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My Books for 2022
This is what I got to this year. I probably didn’t read as many old books as C. S. Lewis would advise. But I did read an older book by the woman that would become his wife. What did you read this year?
Nonfiction:
Fentanyl, Inc.: How Rogue Chemists Are Creating the Deadliest Wave of the Opioid Epidemic by Ben Westhoff
- I work with a population that is greatly suffering from this plague. I know a number of men lost to this drug over the last year. Not a concern of the current Administration.
Young Frankenstein: The Making of the Film by Mel Brooks
Where the Light Fell by Philip Yancey
- Yancey is one of my favorite contemporary Christian writers, writing important works on pain and suffering. This is his memoir.
The Force: The Legendary Special Ops Unit and WWII’s Mission Impossible by Saul David
- If you’ve ever seen the film, The Devil’s Brigade … This is the true story.
The Black Joke: The True Story of One Ship’s Battle Against the Slave Trade by A.E. Rooks (2022)
- I learned about this interesting piece of history from @Seawriter.
Smoke on the Mountain: An Interpretation of the Ten Commandments by Joy Davidman
On Animals by Susan Orlean (2022)
The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self by Carl R. Trueman
- How did we get to the place where a man can call himself a woman and nobody laughs?
Not Forsaken: A Story of Life After Abuse by Jennifer Michelle Greenberg
- I highly recommend this story of a woman’s struggle with abuse in the Christian community.
Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers by Dane C. Ortlund
- Who does Jesus love?
The Church of Baseball: The Making of Bull Durham by Ron Shelton (2022)
Reading the Bible with the Damned by Bob Ekblad
Comedy Comedy Comedy Drama by Bob Odenkirk (2022)
Perry Mason by Erle Stanley Gardner
The Case of the Demure Defendant
The Case of the Deadly Toy
The Case of the Icy-Cold Hand
The Case of the Beautiful Beggar
The Case of the Mythical Monkeys
The Case of the Waylaid Wolf
The Case of the Amorous Aunt
The Case of the Singing Skirt
The Case of the Daring Decoy
Other Fiction:
Preach No More by Richard Lockridge
Superman Smashes the Klan by Gene Luen Yang
The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix
Tracy Flick Can’t Win by Tom Perrotta (2022)
- I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this sequel to Election.
Fish or Cut Bait by A.A. Fair (aka Erle Stanley Gardner)
The Quick and the Dead by Louis L’Amour
Murder in Christmas River by Meg Muldoon
The End of the Affair by Graham Greene
- One of those classics you finally get to and regret putting off for so many years.
The Island by Adrian McKinty (2022)
Sparring Partners by John Grisham (2022)
Published in General
Very cool! I guess I’m not going to complete anything in the next few hours, so this is my official 2022, books I read list. Books I bought list would be much bigger:
• Freddy and Fredericka, by Mark Helprin
A hilariously bonkers love letter to America, featuring a fictional version of Charles and Diana, sent to the United States to reconquer the colonies for Britain and thereby prove their worth.
• The Island of Doctor Moreau, by H.G. Wells
Much deeper than I expected, it delves into deep issues about the nature of humanity, the things that separate us from animals, and the tendency to revert to animal instinct, which we must constantly battle against. Wells called this a “youthful exercise in blasphemy,” and I think he was correct.
• How to Rule an Empire and Get Away With It, by K.J. Parker (Tom Holt)
The second in a series about a city under seige, but not as compelling. The basic plot: an actor gets cashiered into taking the place of the emperor, who he impersonates well. Starts strong, ends strong, drags in the middle.
• Moon Over Soho, by Ben Aaronovich
Meh. The second in the “Rivers of London” series (elevator pitch: Harry Potter as a cop), runs down way too many rabbit trails and by the end I no longer cared. The first book showed that the series held some promise, but the second book didn’t make me want to read further.
• Our Man in Havana, by Graham Greene
Dark comedy about a vacuum cleaner salesman in Havana who gets recruited into the British secret service, starts sending back bogus reports to justify his stipend, and then those reports start being taken VERY seriously. Great stuff!
• Decline and Fall, by Evelyn Waugh
A deeply satirical book about British academe and the upper class. Waugh eviscerates his countrymen with dry, witty observations that are slipped in so deftly you almost miss them as they whoosh by.
• Lost Horizon, by James Hilton
An incident brings four travelers to the hidden Tibetan monastery of Shangri-La, where they are drawn in to its seductions of peace in a time of war. Not a lot happens, but it was hard to put down.
• Star Trek: The Motion Picture, novelization by Gene Roddenberry, supposedly
So sue me. It wasn’t bad. Some say it was actually written by Alan Dean Foster, but given the weird obsessions with sex, I’m pretty sure it was Roddenberry.
• The Color of Magic, by Terry Pratchett
I’ve never read a Discworld novel, so I thought I’d start at the beginning. Everyone says not to start at the beginning, because the first book isn’t very good. And . . . well, I kind of agree with that. I’m still not sure what Pratchett was trying to do or say when he created this setting. Not so much a through-plot as it is a bunch of incidents.
• Little, Big, by John Crowley
The story of a large extended family living in a large mysterious house in the deep forest that operates as a doorway between our world and an inner (larger?) world inhabited by fairy folk. Summary: “Things seem to be happening, but not really. The end.”
Closing out the year reading Helprin’s A Soldier of the Great War, which is overstuffed with long descriptions of forests and mountains and the sea and the land and the moon and . . . everything else.
I haven’t read it since it was originally released in the 90s. It needed a ruthless editor. (This is true of a lot of Helprin.)
And I can’t remember what I initially thought then, but reading it now, I see that it’s not so much about war as it is about loss. The protagonist keeps losing everyone close to him and yet keeps surviving the horrors of war.
When Pratchett began, he was merely spoofing well-known fantasy characters; that’s all the books were. And he was still developing his writing skills. Those early novels are much less popular than the later ones.
I strongly recommend that you start later in the series: Fortunately, the novels are all sufficiently stand-alone that you can begin almost anywhere. Wyrd Sisters is a loose parody of Macbeth and introduces a trio of memorably eccentric witches. Guards Guards!, Men at Arms, Feet of Clay, and Hogfather are good choices. The latter is an alternately comedic and dark satire of Christmas. Small Gods is one of the darkest of these satiric novels.
Yup. Guards Guards would be my pick. The City Watch films with Sam Vimes are the best in the series.
I started with Small Gods and Going Postal, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I would “nuance” that by saying it depends on the tastes of the reader: For some it’s the City Watch stories. For others the eccentric witch stories, or the Susan Sto Helit stories. And for “younger readers” either of the first two YA novels, The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents or The Wee Free Men.
Now get on with your New Years preparations. “Don’t let me detain you.”
https://ricochet.com/236732/fantasy-reading-suggestions/comment-page-5/#comment-2777499
My first comment ever on Ricochet!
I gave slightly different advice on reading Discworld at the time. I think my older advice was better.
Here’s my 2022 reading log. My reading was way down this year.
Meh. You guys have no idea how imperative it is that I Do Things in Order.
That’s pretty much what I got out of it. “Oh, this section is a parody of Conan. And this section is a parody of the Dragonriders of Pern. And here we have a parody of . . .”
Good lists, everyone! I especially like seeing what non-fiction others are reading. And @drewinwisconsin, Graham Greene and HG Wells are at the top of my list for fiction holes to fill.
I keep track of and review all my reading on Goodreads and would be delighted to connect with anyone who’s interested (my handle is Charlotte plus my last name which begins with Rein). I’m Goodreads friends (or whatever it’s called) with a couple of former Ricos there, and there is also a Ricochet Book Group.
I’m on Goodreads here, Charlotte. (Or anyone else.)
I read so much less than last year, mostly because of life post covid restrictions but also because I got stuck on some hard to finish books. I won’t mention them.
I started the year off with Abigail Shrier’s terrifying Irreversible Damage.
Next there was Target Africa by Obianuju Ekeocha. Later on I had the pleasure of meeting Obianuju, or Uju as her friends call her, at a Pro-Life event in Dublin in September. The book is fascinating and infuriating, detailing the ‘ideological colonisation’ of Africa by pro abortion advocates.
Tim Stanley’s Whatever Happened to Tradition came after that. I loved this one too, I’d like to know if @She has read it and what she thought of it.
I’m very lucky to live quite near a retired and very eminent professor of theology Fr Vincent Twomey and I read one of his books The End of Irish Catholicism. At my age ( I like to think of myself as still relatively young) it filled in a lot of gaps for me about the experience of being Catholic in Ireland. Jumping ahead in the year I also read Mary Kenny’s new book The Way We Were Catholic Ireland since 1922 which served a similar purpose but with lots of Irish history thrown in too.
Before that though I read Douglas Murray’s new one, I’m a big fan and it’s a great book but it didn’t have the same impact on me as the previous two.
I also devoured Days of Rage, can’t remember the author right now but it’s about the Underground terrorists in the US in the 1970’s. Someone here on Ricochet said they found it boring but I was glued to it, I even brought it to the hairdresser with me and told her all about it while I was getting highlights.
There’s a very good festival here near me in the Summer and one of the speakers was Paul Kingsnorth who I’d kind of heard about on Rod Drehar’s podcast and somewhere else. His talk on transhumism was so good I bought one of his books, Alexandria. It was a weird but compelling futuristic novel but the most interesting thing about all this was that after the festival I happened to run into Paul and his daughter in Tesco and he very kindly assisted me in buying underwear for my male cousin who had come up from cork for a visit but forgot his drawers.
Great, thanks! (I didn’t know you could just do a link. That’s much more elegant. :-)
Just got a pair of bridge columns about routine endplays, VDH essay high. I only called because I thought y’all were bluffing.
Were the Percy Jackson books worth reading?
As usual a mix of history, biography, sci-fi, and mysteries. I don’t mind fiction placed in an historical context, but I am not a fan of novelizing historical events – the whole time I am reading I am wondering if this is fact or fiction and the credibility or lack thereof tends to ruin the story for me.
The Blood Dimmed Tide – Rennie Airth
American Jennie – Anne Sebba (Winston Churchill’s mother)
Murder on a Midnight Clear – Sara Rosett
The Sanatorium – Sarah Pearse
The Ghost of a Model T and Other Stories: The Complete Short Fiction of Clifford D Simak – Volume Three
Madhouse at the End of the Earth: The Belgica’s Journey into the Dark Antarctic Night – Julian Sancton
An Assembly Such as This – Pamela Aiden
Pardonable Lies – Jacqueline Winspear
A Killer in King’s Cove – Iona Whishaw
Diary of a Dead Man on Leave – David Downing
The Magician – Kathleen Shoop (Historical fiction – Stan Musial)
Saving Time – Jodi Taylor
Short Stories: Five Decades – Irwin Shaw
I am Legend – Richard Matheson
The Weird Sisters – Eleanor Brown
Ship of Fools – Katherine Anne Porter
The City of Mist – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Mary Russell’s War: And Other Stories of Suspense – Laurie R King
The Nightmare Years: 1930 -1940 – William L Shirer
Pinnacle City: A Superhero Noir – Matt Carter & Fiona J.R. Titchenell
A Glass of Blessings – Barbara Pym
Some Tame Gazelle – Barbara Pym
Jane and Prudence – Barbara Pym
By Myself and Then Some – Lauren Bacall (After reading this I came to the conclusion that Bacall was kind of a ditz)
The Feud: The Hatfields and McCoys The True Story – Dean King
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie – Muriel Spark
We Have Always Lived in the Castle – Shirley Jackson
XY&Z: The Real Story of How Enigma Was Broken – Dermot Turing (Gives credit to the Polish scientists who worked on Enigma long before the British)
The Splendid and the Vile – Erik Larson (Churchill’s first year as Prime Minister)
The Blind Side – Patricia Wenworth
Who Pays the Piper? – Patricia Wentworth
Pursuit of a Parcel – Patricia Wentworth
A House in the Mountains: The Women Who Liberated Italy from Fascism – Caroline Moorehead
Grandmother’s Tale and Selected Stories – R.K Narayan
Starship Troopers – Robert A Heinlein
The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek – Kim Michele Richardson
The Kitchen Mistress – Kathleen Shoop
City of Lies – Victoria Thompson
Kingdom of Nauvoo: The Rise and Fall of a Religious Empire on the American Frontier – Benjamin E. Park
This Time Next Year We’ll Be Laughing – Jacqueline Winspear (Biography)
A Catalogue of Catastrophe – Jodi Taylor
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry – Mildred D Taylor
As I’ve mentioned before I’ve been on a light fiction binge after ignoring it for many years. I need a break from the real world.
And so I read, or reread, a lot of Glenn Cook, Jim Butcher, and Larry Correia. I am still slogging through Richard Jordan’s Wheel of Time series. I read one Jordon book, and put him away for a couple months.
I started the Dragon Knight series by Gordon Dickson but partway through the 3rd one I realized I didn’t care what happened and put it down. All 7 books I had went into the library donation box.
Long ago I found abandoned almost the complete paperback series of Conan the Barbarian, more than a dozen paperbacks. I read the first one through this year. I’m trying to decide whether to try another one, or put them all in the donation box also.
I read Ashendon by Somerset Maugham, which is based the author’s experiences as a spy in WW1. Great stuff but it was a different world then. His character portraits are quite vivid and he is a bit of a snob, but I enjoyed it. Contains plenty to offend the woke.
I reread The Golden Keel by Desmond Bagley, another long time favorite. I haven’t looked at it in a long time but it held up well. Several of his books were adapted for movies, but this one never was, and I’ve never understood why. I also read Bagley’s notes which have recently been formed into a sort of semi-auto biography which I enjoyed.
I picked up Assault on a Queen by Jack Finney which I last read 45 years ago. It’s a yarn set in the 50s about resurrecting a scuttled submarine and attempting to hold up the Queen Mary – modern piracy. It held up pretty good.
From Dennis Prager’s Rational Bible series I got his commentaries on Deuteronomy and the Passover. I like his comments on Old Testament topics.
In the “how-to” hobby arena I picked up The Taig/Peatol Lathe and it’s accessories by Tony Jeffee, along with a number of clock making books, including wooden clocks, and started a wooden one. If I can pull that one off I’ll possibly move onto more serious projects.
I picked up Macro Photography: The Universe at Our Feet by Don Komarechka. It has absolutely stunning imagery and the section on 3D macro has been a big inspiration. It got me excited enough to start 3D photography again after a hiatus since the mid 90s. If you think you might like this book, don’t delay. It was published after a successful kickstarter campaign and the author says that only a few are still available.
Matheson wrote a lot of great short stories and screen plays.
Did you like this? I liked a few of Simak’s well known stories long ago, but when I tried The Werewolf Principle I couldn’t get through the 2nd chapter.
I Am Legend was not what I expected, and it was a good one. I believe Matheson did several Twilight Zone episodes.
The Simak stories were kind of fun, but not consistently so. But I think I would try some more of his stuff.
My twelve year old has been on me to read them for a while. They’re entertaining enough. I was halfway through the second before I realized they’re just Harry Potter told with Mythology instead of Wizardry.
I Am Legend is my favorite horror novel. I’d also recommend by Matheson The Shrinking Man and Hell House.
“I have CDO. That’s like OCD but the letters are in alphabetical order as they should be.”
Take my suggestion for the first book you sample. Then, if you like it, read them all in order.
My wife keeps track of what books she reads. I do not. But some highlights.
I read my first CJ Box book a Joe Pickett novel (I have listened to all the prior ones on Audible)
I started listening to The Gulag Archipelago, not very far into it, and I likely won’t finish it, but it’s fascinating
I am still working on Rigged by Mollie Hemingway on Audible as well (I had a ton of credits I stacked up because I’m not driving as much as inused to.
Ringworld and Stranger in a Strange Land, also audio books.
I am in book 8 (10th book in the Expeditionary Force Series by Crag Alanson. It’s a funny SciFi series with aliens, AIs, and humans trying to survive in a scary galaxy.
I read House Atredies in the Dune series and it was OK, but not good enough for me to read the other books.
I listened to some Elmer Kelton (The Time it Never Rained, The Man Who Rode Midnight, and Honor at Daybreak) and loved them as much as the first time I read them.
I also reread the entire Vorkosigan saga (except for Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen) because Bujold is a fantastic writer and tells a wonderful story.
Just a note on the Jodi Taylor books – it’s time travel, comedy, drama and history all rolled into one. I started with Just One Damned Thing After Another written in 2013, the first of the St Mary’s Chronicles. Apparently there is also The Very First Damned Thing written in 2015, which may be a prequel. (I haven’t read that one yet.) It’s a fun series. I really like Taylor’s deprecating humor.
The Innocence of Father Brown, Chesterton
Monster Hunter International, Correia
Padre Pio, Fr. Amorth
For Greater Glory: The True Story of the Cristiada, Ruben
The Message Behind the Movie, Beaumont
Benedict XVI: Defender of the Faith, Pearce
Finding Vigano, Moynihan
First and Last, Hillaire Belloc
Out of the Silent Planet, Lewis
On Christian Doctrine, St. Augustine
The Wisdom of Father Brown, Chesterton
Saint Benedict, Forbes
The Power of Silence, Cdl Sarah
Hollywood Victory, Blauveldt
Dominion, Fr. Ripperger
Age of the Maccabees, Streane
The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu, Rohmer
I read five Greene books
thislast year; that one, Travels With my Aunt, Brighton Rock, The Comedians, and The Heart of the Matter. Most of his books can be rather dark, but that last one was a real downer.I read 38 books in 2022, down from 58 in 2021 and way down from 85 in 2020.
Some of my favorites were:
Reagan: The Life, H.W. Brands
All About Me, Mel Brooks
Stalin: Court of the Red Star, Simon Montefiore
Hap Arnold, Dik Alan Daso
Who Can Hold the Sea, James D. Hornfischer
When the Race Was Won (the Gemini flights), Bart Colomb
I’ll have to get the household Ashendon By Somerset Maugham.
My spouse is big on Maugham, but I don’t think he even knows of this title.