I hope you had fun doing our Reading Challenge this year! Let me know what you want on next year’s challenge soon, and look for it to be posted on January 1. The general aim is a book a week, but each year we play with changing around the categories, so let me know what you’d like to see. We’d love for you to join us in this casual structure to our yearly reading goals.

It was a good reading year for me, although I’ve been rather stuck on choosing my best of the year, since there are about ten stand-outs, each for very different reasons. I read 66 books this year, which is very close to average for me, although what was different were that several of them were very long. (The numbers in parenthesis below are the books I read beyond the 52 book stated challenge.) Here’s what I read in each category, complete with links to my reviews, where appropriate:

Reading Challenge for 2022:

Favorite Fiction (also listed in their category):

(1)  Small Things Like These, Priory of the Orange Tree, Lincoln Highway

Favorite Non-fiction (also listed in their category):

(2) Picasso’s War, Art Materials, Pray like a Gourmet

Substancial Fiction:

1. She Who Became the Sun (4 star review here)

2.   Shantaram (4 star review here)

3.   The Lincoln Highway (5 star review here)

4.   The Priory of the Orange Tree (5 star review here)

5.   The People We Keep (4 star review here)

6.    Klara and the Sun (4 star review here)

7.    House at the Edge of Night (4 star review here)

8.    Fellowship Point (4 star review here)

9.   This Tender Land (4 star review here)

10. Lessons in Chemistry (4 star review here)

11.  Matrix (4 star review here)

12. Remarkably Bright Creatures (5 star review here)

(13) China: the Novel (British view)

(14.) Small Things Like These (5 star review here)

Breezy Fiction:

1.   Bookstore of Second Chances (4 star review here)

2.   The Grand Sophy (5 star review coming)

3.    The Bodyguard (4 star review here)

4.    Bloomsbury Girls (4 star review here)

5.   The Fortnight in September (4 star review here)

6.    Book Lovers (5 star rom com)

7.    Last Garden in England (4 star review here)

8.    House in the Cerulean Sea (review here)

(9.) Last Duke Standing (good but horrible cover)

(10.)  Something Wilder (2 star)

(11.) Miss Eliza’s English Kitchen (three stars)

(12.) This Time Tomorrow (4 star review here)

(13.) The Summer Place (2 stars)

(14.) Writers and Lovers (4 star)

Series:

1. Cafe By the Sea

2. Endless Beach

3. Christmas on the Island

(4) Christmas at the Island Hotel

Mystery:

1. Beautiful Blue Death (5 star– 1st in series– review here)

2. The September Society (5 star; 2nd in series)

(3)  The Lost Apothecary (4 star)

YA Book:

1. What I Carry (5 star review here)

Fable, Fairy Tale, or Allegory:

1. Friedman’s Fables (bad)

Memoir:

1. Educated (deeply affecting chronicle of abuse)

2. These Precious Days (5 star review here)

3. Why Fish Don’t Exist (4 star review here)

Essays:

1. The World-Ending Fire (4 star review here)

Cookbook:

1.  In Praise of Veg

(2.) Harvest

(3.) Comfortable Kitchen

(4.) Love & Lemons Everyday

Poetry:

1. Ain’t Burned All the Bright (5 star review here)

(2.) Love Poems for God (4 star review here)

Spirituality:

1. Pray Like a Gourmet (5 star review here)

2. Amazing Grace: Toward a Vocabulary of Faith (4 star review here)

(3) The Way of Liberation (3 stars)

Art:

1.  Art Supplies (5 star review here)

2.  Picasso’s War (5 star review here)

Life Lessons:

1. The Things You can See Only When You Slow Down (5 star review here)

2. Living from the Soul

Non-fiction:

1. Splendid and the Vile (5 star review here)

2. Paradise in Plain Sight: Lessons from a Zen Gardener (4 star review here)

3. The Almanac of Naval Ravikant (forthcoming review)

4. Gee’s Bend Quilts (see here)

5. Sapiens (5 star review here)

6. The Library Book (three star)

7.  What You Think of Me is None of my Business (three star)

8.  Make Food Simple

Illustrated Non-fiction:

1. Conscious Creativity (4 star review here)

2. Expressive Sketchbooks (4 star review here)

Professional Development:

1. Ram and the Thicket (1/2 way; Christian Science)

2. Letters from John Hargreaves (Christian Science)

3. Lectures by Hendrik de Lange (Christian Science)

Let us know in the comments your favorite books of the year!