I read 62 books this year, most of them (almost three-quarters) fiction. Some of the books I read were really incredible, and I can’t wait to tell you about them.

A change from how I’ve done this list in prior years: I had a baby the second week of 2022, and I spent those early newborn months trying to find books that would just be a pleasure to read, so I’ve also this year included a category for books I enjoyed but that didn’t make me go wow this changed my life. There were also a bunch of sequels to books I’d loved that came out this year, so ones I loved of those I’ve put in a separate category so you’ll know you get to enjoy a whole series leading up to them.

(Oh, also, I put together a living database of recommended media for things that aren’t books – flash fiction, short stories, podcasts, articles, etc. If your TBR/to-listen-to list isn’t long enough, you can check that out too!)

Without further ado –

Books I loved

I loved these books. They’re in no particular order.

Fiction

• Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel A short, lovely book. Compelling & beautiful. I don’t know that I can say much more without spoilers.
• The Sentence by Louise Erdrich The literary fiction entry on an otherwise speculative fiction list. I loved this book so much; I can't wait to read more of Erdrich's work. It was beautifully done and heart-warming — in the spots where a lot of literary fiction would have chosen the sad option Just Because They Can, she chose love, every time.
• Kaikeyi by Vaishnavi Patel A beautiful retelling and reimagining of an old story. I enjoyed the characters immensely and never wanted anything bad to happen to them (spoiler: bad things did happen to them)
• The Seep by Chana Porter This is technically a novella, and I thought it was a lovely exploration of what humans might be like if our lives had different (arguably better) parameters.
• A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik I feel a little silly putting it on here, because if you’re reading this there’s a good chance you’re one of the people who recommended it to me, or didn’t bother recommending this to me because you assumed I’d already read it. I listened to the audiobook and it was a delight, I’m so excited to read the next two in the series. It’s like a darker, less problematic Harry Potter, with a less fleshed-out world but much better world building.

Non-fiction

• How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question by Michael Schur This is hilarious and beautifully done. If you listen to the audiobook, you get actors from The Good Place narrating the footnotes. Moral philosophy doesn't have to be boring, apparently!
• The Warmth of Other Suns: the Epic Story of America’s Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson I never expected to love a 700 page book on the Great Migration, but I did. Compellingly told, and I learned a huge amount.
• Hebrew Roots, Jewish Routes: A Tribal Language in a Global World by Jeremy Benstein Yo, this was amazing! If you like Hebrew and/or linguistics, I strongly recommend this. It’s a pretty quick read.

Books I really liked that are not first in a series

… so you should read the whole series before you read these

• Nona the Ninth (The Locked Tomb #3) by Tamsyn Muir Nona is adorable and absurd. If you haven’t yet you need to read all The Locked Tomb books before Alecto the Ninth (the last book) comes out next year. You may want to read them all twice; I can vouch for the first two being even better on reread.
• The World We Make (Great Cities #2) by N.K. Jemisin The end to N.K. Jemisin’s most recent duology! A great ending.