Longtime readers might have been wondering where I’ve been the last six months. The summer brought renewal – of seeing friends, rediscovering my community, developing new relationships, and continuing my work with Writing Through. I must admit that my desire or need to report on what I had been doing took a back seat to the doing itself. And that’s fine. But I would never let the year slip away without my annual reading list. In good and bad times, reading is an anchor, and it’s interesting to look back over what I read to see what I had been thinking about.

2022 brought a fresh slate of challenges and losses. It was a difficult year coming on the heels of two previously difficult years. My year’s reading reveals a need for escape, for humor, for answers from the past and finding new perspectives. I hope you find the list interesting, and find some ideas for your own future reading (and here is my annual caveat – although I read poetry every day, you won’t find any poetry collections on the list, although there were a great many wonderful ones I discovered this year. Sorry).

Happy holidays to all. May we all travel into the new year with health, joy, purpose, and shelves full of books waiting to be read.

1. Jane Smiley, Perestroika in Paris
2. Colson Whitehead, Harlem Shuffle
3. Henry James, The Ambassadors
4. Anthony Doerr, Cloud Cuckoo Land
5. Emma Darwin, This Is Not a Book About Charles Darwin
6. Sjon, Moonstone
7. Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway
8. Louise Penny, The Cruelest Month
9. Louise Penny, A Rule Against Murder
10. Louise Penny, The Brutal Telling
11. Ann Patchett, The Patron Saint of Liars
12. Alexandra Andrews, Who is Maude Dixon?
13. Jennifer Saint, Ariadne
14. Damon Galgut, The Promise
15. Louise Penny, Bury Your Dead
16. John Green, The Anthropocene Reviewed
17. Daphne de Maurier, Jamaica Inn
18. Jessica Mitford, Hons and Rebels
19. Louise Penny, A Trick of Light
20. Louise Penny, The Long Way Home
21. Voltaire, Candide
22. Jann Wenner, Like a Rolling Stone
23. Jojo Moyes, The Giver of Stars
24. Louise Penny, The Nature of the Beast
25. Abdulrajak Gurnah, After Lives