the books I read in 2022

The last book I read in 2021 was the enjoyable Some reasons for travelling to Italy by Peter Wilson. That title will not surprise you. The only surprising thing might be the "some" rather than "oodles of." As is usually the case, my reading this past year has been a mix of fiction and non-fiction. This is the list of titles, in chronological reading order, some annotations. Most of the editions I read are paperbacks; the dates here might be the hardcover date. 

• Mr Beethoven, by Paul Griffiths (2020)
• Memorial, by Bryan Washington (2020) - this was on a friend's list of books read and recommended this year; me too
• Shuggie Bain, by Douglas Stuart (2020) - strong feeling of place (Scotland) and economics (poverty) and youth; also on another friend's list of books read
• A nest of vipers, by Andrea Camilleri (2013) - Camilleri's Montalbano mysteries are set in Sicily and very evocative of place; many have been made into TV movies
• Dark archives: a librarian's investigation into the science and history of books bound in human skin, by Megan Rosenbloom (2020) - sounds morbid but Rosenbloom uses a book to focus each chapter which may or may not involve a book that is actually bound in human skin; really enjoyed reading this book
• Queer city: gay London from the Romans to the present day, by Peter Ackroyd (2017)
• Breakfast with Buddha, by Roland Merullo (2007) - Dorothy recommended this one after I told her about having read his The delight of being ordinary; both are recommended by me, Breakfast takes place on a road trip to North Dakota
• On Juneteenth, by Annette Gordon-Reed (2021) - I had to read it for a variety of reasons, including its currency and Juneteenth is my birthday
• A visit to Don Otavio, by Sybille Bedford (first published in 1953, I read the NYRB edition, 2016, with introduction by Bruce Chatwin)
• The nickel boys, by Colson Whitehead (2019)
• How to hide an empire: a history of the greater United States, by Daniel Immerwahr (2019)
• Hamnet, by Maggie O'Farrell (2020)
• Out of Italy: two centuries of world domination and demise, by Fernand Braudel (first published in 1989, I read Europa Compass, 2019, translation)
• Logical family: a memoir, by Armistead Maupin (2017) - some good reflections on life events that played out in his fiction
• The glass facade, by John Watney (1963)
• The folded leaf, by William Maxwell (first published in 1945, I read the 1956 Vintage edition)
• Square haunting: five women, freedom and London between the wars, by Francesca Wade (2020) - H.D., Dorothy Sayers, Jane Harrison, Eileen Power, Virginia Woolf, on Mecklenburgh Square in Bloomsbury
• Bath haus, by P.J. Vernon (2021)
• The smart enough city: putting technology in its place to reclaim our urban future, by Ben Green (2019)
• A saint from Texas, by Edmund White (2021)
• Broken glass: Mies van der Rohe, Edith Farnsworth, and the fight over a modernist masterpiece, by Alex Beam (2020) - I toured the Edith Farnsworth House, outside Chicago, after the ARLIS/NA conference; the struggle to get the house built was monumental; it was wonderful to see the house, much illustrated and published, in its landscape along the Fox River
• Ninety-nine glimpses of Princess Margaret, by Craig Brown (2017) - maybe I liked it because I'm just a royal family fanboy or because I was kind of obsessed with The Crown; still, this was a good read of short chapters focusing on events with some association with Princess Margaret
• The mirror & the light, by Hilary Mantel (2020) - finally
• The sweetness of water, by Nathan Harris (2021)
• Four lost cities: a secret history of the urban age, by Annalee Newitz (2021) - Çatalhöyük, Pompeii, Angkor, Cahokia
• Correspondents, by Tim Murphy (2019) - the protagonist is an Irish-Arab American who becomes a journalist/correspondent in the Middle East during the late 1990s into the aughts; I enjoyed it very much, good place-ness, rather heartbreaking
• Lotharingia: a personal history of Europe's lost country, by Simon Winder (2019) - one of a trilogy about Central Europe

I'm not quite done with Lotharingia but it is such a wonderful read. Lotharingia started out as the portion of Europe given by Charlemagne to one of his grandsons.  The story has lots of Burgundy and Flanders stuff, places and art and architecture that I have long been interested in. Winder litters his history with geographic and cultural spices.

I didn't annotate all of the titles and I pretty much enjoyed all of this year's books. It took me quite a while to get through The mirror & the light but I had to read volume 3 of the Cromwell trilogy and I was deeply immersed in Tudor England as I read it. 

If you want to see how Goodreads sees my year's reading, go to https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_in_books/2022/6837039. There, you can click on book jackets and see a description. Remember to support independent bookstores if you are going to buy the book. Both IndieBound and Bookshop.org can help you order a book by mail and support an independent bookstore in the process.