{"id":515,"date":"2022-12-30T16:01:50","date_gmt":"2022-12-30T20:01:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.faithfictionandfeminism.com\/blog\/?p=515"},"modified":"2024-08-23T10:15:48","modified_gmt":"2024-08-23T14:15:48","slug":"my-2022-book-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.faithfictionandfeminism.com\/blog\/2022\/12\/30\/my-2022-book-review\/","title":{"rendered":"My 2022 Book Review"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A few years ago I started a tradition of recapping and reviewing the books I&#8217;ve read in a year on Facebook. I decided to move that year-end book review to my blog this year for a few reasons: 1) it&#8217;s getting to be too unwieldy as a really long FB or IG post, 2) I&#8217;m reading more &amp; more books, so decided to include more titles in my year-end review, &amp; 3) the formatting looks nicer!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>I read over 100 books this year!<\/strong> I&#8217;m excited for myself in reaching this new milestone. But once again I want to share my usual disclaimer about comparison. I allowed my 7 year old son to join Goodreads this year because I thought it would be fun for him to start keeping track of the chapter books he&#8217;s reading now. (Don&#8217;t worry; his account has the highest privacy settings possible, monitored by me, &amp; he has only 5 friends &#8211; me, his cousin, &amp; 3 aunts.) However, I didn&#8217;t foresee the number of conversations I&#8217;d need to have with him about comparing his reading challenge to his cousin&#8217;s&#8230; my son read 113 books in 2022, while my niece read over 500! So I kept reminding him of this same disclaimer I&#8217;m sharing with you: <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">reading is not a competition<\/span>. I read for the pure joy of it, and if your reading habits look nothing like mine yet still bring you joy, then that&#8217;s all that matters!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Because I read so many books, I wanted to include more in my year-end review than I have in the past. I&#8217;ve kept most of my Book Awards categories the same, but instead of naming only 1 book &amp; 1 runner-up for each category, I&#8217;m allowing myself to name up to 3 books, which will generally be listed in order of my liking. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As always, please feel free to share your favorite books from 2022 with me in the comments, either here or on social media!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Steph&#8217;s 2022 Book Awards<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Top 5 favorite books I read in 2022:<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>This Is How It Always Is&nbsp; (Laurie Frankel)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Six of Crows, Crooked Kingdom,&nbsp;and Rule of Wolves  (Leigh Bardugo)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Forging Silver Into Stars&nbsp; (Brigid Kemmerer)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Where the Crawdads Sing  (Delia Owens)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The Poet X  (Elizabeth Acevedo)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>runner-up:<\/em> The Reading List&nbsp; (Sara Nisha Adams)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Favorite nonfiction book:<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>The Wordy Shipmates&nbsp; (Sarah Vowell)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Bittersweet&nbsp; (Susan Cain)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Favorite romance:<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Book Lovers&nbsp; (Emily Henry)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Just Last Night  (Mhairi McFarlane)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Delilah Green Doesn&#8217;t Care  (Ashley Herring Blake) &#8211; it&#8217;s possible this is only because it&#8217;s my most recent read, but for now I like it a lot<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Most surprising:<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Project Hail Mary&nbsp; (Andy Weir)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>A Wizard\u2019s Guide to Defensive Baking&nbsp; (T. Kingfisher)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Alloy of Law  (Brandon Sanderson) &#8211; surprising in that I liked it so much more than the first 3 books in the series!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Made me laugh the most:<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>The Wordy Shipmates  (Vowell)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ&#8217;s Childhood Pal  (Christopher Moore)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>League of Gentlewoman Witches  (India Holton)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Most disappointing:<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Book of Night&nbsp; (Holly Black)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Defend the Dawn&nbsp; (Brigid Kemmerer)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>To Sir Phillip, With Love  (Julia Quinn)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Most Thought-Provoking:<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>The Cost of Knowing&nbsp; (Brittney Morris)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The City We Became  (N.K. Jemison)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Pachinko  (Min Jin Lee)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Classic I read this year: <\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Joy Luck Club (Tan),&nbsp; A Wrinkle in Time (L\u2019Engle), Treasure Island (Stevenson)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Which did I like best?<\/strong>  The Joy Luck Club<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Favorite Re-Read:<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Temeraire series&nbsp; (Naomi Novik)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That&#8217;s it. Can you believe I only re-read 1 thing this year?! I mean, technically it&#8217;s 9 books\u2026 but still.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">\u201cEveryone shut up, I\u2019m reading!\u201d award:<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[made me ignore my real life the most]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>The Golden Enclaves&nbsp; (Naomi Novik)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Crooked Kingdom&nbsp; (Bardugo)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The Final Gambit  (Jennifer Lynn Barnes)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">5 Books that are living rent-free in my head:<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[I&#8217;m adding a section this year to include 5 books I read this year <em>that I haven&#8217;t already mentioned,<\/em> but I still think of often &#8211; for better or worse]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Sea of Tranquility  (Emily St. John Mandel) <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Into the Drowning Deep  (Mira Grant)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>the Bridgerton series  (Julia Quinn)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo  (Taylor Jenkins Reid)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The Lost Metal  (Brandon Sanderson)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>runner-up: <\/em>She Who Became the Sun  (Shelley Parker-Chan)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Book I\u2019m most excited to read in 2023:<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>The Stolen Heir&nbsp; (Holly Black)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Witch King&nbsp; (Martha Wells)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A few years ago I started a tradition of recapping and reviewing the books I&#8217;ve read in a year on Facebook. I decided to move that year-end book review to my blog this year for a few reasons: 1) it&#8217;s getting to be too unwieldy as a really long FB or IG post, 2) I&#8217;m &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.faithfictionandfeminism.com\/blog\/2022\/12\/30\/my-2022-book-review\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">My 2022 Book Review<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":517,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","with-featured-image"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa85Nh-8j","jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/www.faithfictionandfeminism.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/Screenshot-2022-12-29-2.56.49-PM.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.faithfictionandfeminism.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.faithfictionandfeminism.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.faithfictionandfeminism.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.faithfictionandfeminism.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.faithfictionandfeminism.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=515"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.faithfictionandfeminism.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":519,"href":"http:\/\/www.faithfictionandfeminism.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515\/revisions\/519"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.faithfictionandfeminism.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.faithfictionandfeminism.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.faithfictionandfeminism.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.faithfictionandfeminism.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}