Well.
On the one hand, this was a fabulous year for reading. I read 161 books. I'm not sure I've ever read that many books in one year - at least not since I was a child.
On the other hand, I read that many books because my mood this year was so low that I didn't want to do anything, including watch TV or even visit with people, for many, many months. That is not good. I don't think that even the few people who knew my mood was so low knew how much I was filling my time with reading. It was a way to keep my brain focused on something other than myself.
So, I'm not really that excited about reading so many books (even though I enjoyed a great many of them) and, hopefully, this year was an aberration and I will not read as many books in 2023.
One of my resolutions last year was to read fewer mysteries and get back to reading more literary fiction. I tried. I really tried. I did read more non-mysteries than I did last hear. I hesitate to call it literary fiction because a lot of it didn't seem very literary to me. But maybe that was just my mood. But despite my efforts to branch out, I found I would get into a rut where I would find a mystery series I liked and I would just keep reading it until I ran out of books. Then I would start a new series. Sometimes I had two going at once because I often had to wait for books to become available at the library. The point is that it kept me from having to think too hard about what to read next.
This year I kept track of where I obtained my books. 116 were books I got from the library - mostly through Libby, the digital reading app. But some were tangible books I got from the physical library. I purchased 32 books, mostly digital versions. The others were books that I 'inherited' - either because people gave them to me after they read them or because they came through a book-of-the-month subscription that my sister had given my mother before she passed away. Some were books mom had ordered before she died and passed along to me and other were books we ordered to finish out the subscription. The Book-of-the-Month pile was mostly non-mysteries.
I'm not going to list every book I read - there are too many. So if they were in a series, I'll name and describe the series. But, let's start with some highlights from the "non-mystery " books I read in 2022.
Fiction
I read a few novels that I enjoyed that featured unique main characters. Florence Gordon, by Brian Morton, featured a blunt, cantankerous older woman, called by the world a "national treasure" for her work in the feminist movement. She claims that she just wants to be left alone to write but her family is constantly intruding. Then life throws her a curveball. Published in 2014, I wondered how I had not heard more about this novel. Some may find this novel somewhat depressing but I didn't. I really enjoyed it.
Miss Benson’s Beetle, by Rachel Joyce, was, in many ways, a strange book. Set in post WWII England, Miss Benson lives alone and has a job she doesn’t particularly like. So, she sets out on a journey, with an unlikely companion, to New Caledonia in search of a Golden Beetle. Of course, this is really a journey of self-discovery. Rachel Joyce previously wrote a book called The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, which I also remember liking. She must like writing about journeys. Despite it's strangeness I liked this book.
I might be cheating on this next one, because there is a bit of a mystery involved. But the main story of Once There Were Wolves, by Charlotte McConaghy, is about a woman who is heading up a project to re-introduce wolves into the Scottish Highlands. The sheep farmers are not happy about this, to say the least. The woman is fascinating because she has a neurological condition that makes her feel the sensory experiences of living beings she is near – including wolves and people. The main thing I liked about this novel were the wolves and learning how they think and act.
I wasn’t sure I was up to reading a book about COVID lockdown, but I ended up enjoying The Fell by Sarah Moss. This is a very short novel. There are four main characters who live in a small English town in the Peak District: Kate and her teenage son Matt; Alice their elderly neighbor who is recovering from breast cancer; and Rob, who is a volunteer with the local rescue service. All of them are stuck during COVID but Kate, who has been exposed to someone with COVID (although she doesn’t seem to have contracted it herself) and Matt are required to quarantine for 14 days. They can go nowhere except their own garden. Kate, especially, finds the quarantining difficult and she decides to break quarantine and go for a walk. That, and the aftermath, is the story.
I finally read all four of the Lucy Barton books by Elizabeth Strout. I had put these off for years because, although I had liked her novel Olive Kittridge, that one was written in the style of sequential short stories and I don't really like short stories. I was afraid the Lucy Barton books would be the same. But after enjoying The Fell, I read a review of the latest in the Lucy Barton series: Lucy by the Sea, which also takes place during COVID lockdown. So I decided to try the series. I was blown away. Her writing is so spare but still descriptive and Lucy is a deceptively simple, but deeply complex, character. The books are short but thought provoking. I can't recommend this four-book series enough. The first book is My Name is Lucy Barton.
In the Time of the Butterflies, by Julia Alverez, is an older novel, first published in 1994, that I had never read before. Set in the Dominican Republic in the 1950's and 1960’s, it is the story of the murder of three sisters (called Las Mariposas – the Butterflies) who are involved in a movement to overthrow the Trujillo regime. This was inspired by a true story of the Mirabal sisters. Again, this may sound somewhat depressing but I didn't find it so.
Harlem Shuffle, by Colson Whitehead, is the story of Ray Carney, a furniture salesman in 1960’s Harlem, who gets pulled into being a fence for a group of criminals. This is a surprisingly funny novel involving a cast of kooky and/or incompetent characters. The character of Ray is a delight. This is the second Whitehead novel I’ve read and I’ve loved his writing style in both.
Optic Nerve, by Maria Gainza tr by Thomas Bunstead, is a novel that by all rights I should not have liked - but I loved it. The main character, Maria, is an art critic living in Buenos Aires who is telling us a series of stories about her life in which she also discusses her favorite works of art and/or artists. I don’t usually like to read books in translation because I don’t know if the language is the author’s or the translator’s. But phrases like this - “Carelessly administered, the history of art can be lethal as strychnine” - tossed off by the main character as she watches a field trip of youngsters at a museum - left me in no doubt the language was the author’s. I also don’t usually like novels that are really collections of short stories about a group of characters. (There are exceptions such as Olive Kittredge.) At first this novel seemed like it was structured that way, but it really wasn’t. It was more like a collection of New Yorker articles about art in which the author also talks about herself. (You know how New Yorker writers always talk about themselves as much as their subject? It seems to be an editorial “thing” there.) If you like learning about art you will like this. If you don’t, it won’t be for you.
I’m a big Kate Atkinson fan and, while Shrines of Gaiety: A Novel wasn’t my favorite novel of hers, I did enjoy it mostly for the time period and the setting. The novel is set in London after World War I, when the world just wants to drink and dance the night away in nightclubs and forget the carnage and death of the war and the Spanish Flu. The “infamous” Nellie Coker runs three or four successful nightclubs but Scotland Yard inspector John Frobisher is sure she is responsible for a series of mysterious deaths of women. He enlists the aid of Gwendolen Kelling, a former army nurse who has travelled to London from York in search of two girls who have run away. I did not think the characters were as well drawn as in other Atkinson novels, which was a disappointment, but it did keep my interest until right before the very end. I thought it fell a little flat at the end.
The main character in Good Riddance, by Elinor Lippman, is a woman who inherits from her mother, a high school teacher, a 1968 yearbook from that high school. When she de-clutters it into the garbage it is found by a neighbor who claims to be a filmmaker and wants to make a documentary about the Class of 1968. This was a comic novel and I’m not big on those. But it was an enjoyable light read if you are looking for a light read.
A much better light read is Flying Solo by Linda Holmes. A woman returns to her hometown to clean out a dead aunt’s house. Will she rekindle a romance with an old love? I really enjoyed this even though I found the parts about cleaning out the house after a death somewhat triggering. While it is not a sequel to Linda Holmes' first novel, it is set in the same fictional universe.
Spoonbenders, by Darryl Gregory, is about a family, the members of which have special powers. Or do they? Maybe they are just con artists. And what does the government want with them? Weirdly, this is the second book I’ve read about the CIA wanting to recruit people for their special abilities. Apparently it really was a "thing" a while back.
Loveless by Alice Osman, is about Georgia, who is off to university where she tries to figure out her sexuality. I think this probably falls under YA, but it was well written and thought provoking.
I had to think long and hard whether to include Ariadne by Jennifer Sant in my "liked" list but, in the end, I decided to because I really thought it was well written. I'm just getting tired of the Greek Myth books, having read a number of them in previous years. This one involved the Minotaur, Theseus and the Gorgon, as well as Ariadne.
I also read a whole lot of other books in the "non-mystery" category that I thought were just "meh". I number of them were from the Book-of-the-Month pile, some were given to my by other people or picked by my book club. I may write a whole post on why I thought they were "meh" for me but might not be for you - if I get enough energy. Most of them either had structural problems, from my point of view, or were written in the first person point of view by a character I thought was kind of dumb. I hate being in the head of a dumb person. Many of the structural problems fell into the "two time period" category. I love me a two-time period book but the author has to be careful with pacing. Some of these also were "multiple-points-of-view books" and, again the author has to be careful with pacing. Too much shifting between time periods and/or characters can mean the flow is interrupted and I put the book down rather than raptly turning the pages.
The Venice Sketchbook by Rhys Bowen, and
The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles was well reviewed but I just couldn't get into it. Brothers Emmett and Billy are supposed to be taking the Lincoln Highway west to California, but they end up going east to New York. I think Mr. Towles and I are just not meant to be. I didn’t like his first novel and didn’t like this one either. I just didn’t care what happened to any of the characters and I found myself irritated, rather than interested, by all of the digressions.
Matrix by Lauren Groff, sounded promising - a royal orphan in the twelfth century becomes a nun and eventually the head of the abbey which she wants to protect from intruders. But there was far too much telling and not showing for me. I remember I felt this way about the last Lauren Groff novel I read.
I thought I would like My Darling Detective by Howard Norman because I thought it would be a straight mystery but it wasn't. It was billed as an "homage" to noir. But it seemed more like it was making fun of noir. And I hate being in the minds of stupid people. The only way I got through this was by pretending it was an episode of Fargo.
Miss Graham’s Cold War Cookbook by Celia Rees was another book with a dumb heroine. I couldn't feel at all sorry for her when bad things happened. The concept of the book was promising - a woman sent to uncover a network of spies and war criminals in Germany after WWII. Secret information is coded in recipes sent in letters. But it just didn't pan out for me.
Then there were the books that I flat out disliked, starting with
I'm going to end with Trust by Hernan Diaz, which ended up on a whole lot of "best books of 2022" lists. I have no idea why. The writing struck me as, at best, pedestrian. The big "reveal" at the end of the book wasn't much of a reveal and the characters were all poorly developed. It was the last book I finished in 2022 and it might be my least favorite book of 2022 if only because it was so hyped and ended up being such a disappointment.
Non-Fiction
I'm not a big reader of non-fiction, probably because my work days are spent reading non-fiction. Some years I read almost no non-fiction. This year I read a little more than usual.
One of my absolute favorite books I read this year was Shy: The Alarmingly Outspoken Memoirs of Mary Rodgers . Mary Rodgers wrote the music for Once Upon a Mattress. She also wrote young people books including the Freaky Friday series. She was the assistant producer of Leonard Bernstein's young people concerts. She was the chairman of the board of Julliard. She was married twice and had six children, one of whom died and one of whom is composer Adam Guettel who won a Tony for Light in the Piazza. She was close friends with Stephen Sondheim. And she was the daughter of Richard Rodgers. She knew everyone. And she was willing to dish on them in this memoir. If you like musical theater, you will like this book.
Congratulations, By the Way by George Saunders, is a short meditation on kindness adapted from a graduation speech he gave.
At the beginning of the year, after my dad died I read The Grief Handbook by Bridget McNulty, which was helpful. But Notes on Grief by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, about her father’s sudden death was almost too much for me and I cried through it. But I'm glad I read it. Beautiful.
Living With A Dead Language: My Romance With Latin by Ann Patty, made me want to take Latin again. Well, not really. But I liked reading about her Latin journey.
Beautiful Country by Qian Julie Wang, I didn't care for. A memoir about being a Chinese girl brought to this country by her parents illegally as a child. I thought the prose was uninteresting. It was in the "Book of the Month" pile.
Poetry
I was not very successful with poetry this year. I'm still working my way through a couple of books of poems I bought but the ones I finished didn't do much for me. I usually love Billy Collins, but Whale Day and Other Poems was only ok. There wasn't a single poem in the collection that spoke to me. I also read Three Poems by Hannah Sullivan and it was not a success with me. The blurb said “exacting clarity”. They must have been reading something else. Then there was Time is a Mother by Ocean Vuong which I heard about on NPR. I found the topics of the poems were not things I wanted to spend time on this year. So I can't recommend any of them.
The vast majority of the books I read this year fell into the mystery category. As I said, I would find a series I enjoyed and would just keep reading until there were no more books in the series. Sometimes, a series that I've read in the past would pop out a new book this year that I would read.
But before we get into series, I did read a few "stand alone" mysteries.
The Violin Conspiracy, by Brendan Slocumb, was well reviewed (I actually wasn't sure if this went in the Non-Mystery general Fiction category but it IS a mystery). But I guessed who stole the Stradivarius in the first 20 pages. It’s also a little bit preachy.
The Verifiers by Jane Pek. The main character is a Chinese American woman who works for an odd agency that verifies that the people you are matched with on dating apps are who they say they are. This was a first novel and I thought it was good. I really liked all the literary allusions she sprinkled through the book. “That man is harder to read than Finnigan’s Wake “ Again, I wasn't sure whether to classify this as a mystery or just fiction - but it IS a mystery. I suspect there may be sequels in the future.
I’m a big Louise Penny fan but I was doubtful that she and Hillary Clinton could pull off writing a thriller together. I was surprised how much I enjoyed State of Terror . She had me on the edge of my seat at times. Good characters. Good plot.
In a Place of Fear by Catriona Mcpherson. I’ve read other Catriona McPherson books but this was a stand-alone murder mystery set in Edinburgh after WWII that is also an homage to the British National Health Service. I quite enjoyed it. (I started her book Scot Free and it was the only book that I DNFd this year. Again, satire, farce, comic novels are not for me. )
Mystery Series
Here is where I am not going to list every book I read in a series. The mysteries I enjoy the most are in the historical category and there isn't a lot of blood and gore in any of them. So buckle in, there are a lot to go through this year.
For the last few years I have really enjoyed mysteries set on the Asian sub-continent. This year I found a new series thanks to my friend Izzy who recommended it at the beginning of the year: The Baby Ganesh Agency Investigation Series by Vaseem Khan. Ashwin Chopra, a recently retired Bombay police inspector, is getting on the nerves of his wife. On the other hand, he was forced to retire because of a serious heart attack so she doesn’t want him to do anything too strenuous. This doesn’t stop him from investigating a series of crimes. With him is Ganesha, a baby elephant who arrives one day as a gift. Is the elephant the reincarnation of Chopra’s uncle? He is certainly a smart elephant. I loved this series. I’ve read the first four so far. Can't wait for a new one to come out.
The Bangalore Detective’s Club, by Harini Nagendra., is set in 1919 Bangalore but the characters seemed a little too modern for 1919. And the mystery was convoluted. I think there are sequels but I haven't read them. I would consider reading them ... maybe.
The Harriet Gordon Mysteries, by A.M. Stuart, are set in Colonial Singapore in the early 20th century. Harriet is hoping to make a new life for herself. Wanting to be somewhat independent of her brother, she advertises her services as a personal secretary. This seemed like a good idea until her employer is murdered. But she teams up with Inspector Robert Curran to solve it and that leads to other mysteries to solve. I’ve read the three that are out so far and each one is better than the last.
One of my favorite series is the Sebastien St. Cyr series by C.S. Harris. Her "detective" is an aristocratic nobleman in Regency England. This year a new book, When Blood Lies, was released. The switch of venue to Paris was a surprise and interesting but I really want the story to go back to England. This one had a little too much narrative for my liking. But still enjoyable. I highly recommend this series.
Because I like that series so much I'm constantly trying series set in the same or similar time periods.
I also discovered in the last few years that I like mysteries where there are dogs involved. The Mercy Carr mysteries by Paula Munier is a favorite. Former Army MP, Mercy, and former military bomb sniffing dog Elvis solve crimes with the help of US Game Warden Troy and his dog Susie Bear. The latest installment, The Wedding Plot , was released this year. If you like dogs and you like mysteries, I think you will like this series.
Since I had so much success with Mercy and Elvis I started looking for other dog mysteries. I found
Since I was on a dog mystery roll, I also tried The Scent of Murder by Kylie Logan. It features a main character who is a cadaver dog trainer. My opinion: not enough dog. I don't think I'll read more.
Then there is the FBI K-9 Series by Sara Driscoll. This is a decent series featuring FBI agents with trained search dogs. I read all of them (7) this year and enjoyed them until the last one was released this fall. Still Waters is supposedly set in the Boundary Waters but you'd never know it from the descriptions. The main character, who is supposedly from Virginia where she would not often see the Northern Lights, sees them one evening and basically shrugs. I know I'm being picky because I know that area well. The other thing that drives me crazy about this series is that the dialog doesn't sound anything the way people actually talk. People don't talk in narrative. But the story lines are good and I like the dogs.
Speaking of the Boundary Waters and Northern Minnesota, I read Leave No Trace by Mindy Mejia. This was a mystery supposedly set in the Boundary Waters , but the characters almost never leave Duluth. On the whole, disappointing.
If you want good mysteries set in the Boundary Waters (mostly) you should read William Kent Krueger's Cork O'Connor mysteries. I got hooked on them in 2021 and read them all. Then I discovered that a number of people I vacation with in Minnesota are also hooked on them. Fox Creek was released this year and it takes place almost completely in the Boundary Waters. I really enjoyed it. (But is it reasonable to expect Henry to live forever? Those who have read know what I'm talking about.)
The outdoor adventures of the William Kent Krueger mysteries and the Paula Munier mysteries led me to the Joe Pickett mysteries by CJ Box which take place in the mountains of Wyoming. There are a LOT of books in this series (22 so far!) and I worked my way through all of them. I'm convinced the only reason Joe is still alive is because the author won't kill him - he gets himself in the most dangerous situations where he really ought to be dead. And there is another character that acts as a sort of deus ex machina to save Joe on a regular basis. He is completely unrealistic. But I just shrug and keep on reading because these are real page turners. I've heard the series has been made into a TV series on Paramount Plus. When I subscribe for a few months to watch Star Trek this year, I'll try that out.
Another one of my favorite series is the Inspector Rutledge series by Charles Todd. I've been reading these for years. Rutledge is a Scotland Yard detective who has PTSD from his service in WWI. A Game of Fear was released this year and I think it is the best one in a while. It involved a country house and an airfield and a woman who claims to have seen a violent murder but there is no body. And the killer is someone who supposedly died in the war. It all hung together and was quite suspenseful. Charles Todd was really a mother/son writing team and the mother died this year. I hope the son keeps writing these.
WWI and the time immediately after is a period I like to read about. This year I discovered the Verity Kent Mysteries by Anna Lee Huber who also writes the Lady Darcy series . I think I like this series even better than the Lady Darcy series The heroine worked for the military secret service during the War but cannot tell anyone. The first book has a twist I never saw coming. I read all six that are out so far this year. I don't like them QUITE as much as the Inspector Rutledge mysteries, but they come a close second.
A series that started in WWI but has now moved to WWII is the Maisie Dobbs series, by Jacqueline Winspear, which I've been reading for years. This year the 17th mystery, A Sunlit Weapon, was released. I hadn't cared much for the last few in the series but I liked this one a lot. It involved women pilots helping in the war effort, something I hadn't known anything about before.
Before I get to mysteries set in more modern times, I have to mention Lindsey Davis' Flavia Albia series set in Ancient Rome. I was a big fan of her Marcus Didius Falco series and I liked the first few in the Flavia Albia series. But I didn't like the last few in the series because I thought there was too much narrative. The latest, Desperate Undertaking, released this year, was much better.
Elly Griffiths writes the Ruth Galloway mysteries which take place in Norfolk and feature a woman archaeologist. The Locked Room is the latest in the series. It takes place during pandemic lockdown and part of it involves a cemetery of plague victims. I liked it but it was somewhat triggering (unlike The Fell and Lucy by the Sea). I realized this year that she also writes two other mystery series. One is The Brighton Mysteries. These are set in Brighton in the 1950’s and 1960’s and involve a magician who helps solve the mysteries. I really liked this series. I read six, which I think are all of them so far. She also writes The Harbinder Kauer mysteries. I knew she had a stand alone mystery named Stranger Diaries and I finally read it. It was a modern gothic story and I didn’t guess the end. But she followed it up with The Postscript Murders. Did the woman in the retirement home, who acted as a "murder consultant", die of natural causes or not? This fall Bleeding Heart Yard was released making clear that she intends to continue with Harbinder Kauer as a detective series. (As an aside, after I discovered all these Elly Griffiths novels I also discovered that she wrote three novels under her own name, Domenica De Rosa. I read one - The Eternal City which is a quasi romance set in Rome. Meh. I should have put this above under the "meh" novels.)
An oddly delightful mystery I discovered this year was The Windsor Knot by SJ Bennett. The premise is that Queen Elizabeth II was good at solving mysteries. But, of course, one can’t be seen to solve mysteries. When there is a murder at Windsor Castle the Queen must get to the bottom of it. This is a QEII in her late 80’s. Phillip is still alive. I was somewhat doubtful of the premise, but it was really enjoyable. I think there are 2 more in this series and I might look them up.
I read a number of other odd mysteries - or maybe they were standard mysteries featuring odd characters. The Fiona Griffiths Series by Harry Bingham is set in Cardiff Wales and Fiona is … intense. She has few social skills but good analytical skills and intuition. I’ve read two of the books.
A couple of years ago I watched Shetland when it was available on Netflix and I wondered why I hadn't read any of Ann Cleeves' mysteries. This year I got around to it. The Shetland series involves crimes that take place in The Shetland Islands which are part of Scotland but FAR off the coast. Very isolated. The library only had two of that series available digitally so, after I read those, I switched to her new series - The Matthew Venn Mysteries. Matthew is a police detective who lives with his partner in the West Country of England. He is estranged from his fundamentalist Christian family both because he rejected their church and because he is gay. It's a good series. I've read both of the novels and the short story she released. Then I started on
The latest in the Thursday Murder Club Mysteries by Richard Osman was released: The Bullet that Missed . Our intrepid pensioners who solve cold cases look into the death of a television reporter. Why this hasn't been picked up for a television series is beyond me.
It seems clear that editors are now looking for Richard Osman type mysteries with old people. The Marlow Murder Club by Robert Thorogood fits that bill. Judith, Susie and Becks help a detective sergeant solve three murders. This is supposed to be a new series. It was fine and I’d probably read another but I wasn’t blown away by it.
The Secret, Book and Scone Society by Ellery Adams is the first book in a series. I considered it a palate cleansing cozy mystery. The main character is a small town North Carolina book shop owner who is a burn survivor. The plot involved real estate development, which isn't inherently exciting. But it worked as a cozy mystery. I don't know that I'll read any more in the series.
Circle of Influence by Annette Dashofy. The main character is a Pennsylvania EMT whose friend is killed. This is the first book in a series and I enjoyed it. I’ll probably read others.
Elizabeth George came out with a new book in her Lynley/Havers series: Something to Hide . I remember enjoying this when I read it but months later I can’t remember what it was about.
Murder at the Porte de Versailles is the latest in Cara Black's Aimee Leduc series. It was good as usual although I guessed the murderer very early. And did I miss it or didn't she tell us what happened to the cute basset hound Sami?
I ended the year with the new Inspector Gamache book by Louise Penny, A World of Curiosities. It was a little more "normal" than last year's installment, although I truthfully found the main plot element hard to believe. I'd like him to go back to solving ordinary mysteries.
That's it for 2022. As I said, I hope NOT to read as many books next year. And, again, I want to read more non-mysteries. But since I plan to start out the new year with the latest Ian Rankin mystery, we'll see how that goes.
