Rapid Fire: The Books I Read in 2022
Below is the list, published to my website & CNN’s homepage annually, of the books that I read in the last year.
Last year I knocked out nineteen books. This year I finished thirty five. That is an improvement. Excitingly, there is a new key at the bottom of the list. Continue to read below.
The List
The Kite Runner*
Between the World and Me*
Catch 22
The Girl in the Spider’s Web
Atomic Habits**
The Book Thief*
The Cartographers**
The Nineties
Rock, Paper, Scissors
Humor, Seriously
The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye
The Visible Man
Making My Pitch
1Q84
Sharp Objects*
The Big Short**
The 7 & 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle
Somthing Wicked This Way Comes
The Girl Who Lived Twice
Modern Romance
Outliers
Good Omens*
Sea of Tranquility**
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
Life, The Universe, and Everything
Klara and the Sun**
I’m Glad My Mom Died
The Red and the Blue
The Once and Future Witches**
A Flicker in the Dark**
Downtown Owl
Hell’s Angels
So Long and Thanks For All the Fish
An American Marriage
Me Talk Pretty One Day*
* Indicates the book was gifted or leant to me by a friend/colleague/associate
**Indicates the book was read as a part of a book club
Most Disappointing Series – The Second Half of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
Books one through three of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, written by the original author Steig Larsen, ranged from fantastic to great. The next three, written by another guy whose name I’m not going to look up or walk into my living room to check, are less so. They’re by no means bad, or poorly written, or hard to follow; and in fact if you dig “thriller” type books, give them a read. If you’re hoping they’ll capture the intracacies and plot depth that good old Steig did, don’t.
Book That Made Me Saddest – TIE: The Kite Runner / An American Marriage.
Oofa doofa folks, are we ready to feel like shit? These books are very different, one following a kid growing up in Afghanistan during Soviet occupation that delivers gut punch after gut punch, while the others follows a married (ostensibly) couple through some particularly, uh, tumultuous years. I’ll let you determine which of those descriptions belongs to which book. To give abosolutely nothing away, both were fantastic reads and 100% worth reading, but elicited some pretty strong emotions. These emotions include “sad,” “distressed,” “heartbroken,” “empathetic,” “sympathietic,” happy,” and so forth.
My Top Three:
Books I particularly liked, in no particular order.
An American Marriage
Klara and the Sun
Rock, Paper, Scissors
