My 2022 In Books

Alright, another year in the books! (Badum-tss.)

Sure, I could just link or rewrite my Year in Books (Goodreads) and 2022 Reading Wrap-Up (StoryGraph) and be done with it. But what’s the fun in that? (Especially when I made a spreadsheet and I have graphs in said spreadsheet!)

Reading Stats

143 books read
- First: This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone
- Last: Little Thieves by Margaret Owen
52 books DNF’d
173 books acquired (bought, borrowed, gifted, ARCs, freebies, etc.)
- 14 still to-read

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Ratings distribution

Average Rating: 3.41

★

Reading by month

Reading Challenges

2022 Reading Challenge: 143 / 100
Cross-Country Reading Challenge: 52 / 51
Books and Tea Challenge: 25 / 24

Top-Rated Reads

Listed from highest to lowest, omitting rereads.

unlock your storybook heart by Amanda Lovelace (5 stars)
The Winners by Fredrik Backman (5 stars)
Osmo Unknown and the Eightpenny Woods by Catherynne M. Valente (5 stars)
Bravely by Maggie Stiefvater (5 stars)
Babel, Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution by R.F. Kuang (4.5 stars)
A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers (4.5 stars)

Blogger’s Choice

The books I’m still thinking about regardless of rating or objective merit, omitting top-rated (above) and rereads, listed in chronological read order.

I Kissed Shara Wheeler by Casey McQuiston
Greywaren by Maggie Stiefvater
I Shall Wear Midnight by Terry Pratchett
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
Little Thieves by Margaret Owen

Closing Thoughts

Compared to the previous year (2021), I read about half as many books but also DNF’d about half as many books, and my average rating was a little bit higher. I acquired far fewer ARCs (only 11 total!) and read them all — but while I borrowed/bought fewer books, I did not do nearly as well finishing them off.

I’m still reading more fantasy than anything else (21% [2022] vs. 24% [2021]), though I’m DNF’ing a significant and greater proportion of them (32% vs. 16%). Contemporary (18% vs. 13%) surpassed nonfiction (10% vs. 16%), putting them in second and third place, respectively. I read more [Adult] Romance (9% vs. 2%) and Classics (9% vs. 5%). Genre-wise, everything else looks roughly the same.

My main theory is that this was largely due to the reading challenges I was doing, which led me to add a bunch of books to my TBR and also brought my average rating down from what it would be if I wasn’t trying to finish books just to finish prompts.

I think I’m at a stage where I’m much less likely to be pleasantly surprised by a book that I discover through a reading challenge; while I’m theoretically still open to picking up random books that catch my interest, but mostly I plan to work through my existing TBR in the coming year.

But who knows, really?