books that I read in 2022:

While I loved the unique story of Gideon the Ninth (review here), I wasn’t as enamored with the sequel, Harrow the Ninth (review here). I am still planning to continue the series with the latest release, Nona the Ninth. This is the kind of series where I may need to read it a second time to understand all the nuances.

Dark Matter was the first book I have read by Blake Crouch and was an exciting science fiction thriller (review here). I believe this is getting made into a series or movie. I liked it enough that I’d definitely read something else by this author.

The River of Silver is a book for fans of the Daevabad Trilogy and is a collection of short stories that is meant to be read after the first three books. However, if you have read The City of Brass, The Kingdom of Copper, and The Empire of Gold, then this book reads like a director’s cut of missing scenes from the main trilogy.

With the release of The Rings of Power, I had to reread some Tolkien and it was time to delve into The Silmarillion. This book also isn’t for everyone, but if you want to read all of the myths of Middle Earth, this is an essential volume. I recently ordered the new edition of The Silmarillion that contains Tolkien’s own illustrations and I can’t wait for it to arrive.

Lastly on here is a book I just finished a few weeks ago – A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik. I have been a fan of her writing for some time despite the faltering ending on her Temeraire series. Her latest stand-alone novels (Uprooted, Spinning Silver) were some of my favorites reads and I still recommend them to people. In A Deadly Education, she ventures into a magic school tale, but this place is very sinister, and the school is a character of its own. I’m planning to post a full review soon.

I also read much of The Witcher series of books in 2022, but I’m going to reserve judgement on those until I find out how it ends.

Coming soon – my reading plans for 2023!