A YEAR OF BOOKS [2022]

Happy New Year! I hope that 2023 brings each of you good health, security and stability, love, productivity, and pure unadulterated happiness. <3

As I did in 2021 and 2020, I kept a list of every book I read – for pleasure, not work – throughout 2022.

In total I read 172 books this year, including 31 poetry books for The Sealey Challenge (in which you read a poetry book/pamphlet/micro-chapbook every day throughout the month of August).

As before, I rated each book out of 5; ratings for each entry are in [square brackets]. The books I’ve read previously are noted ‘[re-read].’ I’ve highlighted my absolute favourites, books I’d especially recommend, in bold.

This year, my greatest literary discoveries included the incredibly talented poet Naoise Gale (her pamphlet After the Flood Comes the Apologies and full-length collection IMPLODE EXPLODE are both remarkable); Catalan writer Eva Baltasar (whose poetry collections I desperately need someone to translate into English); American poet Morgan Parker (I can only pray that one day I manage to come across as cool and sassy as she does in her poems); Irish novelist Eimear McBride (I’m very late to the party on this one, but once I wrapped my head around her unique, formally challenging prose style, I was totally in love); and Maddie Mortimer, whose experimental novel Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies was longlisted for the Booker Prize, shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize, and won the Desmond Elliott Prize (and, either depressingly or inspirationally, she’s only 26).

What was your favourite book of 2022? Let me know in the comments!

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JANUARY [stars out of 5]

1. Rachel’s Holiday – Marian Keyes [4]
2. Burntcoat – Sarah Hall [5]
3. Unsettled Ground – Claire Fuller [3]
4. Gin & Tonic – Phoebe Stuckes [4]
5. Trust Exercise – Susan Choi [2]
6. Queenie – Candice Carty-Williams [5] [re-read]
7. Ghost Wall – Sarah Moss [3]
8. Snowflake – Louise Nealon [5]
9. Damage – Josephine Hart [3]
10. After the Flood Comes the Apologies – Naoise Gale [5]
11. Platinum Blonde – Phoebe Stuckes [4]
12. Bright Burning Things – Lisa Harding [4]
13. Small Ascensions – William R. Soldan [ARC] [5]
14. Rock Paper Scissors – Alice Feeney [3]
15. Giving Up – Jillian Becker [5]
16. Something happened at 2am – B F Jones [ARC] [5]
17. Insatiable – Daisy Buchanan [5]
18. Jillian – Halle Butler [4]
19. The Happy Birthday of Death – Gregory Corso [re-read] [5]
20. Papers – Hollie McNish [2]
21. Generation Txt – Dunthorne, Ellams, Forman, McGordon, Oborne, Wilkes [5]

FEBRUARY

22. A Sand Book – Ariana Reines [5]
23. Trust – Domenico Starnone [2]
24. Half-Empty Doorways & Other Injuries – Stephen J. Golds [ARC] [5]
25. The Limits of My Language – Eva Meijer [5]
26. Wild Embers – Nikita Gill [1]
27. The Forward Book of Poetry 2021 [4]
28. Men Who Feed Pigeons – Selima Hill [4]
29. Eleven Lines to Somewhere – Alyson Rudd [4]
30. The Way Out – Laura Stamps [ARC] [5]
31. The Maidens – Alex Michaelides [2]
32. Daddy – Emma Cline [4]
33. The Air Year – Caroline Bird [5]
34. Happening – Annie Ernaux [4]
35. The Forward Book of Poetry 2018 [3]
36. Leave The World Behind – Rumaan Alam [4]
37. The Lessons – Naomi Alderman [5]
38. Permafrost – Eva Baltasar [5]
39. Pull Yourself Together – Arden Hunter [ARC] [5]
40. What A Shame – Abigail Bergstrom [4]
41. Honorifics – Cynthia Miller [4]

MARCH

42. Cleopatra & Frankenstein – Coco Mellors [5]
43. The Party – Elizabeth Day [3]
44. Tides – Sara Freeman [5]
45. A Very Nice Girl – Imogen Crimp [3]
46. The Book of Mother – Violaine Huisman [4]
47. Happy Hour – Marlowe Granados [2]
48. A Girl in a Half-formed Thing – Eimear McBride [5]
49. Song of the Sister – Leia John [ARC] [5]
50. Hymns From The Whipping Post – Gabriel Hart [5]
51. Our Wives Under The Sea – Julia Armfield [4]

APRIL

52. The Coming Bad Days – Sarah Bernstein [2]
53. Eat Or We Both Starve – Victoria Kennefick [5]
54. The Lesser Bohemians – Eimear McBride [5]
55. What the Water Gave Me – Pascale Petit [3]
56. None of This is Serious – Catherine Prasifka [3]
57. Dead Burying the Dead Under a Quaking Aspen – David Cranmer [5]
58. Sad Janet – Lucie Britsch [2]
59. Calling a Wolf a Wolf – Kaveh Akbar [5]
60. The Chronology of Water – Lidia Yuknavitch [4]
61. Rotten Days in Late Summer – Ralf Webb [5]

MAY

62. An Accumulation of Vapors – Claudia Lundahl [5]
63. La Femme de Gilles -Madeleine Bourdouxhe [3]
64. Wet Paint – Chloe Ashby [5]
65. Opportunity Cost – Abby Johnson [5]
66. The Promise – Damon Galgut [3]
67. The Forward Book of Poetry 2022 [4]
68. Reverse Into Space – J. Archer Avary [5]
69. Comic Timing – Holly Pester [5]
70. Careering – Daisy Buchanan [3]
71. Holding Her Breath – Eimear Ryan [3]
72. My Mess Is a Bit of a Life – Georgia Pritchett [4]
73. Three Rooms – Jo Hamya [3]
74. The Last Act of Love – Cathy Rentzenbrink [5]

JUNE

75. Lost Cat – Mary Gaitskill [3]
76. #thighgap – Chandler Morrison [5]
77. Tender – Belinda McKeon [4]
78. Other People’s Comfort Keeps Me Up at Night – Morgan Parker [5]
79. The Copenhagen Trilogy – Tove Ditlevsen [re-read] [5]
80. The Poet – Louisa Reid [4]
81. Body Work – Melissa Febos [5]
82. Write It All Down – Cathy Rentzenbrink [3]
83. Topics of Conversation – Miranda Popkey [3]
84. Afterwards – Charlotte Leonard [3]
85. Pretending – Holly Bourne [4]
86. Suicide Blonde – Darcey Steinke [re-read] [5]
87. Stargazer – Laurie Petrou [2]

JULY

88. Saltwater – Jessica Andrews [re-read] [5]
89. There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé – Morgan Parker [5]
90. Talking to Ghosts at Parties – Rick White [5]
91. The Kids – Hannah Lowe [4]
92. The Adoption Papers – Jackie Kay [4]
93. The Book of Practical Witchcraft – Pamela Ball [5]
94. Weather – Jenny Offill [re-read] [3]
95. Milk Teeth – Jessica Andrews [4]
96. Bird by Bird – Anne Lamott [re-read] [5]
97. Original Sins – Matt Rowland Hill [5]
98. The How – Yrsa Daley-Ward [3]

AUGUST

98. Iron Annie – Luke Cassidy [4]
99. Common Decency – Susannah Dickey [4]
100. Friends Like These – Meg Rosoff [2]
101. Nothing Can Hurt You – Nicola Maye Goldberg [3]
102. Heatwave – Victor Jestin [2]
103. The Ha-Ha – Jennifer Dawson [5]

SEPTEMBER

104. People Person – Candice Carty-Williams [3]
105. Temporary Stasis – Lucy Holme [5]
106. One Friday in April – Donald Antrim [4]
107. Exposition Ladies – Helen Bowie [5]
108. Briefly, A Delicious Life – Nell Stevens [5]
109. My Darling from the Lions – Rachel Long [5]
110. New Animal – Ella Baxter [3]
111. The Morning Star – Karl Ove Knausgaard [4]
112. Boys Don’t Cry – Fiona Scarlett [3]

OCTOBER

113. Maps of our Spectacular Bodies – Maddie Mortimer [5]
114. Once More, With Feeling – Sophie McCreesh [3]
115. You Be Mother – Meg Mason [4]
116. Head of a Gorgon – Raegen Pietrucha [5]
117. All’s Well – Mona Awad [3]
118. Walking Towards the Noise – John Bowie [5]
119. Implode Explode – Naoise Gale [5]
120. The Buddha and the Borderline – Kiera Van Gelder [4]
121. Utopia – Heidi Sopinka [3]

NOVEMBER [stars out of 5]

122. Nightshift – Kiare Ladner [4]
123. Vladimir – Julia May Jonas [4]
124. Exposure – Olivia Sudjic [5]
125. Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath – Heather Clark [5]
126. Tell Me You’ve Earned It – Kat Giordano [ARC] [5]
127. Three-Martini Afternoons at the Ritz – Gail Crowther [4]
128. The Outrun – Amy Liptrott [3]
129. I Wanted to be Close to You – Katie Oliver [5]
130. Rabbit – Sophie Robinson [re-read] [5]
131. Knife Edge – Colin Bancroft [5]
132. The Great Believers – Rebecca Makkai [5]

DECEMBER

133. How To Decode Your Orange-Peel Fortunes – Alice Wickenden [5]
134. An Othered Mother – Jem Henderson [5]
135. Vocation – Yasmin Djoudi [5]
136. Ruth & Pen – Emilie Pine [3]
137. Such A Fun Age – Kiley Reid [5]
138. Checkout 19 – Claire-Louise Bennett [4]
139. A Certain Hunger – Chelsea G. Summers [4]
140. Complete Plays – Sarah Kane [5]
141. The Rabbit Hutch – Tess Gunty [4]

THE SEALEY CHALLENGE [August 2022]

1. The Heavy-Petting Zoo – Clare Pollard
2. Name and Noun – Stephanie Yue Duhem
3. Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head – Warsan Shire
4. Be ¥ cause – JP Seabright
5. The Illustrated Woman – Helen Mort
6. Honey-Laced Garbage Dreams – Wanda Deglane
7. penumbra – Wanda Deglane
8. All the Men I Never Married – Kim Moore
9. frank: sonnets – Diane Seuss
10. There Will Be No More Nonsense – Lorraine Mariner
11. Standing Female Nude – Carol Ann Duffy
12. Selling Manhattan – Carol Ann Duffy
13. the blue chapbook – Scott Cumming
14. The No You Never Listened To – Meggie Royer
15. In Defence of Adultery – Julia Copus
16. Lipstick – Maggie Butt
17. River Street Rhapsody – C.W. Blackwell
18. After the Flood Comes the Apologies – Naoise Gale [re-read]
19. So Fast, So Close – William R. Soldan [re-read]
20. Meditations for the Death and Dying – Perry Gasteiger [re-read]
21. Baptism by Fire – Amy-Jean Muller [re-read]
22. To Swallow the Summer – Leia John
23. Cheat – Danielle Chelosky
24. Waterlog – McCaela Prentice
25. belly of – Rae Doyle
26. Loose Woman – Sandra Cisneros [re-read]
27. Poemland – Chelsey Minnis [re-read]
28. Washed Away – Shiksha Dheda
29. Twenty Love Poems… – Pablo Neruda
30. Lost Things – Lauren Theresa
31. How to burn a woman – Claire Askew