All the Books of 2022, Part Two

Apr 15

Apr 15 All the Books of 2022, Part Two

books, books of 2022, reviews

15 March 2023

Dear Readers,

Welcome back to part two, and thank you for being here. I am excited to share with you the second and final part of this series. It has been fun revisiting a lot of these books. As I was putting this together, I came across an interesting statistic. For the first half of the year I read 37 books, and for the second half I read 21. My monthly numbers ended up averaging closer to four books a month, whereas at the start of the year, there were a couple months where I read eight books. I’m not sure what caused the momentum switch but it’s interesting to see how it shifted over a full year. Though I think I may have enjoyed a larger percentage of these books more than the first half.

One thing I had wanted to mention in part one was that the inspiration for these stop motion videos came from the first video I made back in 2018. I’d made it one morning before going to work as I wanted to feel like I was still creating things and thought I’d try my hand at stop motion. I’m still surprised that I managed to set it all up and execute this shoot all before leaving for the office. It was shot next to the kitchen window at our old apartment. It was where the kettle lived and where I’d often find the cat sitting to look out the window. Everything was moved to the side so I could have the blank canvas of the table. It’s still one of my favorites ones to date. I’ve included it so you can enjoy too.

I hope you’ve enjoyed these reviews. I’d love to hear what books you may have been inspired to pick up and what were your favorite books of the year. For my favorites, scroll down to the end of this post for the final list.

JULY

STATS:
- Finished four books.
- Two books for me. Two books for work.
- Two physical books. Two on kindle from the library (When We Were Magic, Better Than the Movies).
- Day with the most pages read: 27 July - 189 pages.

When We Were Magic by Sarah Gailey
(Started on 19 July 2022. Finished on 22 July 2022.)

When We Were Magic is a YA novel that follows six best friends who all posses a different magical ability that they’ve managed to keep secret. One can understand the desires and wants of animals, another can connect to plants, another can change her make-up/appearance at will. That is until the night of senior prom when one of them accidentally kills a boy during sex. They attempt to cover it up but it doesn’t go quite as planned. Their first spell backfires and then the second makes it even worse. They now have to figure out to dispose of his body parts that were left behind from their clean up spell, so they do the only thing they can think of, bury each part and hope that somehow it’ll all settle itself out. But the further they get down this road, the more they realize that nothing comes without a price. Each friend begins losing something they hold dear: freckles, the color green, the ability to dream.

Of the magic stories, this one didn’t do anything for me and I found the process of them disposing of this pour boy to be repetitive. It’s so much about their relationships as friends and the attempt to keep this giant secret (the death and their powers) a secret which only works for a while. Inevitably they’re found out. I also wanted their powers and the thing they loose to be bigger somehow as each of their powers felt small in the grand scheme of things. The opening is flashy and provocative, it really gets your attention, but then it dropped off for me. One element I did like was the queer love story that emerges among two friends, and how each girl has a different background so you can see how being in this predicament is impacting them all a little differently.

Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert
(Started on 10 July 2022. Finished on 23 July 2022.)

Big Magic was one of those books that I’d known about for years. I’d sometimes reference it when people brought up stories about the same idea popping up in different places, a story that was once told to me by a girlfriend who was the first person that insisted I read it. (The story goes that Gilbert once transferred an idea to Ann Patchett, which Ann would take and make into State of Wonder.) It was a book I knew I should read but one that I just hadn’t gotten around to it yet. My mom read it first after we’d talked about it years before and given me her copy. There were earmarks at passages that resonated with her. Sometimes those same passages and pages also resonated with me. It was a bit like reading it together. Then last summer I was going through a hard time of knowing what my next step should be. I was feeling stuck in work and creatively. I wanted to make a change but didn’t know where to even start anymore. It all felt like too big of a question. So I took this book off the shelf and thought I’d see what Elizabeth Gilbert had to say.

For those that aren’t familiar, the idea of big magic is that you need to allow space within yourself to be receptive to the incoming of ideas. An idea won’t come to you if you’re not allowing it the space to come in and then it will leave if you’re not able to give it the time that it’s requiring. Some ideas will stick around for years until you’re ready, but others, if you don’t engage with them quickly, they’ll go find someone else who has the time and space right now.

I believe the creative process is both magical and magic.
Because here is what I choose to believe about how creativity functions:
I believe that our planet is inhabited not only by animals and plants and bacteria and viruses, but also by ideas. Ideas are a disembodied, energetic life-form. They are completely separate from us, but capable of interacting with us—albeit strangely. Ideas have no material body, but they do have consciousness, and they most certainly have will. Ideas are driven by a single impulse: to be made manifest. And the only way an idea can be made manifest in our world is through collaboration with a human partner. It is only through a human’s efforts that an idea can be escorted out of the ether and into the realm of the actual.
Therefore, ideas spend eternity swirling around us, searching for available and willing human partners. (I’m talking about all ideas here—artistic, scientific, industrial, commercial, ethical, religious, political.) When an idea thinks it has found somebody—say, you—who might be able to bring it into the world, the idea will pay you a visit. It will try to get your attention. Mostly, you will not notice. This is likely because you’re so consumed by your own dramas, anxieties, distractions, insecurities, and duties that you aren’t receptive to inspiration. You might miss the signal because you’re watching TV, or shopping, or brooding over how angry you are at somebody, or pondering your failures and mistakes, or just generally really busy. The idea will try to wave you down (perhaps for a few moments; perhaps for a few months; perhaps even for a few years), but when it fairly realizes that you’re oblivious to its message, it will move onto someone else.
But sometimes—rarely, but magnificently—there comes a day when you’re open and relaxed enough to actually receive something. […] And then, in a quiet moment, it will ask, ‘Do you want to work with me?’ (pg. 34 - 36)

I tend to find books on the subject of writing or creativity to be really hard for me to read. Often the tone isn’t right, it’s too preachy or too earnest, or I can’t relate to the person writing, or I find their approach to feel too simplistic and unrealistic for me. I’ll start reading the introduction and something about the writing will cause my eyes to glaze over, jumping around the page, and I’ll know that it’s not the right one for me or it’s not the right time for it. I can’t quite explain my aversion to writing advice books even though I find myself looking at new releases or favorite classics to see if maybe this one will speak to me. Some can be incredibly helpful, like I really loved Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott when I read it in grad school and have a small collection of other writing/technical books that I’ve enjoyed or reference from time to time. I think I have to trust that the writer knows what they’re talking about, have been in my place so it’s like a peer to peer conversation, and to be about something more than just the mechanics of how to write.

I didn’t have that problem with Elizabeth Gilbert. I knew that she’d faced the blank page before and she knew what it was like to try to create something and not have it work. I trusted her advice because I knew that she had sat in my seat before; and maybe the biggest thing that won me over was her voice. She was not only knowledgeable and inspiring but also approachable. She never made me feel like I wasn’t trying hard enough to do the thing, or made me feel bad when I had a hard time finding the energy or time to focus on it because other circumstances were always calling; instead, she made it seem like those problems are normal and something she’s faced herself. She shared her advice on the methods she’s found to move past them. She wasn’t reprimanding me but instead encouraging me to open up to the possibility of my ideas and to give them some attention. I just liked the way she wrote. Her advice on how to be open to big magic and the creative process was incredibly helpful and achievable. So much of her advice wasn’t about needing to necessarily do more but it was about taking the time to sit in the chair, to try, and to be open to the flow. She wrote what I needed to hear and be reminded of. I finished the read feeling really inspired and like I could work through my own roadblocks. It’ll be one I’ll return to again.

Though I was looking at it through the lens of my own creativity, I think it would be a useful book for anyone who is looking at how to reignite their own spark.

I once read a heartbreaking letter that Herman Melville wrote to his good friend Nathaniel Hawthorne, complaining that he simply could not find the time to work on his book about the whale, because ‘I am so pulled hither and thither by circumstances.’ Melville said that he longed for a big, wide-open stretch of time in which to create (he called it ‘the calm, the coolness, the silent grass-growing mood in which a man ought always to compose’), but that sort of luxuriousness simply did not exist for him. He was broke, he was stressed, and he could not find the hours to write in peace.
I do not know of any artist (successful or unsuccessful, amateur or pro) who does not long for that kind of time. I do not know of any creative soul who does not dream of calm, cool, grass-growing days in which to work without interruption. Somehow, though, nobody ever seems to achieve it. Or if they do achieve it (through a grant, for instance, or a friend’s generosity, or an artist’s residency), that idyll is just temporary—and then life will inevitably rush back in. Even the most successful creative people I know complain that they never seem to get all the hours they need in order to engage in dreamy, pressure-free, creative exploration. Reality’s demands are constantly pounding on the door and disturbing them. On some other planet, in some other lifetime, perhaps that sort of peaceful Edenic work environment does exist, but it rarely exists here on earth.
Melville never got that kind of environment, for instance.
But he still somehow managed to write Moby-Dick, anyhow. (pg. 158 - 159)

Mrs. March by Virginia Feito
(Started on 28 June 2022. Finished on 27 July 2022.)

Mrs. March follows the title character, Mrs. March, who comes to believe that the unflattering main character in her husband’s new book is based off her. The connection is first expressed to her at her local bakery, and once the owner says the words, Mrs. March decides that she can never show her face there again, even if they did make her favorite loaf. (She’s also referred to by Mrs. March for the entirety of the book, even when she thinks about herself as a child, which plays into the idea that everything she’s telling you and everything that’s described as happening is all being filtered through her off-kilter perspective.) What begins as a somewhat routine story about a well-to-do wife in New York City who is questioning her place inside her marriage and family then starts to morph. She has a weird disconnected relationship with her son, and is worried that her husband is having an affair, which calls back memories about how they got together in the first place, her being his younger student; and turns into a psychological thriller when Mrs. March becomes convinced that her husband is a murderer, after hearing news stories about a woman in Maine who went missing who her husband commented on once. And so she decides to take a trip up north to investigate. It all comes together in a shocking and surprising ending.

This was a book that really surprised me with the twists it made as I wasn’t expecting it to enter into thriller territory. I will say that while there were periods of reading it only during the day because I didn’t want to necessarily be inside Mrs. March’s head before bed, I do think the thriller elements worked and weren’t too scary because it was all coming from her and the off-kilter way that she was viewing the world. She became more unreliable as the book went on to the point where I sometimes wondered if what she said or saw was actually there or if she’d made it up. It all comes together really well, though in surprising ways, and I’ll say that I enjoyed it a fair amount. It twisted and turned from what was reality to what was imaginary in a way that was really clever and successful. And in all the ways that the ending is surprising, it also makes a lot of sense after you’ve spent this entire time inside Mrs. March’s head.

Better Than the Movies by Lynn Painter
(Started on 27 July 2022. Finished on 31 July 2022.)

This was another book recommended to me by the friend who’d also suggested the Wisteria Society. I realized also after checking it out from the library that I’d bought this book the Christmas before for my niece. Better Than the Movies is a fun and sweet YA romcom about Liz and Wes, two neighbors who are sworn enemies, who agree to fake interest in each other so she can get the prom date of her dreams. Except, to her complete shock, she realizes that the person she wants to be with is Wes and not her childhood crush who has recently moved back to town. It features all the classic romcom elements that you want like enemies to lovers, a character getting that big romantic gesture they’ve been wanting the whole time only to realize that they now wish it was someone else doing the asking, an understanding of classic rom coms and their tropes, and it leaves you wishing there was more book to read even though it’s all been neatly tied up in a bow.

I enjoyed this book so much. It’s smartly written, funny, and gets into discussions about loss and how to face these big moments in your life, like the ending of high school and moving away from home for college. Liz and Wes are charming together. You get why they would’ve previously disliked each other as they were growing up but you also get why they’re pushed together now. There are many moments where characters have to deal with the misconceptions they’ve had toward another character that felt so real and relatable. I liked it as an adult and think I would’ve been just as into it as a teenager. One small gripe I have about the book is that classic romcoms are referenced throughout and feature quotes over chapter titles, and I really think there was a missed opportunity of not featuring the classic You’ve Got Mail line, “I wished it was you. I wished it was you so bad”, for the last chapters.

AUGUST

STATS:
- Finished two books.
- Both were for me.
- Two physical books.
- Day with the most pages read: 9 August and 15 August - 79 pages.

The Art of Repair by Molly Martin
(Started on 2 August 2022. Finished on 17 August 2022.)

The Art of Repair is a book I found through @Toast’s online mending workshops. Toast is a UK clothing brand that has been offering in-store repairs for items previously purchased from them. They have a team of incredibly talented menders who are available to work on your garments, and they’ve also hosted various online workshops on how to start mending. I’m not sure about you but I was having issues with my jeans wearing out in the same patches then ripping, elbows wearing thin, and having too many moths who decided my cashmere and wool sweaters made for the perfect snacks. But despite the holes, these items were all still perfectly wearable and I felt like they had more life in them. So I was curious to learn more about how to repair my own clothes, to extend their life and to keep much loved items around. Molly Martin’s zoom tutorials with Toast were the first I attended and it really opened the doors to me about what was possible with mending. Reading her book expanded on the how-tos of mending techniques with handy illustrations like Swiss darning and sashiko (a Japanese technique), while also diving into discussing the history of many mending traditions and practices, and how to embrace a bit of color into the visual repairs. I loved her book and have used it as a guide as I’ve begun my practice. So far I’ve repaired one very moth eaten cashmere sweater and a hole in another sweater, two pairs of jeans, and the elbow on my trusty chore coat. The elbows on many shirts are next on my list.

On Flowers: Lessons from an Accidental Florist by Amy Merrick
(Started on 8 August 2022. Finished on 19 August 2022.)

On Flowers is a beautiful book about @Amy Merrick’s journey of becoming a florist in New York City to a flower creator and appreciator around the world. I’ve been a long time admirer of her floral work from her New York days (she did Jamie Beck’s wedding bouquet and other high profile arrangements around the city) to her floral travel arrangements and wanderings around the English countryside. This book covers the essentials from where to source flowers, from fields to supermarkets to a high end florist shop; to how to appreciate the flowers growing in sidewalk cracks, to the most elaborate displays; to how to build your own journey and relationship with the flowers around you. It captured so much of what I aim and strive for the Bloom Report to be. It’s filled with stunning photographs and stories from her many travels; and is also very successful at capturing what feels like Amy’s spirit. All in all, a gorgeous book from all angles. A read for the casual and devoted flower fan.

SEPTEMBER

STATS:
- Finished four books.
- All personal reads, as are the rest of the books for the year.
- Two physical books. Two books on kindle from the library (Beach Read, This Time Tomorrow).
- Day with the most pages read: 4 September - 238 pages.

Beach Read by Emily Henry
(Started on 30 August 2022. Finished on 4 September 2022.)

Beach Read follows January, a romance novelist who no longer believes in love, after a devastating family secret is revealed at her father’s funeral. She moves to a Michigan beach town with the intention of selling the beach house she inherited and to get away from reality so she can hunker down and finish her next book; but things don’t go to plan when she discovers that her new neighbor is her literary rival, Augustus. To get over writer's block, they challenge each other to write in each other's styles for the summer. He’s what she would call a serious writer so his task is to write something happy while hers is to pen the next Great American Novel. Romance blooms between them as they go on writing excursions together and realize that the perceptions they had of each other were wrong.

This is a classic enemy to lovers story and I found it worked really well. I liked their banter and interactions with each other. That is ultimately what had me rooting for them and wanting to see them fall for each other. It was funny in parts but also didn’t shy away from talking about harder hitting topics, like grief and feelings of betrayal. There was a side plot during their excursions where Augustus was investigating a nearby cult so his sections went darker as they found out more about this cult and what it did to one family, but then those moments were lightened by the silly romcom themed nights that January would plan. The town is full of light hearted support characters who add depth to the town, like the bookstore owner/cafe barista who asks January and August to come to her bookclub where they’ll talk about each of their books and do an impromptu Q&A, which goes about as well as you’d imagine. For being a book about writers and their processes, I thought it worked because most of the focus is on the characters and how they’re approaching their individual writing crossroads and less about how one writers a book. It didn’t get too inside baseball, if you know what I mean. It was a good summer book. I read it mostly on airplanes and in that context it worked really well because I was captivated enough by the world to keep reading but if I happened to lose focus for a minute, I never felt like I missed too much or had a hard time jumping back in.

This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub
(Started on 5 September 2022. Finished on 13 September 2022.)

This Time Tomorrow is my favorite of Emma Straub's books. I had previously read The Vacationers and All Adults Here for work purposes, and while I respected what she was aiming to do with each book, I had a hard time investing in the characters or connecting with them. There was something about each of those reads where I felt like I was an arms distance from the subject matter. That wasn’t the case with This Time Tomorrow.

Straub wrote this book for her father when he was in the hospital and you can feel the love in its pages. At its core, it's a story about a father daughter relationship, the desire for more time, and second chances. It's also a love story to New York, the love one has for their city, even though it's always changing. Oh, and there's time travel. On her 40th birthday, Alice accidentally discovers that she can travel back in time to her 16th birthday but only when she visits the shed in the garden of her childhood apartment building and only during one hour in the middle of the night. The building is small, made up of a couple attached apartments on the Upper West Side, hidden away by a wall. In the present, Alice’s father (a famed sci-fi novelist) is in the hospital and she’s worried that they won’t have more time together. So when she discovers that she can go back in time, she hopes to rewrite the future so her father won't be sick and that maybe her actions in this new past, will allow her to wake up to a new and exciting life, one where she was able to take more chances. The thing though is that when Alice does return back to her 40th birthday after a night of time traveling, the life she’s returning to isn’t one she recognizes nor does it feel entirely earned. She is able, however, to create some small, positive changes that stick around.

I really loved this book and think it’s one of my top books of the year. Straub is a New Yorker so the New York she wrote about and captured felt so authentic and lived-in. Her depiction of the way a city changes and how we change with it, even if the ghosts of all our favorite old restaurants that are now closed still linger in our memory, was so relatable. Manhattan is a fascinating character in this book that adds a whole other complex layer to the story. I also really liked the way she captured the nuances of her father daughter relationship, the complexities that emerge when the child moves into a parenting role, and the shared experiences they have across all the time traveling moments. There are some excellent moments when Alice is traveling back in time where she’s able to talk to her father about this new experience and where she’s talking to him as her 40 year and 16 year old selves simultaneously. I think it’s a book with a lot of heart and love at its core. It touched me and kept me interested throughout. The one note I do have about it is that it took a beat for the time travel element to be introduced, so if you’re finding it a bit slower at the beginning, give it time because it does all pay off nicely.

Under the Net by Iris Murdoch
(Started on 10 April 2022. Finished on 14 September 2022.)

Under the Net is my first (completed) Iris Murdoch. (I’d started reading her novel The Sea, The Sea during 2020 lockdowns. I remember starting it in our old apartment during cold bath season so it must’ve been in the summer, and reading all these descriptions about food the character was reading. I put it down then, for a reason I don’t remember now, but would like to return to it.) This book was frustrating at times because it was wandering and felt full of tangents I couldn't connect until I finished it. Then the circular narrative all made sense as we finished where we started, but now changed.

The basic narrative is that Jake wants to win back Anna but Anna has fallen for Hugo, who is in love with Anna's sister, Sadie, who is in love with Jake. Jake is a writer, though he mostly translates the books of other writers into English. Anna is Jake’s old love. She’s a singer who will be taking off for America soon. Hugo now runs a film studio. He’s a former friend of Jake’s, who Jake inadvertently ripped off when he published his first book that was made up of conversations he had with Hugo. Sadie is a successful actress who thinks she’s being stalked by Hugo so asks Jake to watch her apartment for her, while hoping that she’ll win him over at last. It’s a tangle of personal relationships but at its center, it’s Jake’s story that we’re following.

It’s set in London. Most of the chapters take us around different neighborhoods as Jake attempts to track down his person of interest (either Anna or Hugo or other secondary characters) and follows his thought process on a given day / his attempt to earn money because he’s broke. He goes to Paris at one point to try and win back Anna, and spends a memorable evening getting lost in its streets. Murdoch’s writing is full of brilliant commentary, witty observations, nuances and absurdity that took hold of me as we navigated her London and Paris. Though I sometimes wasn’t sure where a narrative thread was going or what I was supposed to be feeling in a given moment, I ended up liking the book as a whole and it’s one that I think about from time to time. There are a few scenes that really stayed with me. It left me wanting to read more of her work to find out where she'll take me next.

Heads and Straights: The Circle Line by Lucy Wadham
(Started on 27 September 2022. Finished on 30 September 2022.)

Heads and Straights is the one book I brought to London with me in September 2022. It's part of Penguin's Underground Series: centered around the Circle Line and the neighborhood of Chelsea, where we stayed. I’d bought it from John Sandoe Books in Chelsea back in 2016 so this felt like a perfect time to pick it up. It's a memoir of Lucy Wadham's upbringing, the way she and her sisters fought against their posh upbringing, for worse and better, and how the city changed around them. One sister became a punk and fell into drug addiction, the others all moved abroad. It was really interesting to read how she related to her neighborhood and then how she saw it evolving over the years; how she wanted to push against the life that was being given to her, which she saw as too posh and not radical enough, only to later realize that some of the things she pushed against maybe weren’t all that bad. She's honest in her portrayal, doesn't shy away from the messy moments of her life or that of her family, and keeps the reader absorbed until the last page.

OCTOBER

STATS:
- Finished four books.
- Three physical books. One book on kindle from the library (Book Lovers).
- Day with the most pages read: 29 October - 157. Followed closely by 8 October at 144 pages and 14 October at 143 pages.

Book Lovers by Emily Henry
(Started on 13 September 2022. Finished on 9 October 2022.)

When it comes to Book Lovers, I wish I hadn’t read it so close on the heels of Beach Read because I found it to be a less successful version of the same story, and with the other still fresh in my mind, I only ended up comparing the two books. I’ve talked to a couple friends about this and it seems that we’ve all liked the one we read first, and those like me who started with Beach Read have held similar opinions.

Book Lovers follows another enemy to lovers' trajectory. Two New York book colleagues, who are often at odds professionally after a disastrous work lunch, find themselves in the same small town for a month. Nora, an agent, is on a sister's trip with a custom to-do list designed to get her to enjoy life outside the city. Charlie, an editor, has begrudgingly returned home to help run the family bookstore. The small town in question was the inspiration behind one of Nora’s client’s biggest books, which annoys Charlie and is the reason why Nora’s sister picked it as their destination in the first place. At first, they attempt to keep their distance, but finding that impossible as they keep running into each other and now that they’ve agreed to edit a book together, they come to realize that there’s more to each other than they'd original imagined.

I put aside Book Lovers a couple times before committing to finishing it. I found the set up hard to get behind and the characters didn’t wow me. I guess I wasn’t sure why I wanted to root for them individually because I didn’t have a lot of emotional connection to either of them. Nora has been described as an ice queen and shark by her former boyfriends and colleagues, and so she’s often on the defensive when it comes to love. Her guards are up high to avoid getting heartbroken again and so she’s constantly focused on what’s next, next, next when it comes to work. She’s also been the main support for her sister ever since their mom died but now that her sister is married with a family of her own, Nora isn’t needed in quite the same way and has a hard time letting this mentality go. Charlie could also be described as a workaholic. He loves his job. He’s very good at it. Leaving it behind is very hard on him when he goes back to his hometown and is debating about whether or not he should stay for good. Nora and Charlie are like two sides of the same coin. They’re supposed to be together and we want them to be, but they keep making excuses about why they can’t be.

The thing that made it a hard book for me to read was partially the sister character, I found her to be under-seasoned as a character and her habit of calling Nora “sissy” became very annoying, and that I felt the banter between Nora and Charlie didn’t quite land within the book’s larger premise. If there had more of a space between the two books, I may have enjoyed this one more, but as it felt too similar to Beach Read and not as absorbing. It ended up being more disappointing.

The Bullet That Missed by Richard Osman
(Started on 2 October 2022. Finished on 14 October 2022.)

The Bullet That Missed is the third book of the Thursday Murder Club series. This time the gang finds themselves ensnared in a cold case that doesn't quite fit together, a territory battle between rival money launderers, one a former enemy/lover of Elizabeth's, and there are new romances on the horizon. Supporting characters from book two resurface and cause new mayhems that will no doubt have longer term consequences.

I’ve really enjoyed seeing how the gang has solidified and developed from book to book, like how Joyce continues to get bolder and we learn more about Elizabeth’s past. She’s one interesting lady and each time a new revelation is dropped, I’m only slightly surprised that Elizabeth would be involved because really what hasn’t she done. I enjoyed the read a lot though the ending felt a little too easily tied up. I think I wanted there to be more obstacles or a cleaner resolution, instead it felt like the ending came together very quickly and almost too easily.

The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley
(Started on 23 October 2022. Finished on 28 October 2022.)

The Watchmaker of Filigree Street is what I'd describe as a steampunk mystery. Set in 1883, London. A telegraphist finds a mysterious watch one night in his flat. Six months later, the watch lets off an alert that saves his life, drawing him away from a blast that destroys Scotland Yard. Thaniel wants to know what happened so he tracks down the watchmaker, Mori, a Japanese man living in London, whose shop is full of mysterious clockwork objects, including an octopus. After the explosion, Thaniel is promoted to the Home Office and is asked to keep an eye on Mori as he’s suspected of being the maker of the bomb. Thaniel becomes Mori’s lodger under this pretense of watching him, but his allegiances begin to shift the more the two men spend time together. Then in Oxford, we meet Grace, a scientist who is finishing her studies and is forced to return home to live with her father, who will not tolerate her experiments, and who pushes her to track down a husband. Grace is also in possession of a Mori watch. She’s later convinced that Mori is hiding something as he always seems to know what is going to happen before it does. Thaniel, Grace, and Mori become entangled in a love triangle as feelings become crossed and their futures become more complicated.

This was a very atmospheric read. It asks questions about what is science and what could be called magic. The pages sometimes feel taken over by clockwork inventions that you can’t help but imagine existing in real life. We’re taken from Victorian London to Mori’s past in Imperial Japan to Oxford. There is so much happening in the book and is so well thought out that I was surprised to find that the ending felt a little too easily resolved, like the pieces fit together too well without the reader being fully tuned into why it worked. That aside, I liked the world and dynamic between the characters, this different take on a Victorian society that felt within its time but also designed for a modern reader, and thought it balanced the whimsical with the grounded well. I hesitate to call this a sci-fi novel so instead I would say that it’s part historical fiction, mystery, and steampunk. This is the first book in a series. I would be curious to see how the rest of the series evolves.

Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom by Sylvia Plath
(Started on 29 October 2022. Finished on 29 October 2022.)

Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom is a Sylvia Plath short story, written and submitted to magazines when she was an early writer. It follows Mary on a train ride to the Ninth Kingdom, a place that one cannot leave and set up to resemble a type of hell-like destination, and her eventual crossroads of “will she accept her fate or will she try to change it”. Mary is forced on the train by her parents, not fully wanting to go on the journey, and then once on the train, she meets a woman who says that she can get off if she wants to, but she has to really want to. It feels in line with what Plath would later write, but on its own, feels like it lacks some of the nuance of those pieces. Her voice is present and captivating, her descriptions alluring, and it did make me wonder about all the kingdoms passed on this journey and why the other characters are traveling there.

NOVEMBER

STATS:
- Finished four books.
- Three physical books. One book on kindle from the library (The Kiss Curse).
- Day with the most pages read: 27 November - 204 pages.

Ghosts by Dolly Alderton
(Started on 29 October 2022. Finished on 1 November 2022.)

Ghosts was a book I was excited to finally read, having it on my radar since its announcement. I had actually pitched it to work when it was still in the manuscript phase, but there wasn’t a lot of interest in it, so it ended up getting pushed down my reading list even though I had an early copy. I am so glad to have finally gotten around to reading it as I enjoyed it so much. Just as I was going to buy myself the paperback, a girlfriend sent me her copy saying she’d just read it and thought I would really like it.

It follows Nina, who is one of the last singles in her friend group. She's a successful cookbook author and thinks she's finally found her person, only to be ghosted by him as things grow serious. While dealing with her disappearing love life, Nina is confronted with her father's growing memory loss and her mum's struggle to maintain order. Then to Nina’s surprise, just as she feels like she’s starting to get over this guy, he reappears and makes her question herself and what she’s willing to do for a relationship.

I really liked the writing. It’s honest, funny, and heartbreaking at times. Alderton, herself a woman in her 30s, and a journalist who’s become known for her writings about relationships and her Agony Aunt column, knows what it’s like to inhabit the world of her characters. She’s spent a lot of time thinking about relationships, romantic and platonic, and that comes across on the page. The conversations Nina and her friends have are one's I've had or felt. Her world is relatable and the circumstances that Alderton has built feels real to life in one’s early-30s. It’s a strange feeling to see friends cross off milestone after milestone, and I think this stage of life is well portrayed throughout the book.

Cult Classic by Sloane Crosley
(Started on 30 August 2022. Finished on 4 November 2022.)

Cult Classic is a book I picked-up at Three Lives & Co in New York over the summer. I read the first couple pages and was completely hooked by the concept, though I later felt let down by the book when it came to be revealed that the prologue was less a roadmap for where the story was going to go and more a metaphor for the journey the protagonist would take.

Lola begins to see her exes, one by one, throughout downtown Manhattan. What started off as strange occurrences begins to become routine when Lola learns she's part of an experiment by a secret society, hemmed by her former boss, an eccentric former magazine editor. She's the prototype for a new service to provide people with closure. Her experience is going to be the model for the deluxe package. Yet things don't go quite as they’ve planned.

It took me a while to get into. Partly due to the prologue and feeling slightly misdirected, and also partly because I was having a hard time connecting with Lola. She has a fiance who makes glass sculptures and who she seems lukewarm about at best. Then as the ex’s begin to appear around the city and Lola interacts with each of them, she starts to wonder about not only the nature of the relationships but about how maybe she hasn’t changed that much since each one. It wasn't until the secret society came into play, more than half way through, that I began to enjoy it more. This was a twist that added another dimension to the book and which changed the propulsion of the story. Though there was a chance that I might not’ve gotten to this point at all, if I wasn’t for some reason of being compelled to keep reading. Maybe it was because I’d bought the hardcover? The ending did came with some surprises that made up somewhat for the lukewarm start. It all managed to come together in the end, though the second half was what made the book for me. So many other readers enjoyed it far more than I did, so it could be that it’s a book more for some readers than others.

Paddington Helps Out by Michael Bond
(Started on 29 October 2022. Finished on 8 November 2022.)

This is the third book in the series and it finds Mr Paddington Brown experiencing all sorts of things for the first time. He has an exciting visit to the cinema where the organist hired to play in the interval is unable to perform, so Paddington takes it upon himself to help out. There’s an eventful picnic at the river that is supposed to be relaxing but ends with Paddington needing to be fished out of the river. There are some troubles with DIY projects and the laundry. For a young bear, it’s hard to know how much soap should be added into a laundry machine so sudsing accidents are bound to happen. Of the collections I’ve read so far, I found Paddington Helps Out to be perfectly delightful, though it’s maybe not my favorite collectively. Some stories felt stronger to me than others.

The Kiss Curse by Erin Sterling
(Started on 27 November 2022. Finished on 28 November 2022.)

The Kiss Curse is the second book in the Ex Hex series. Just like the first book, it takes us back to the community of Graves Glen and its vibrant community of witchy and mortal characters. Like Sterling’s other books, we’re following characters who were introduced and played secondary roles in the original book with the former leads now taking a backseat. It follows Gwyn (Vivi’s cousin) and Wells (Rhy’s brother). Wells decides to give up his pub in Wales, which always sits empty beneath his father’s castle, in order to come to Graves Glen to help reestablish his family’s lines with the city. Gwyn has a memory of once meeting a very arrogant Wells in one of her university classes, many years ago, so isn’t all that happy to find out that he’s a) back in town, and b) has decided to open a rival shop right across the street from her shop. What starts as an attempt to out-do the other, eventually turns into a steamy romance. Except there’s this little secret about how Wells’s father has created a curse that will strip Gwyn and her family of their magic the longer Wells is around them, and due to their budding romance it’s taking away Gwyn’s powers at an alarming speed.

It was a fun and fast read just like the Ex Hex. I enjoyed the chemistry between Gwyn and Wells, though I wanted there to be as much focus on the witchy problems as there was on the romance. This book is even sexier than the first one. Leaning more into the funny banter between the two shop owners, an element I enjoyed, than perhaps explaining to the reader how the question of “will Gwyn get her magic back” is going to be solved. I thought the solution to that question was resolved far too easily and quickly, which ultimately lessoned the stakes of this overarching conflict. Yes, we do see them attempt to research how to solve the problem and they are trying out different ideas, but when it becomes serious, Gwyn and Wells end up going separate ways to get to the bottom of it. But this is at its core still a romance book, so I guess I can forgive it for not getting as in the weeds with magical remedies as I would’ve perhaps liked.

DECEMBER

STATS:
- Finished three books.
- Two physical books. One book on kindle from the library (HMRC).
- Day with the most pages read: 8 December - 122 pages.

Her Majesty’s Royal Coven by Juno Dawson
(Started on 28 November 2022. Finished on 5 December 2022.)

Her Majesty's Royal Coven is the first book in a new series by Juno Dawson. The second book is scheduled to come out in June. Again, I’d originally seen it on a table at the bookshop Three Lives & Co over the summer, and was intrigued, though didn’t end up picking it up due to space and thinking I’d come back to it later.

It follows a group of five witches who grew up and took the sacred oath of the coven together but have since taken different paths as adults. One is now the High Priestess of HMRC, the official coven institution for all UK witches, while another has started her own rival coven; another has put her abilities on the back-burner to live a "normal" life but must face who she is once her daughter starts to exhibit signs of magic; one is in a coma due to crossing the coven, while her twin is pulled back to the world of HMRC when the seers see the coming of end times.

It's a modern take on a witch story, full of discussions about gender and one's place in a society. I thought the world building was well done from Dawson’s take on a witch prison and high magic government institution (which could call comparisons to Azkaban and the Ministry of Magic) to the ways that she differentiated the types of magic that exist in this world, like seers and elementals. It felt grounded in the lore and tradition of these types of stories but done in a new way. There’s one scene where “the pipes” are used - this was the traditional way of punishing witches who went against the coven, by burning them in chimneys - that was eerily done and has stayed with me since reading. I found it to be a quick and absorbing read. The last pages really set up the sequel very well, it’s quit a shock, that left the reader on a big cliffhanger. That’s hard to do and make it feel like it was well earned, which I think it was. It makes me interested to check out the sequel and see what sort of chaos is going to happen next.

Red Sauce Brown Sauce: A British Breakfast Odyssey by Felicity Cloake
(Started on 5 November 2022. Finished on 12 December 2022.)

Red Sauce Brown Sauce is a London book I picked up from John Sandoe Books. It's all about the fry up and how this breakfast became such a part of UK culture. Felicity Cloake cycles across the UK to discover regional specialities like kippers, stottie cakes, white pudding, and laverbread, and the more universal breakfast plate accompaniments from baked beans to porridge, marmalade (and the annual marmalade competition) to tea. On each leg of her journey, she asks her companions if they prefer red sauce or brown sauce. Cloake, at the start of her journey, is firmly team mustard, but by the end finds that her taste has changed when she requests a bacon sandwich with brown sauce. So much of her journey was planned pre-covid lockdowns and so when it came time to do the journey, some of her plans had to change due to factories and locations still being off-limits. There’s a heartbreaking moment for Cloake when she isn’t able to go inside the marmite factory which she was so excited to see, being a huge marmite fan herself. But for every disappointment or change of plans, a new story comes out of it which leaves no breakfast stone unturned.

It is a deliciously fun book that tells the story of what can be on one's breakfast plate, and how it has shaped particular regions and our taste buds. I especially enjoyed the sections about regional specialties, many of which I haven’t tried or weren’t entirely sure what they were before reading. She gives space to talking about the history of these regional items and how there’s a chance these items could disappear forever if we don’t value them. Cloake also includes “Tea Breaks” throughout the book where she’ll talk about a fun fact or go on a sidebar. I enjoyed these sections a good amount. It’s as much a food history book as a travel book, though beware that it will make you hungry while eating and you may find yourself cooking elaborate fry ups. I made some bacon sandwiches and beans on toast during and after reading the book, and a couple weeks ago cooked a full fry up to fulfill that itch for one and so I could finally try brown sauce. It was a bit sweeter than I was imagining it would be though I’m ready to try it on a bacon sandwich like how Cloake and many others have recommended.

[Cloake is talking about trying to get into the Marmite factory but is facing some unsolvable obstacles.]
I’ll show them, I think crossly as I stand in Gemma’s kitchen, liberally buttering two bread rolls. After yesterday’s painful experience on the way to Wolverhampton, it seems wise to leave Eddy [her bike] here to recuperate for a few days, so I’ve managed to persuade Tess, who I only said goodbye to 22 hours ago in Shrewsbury station car park, but who happens, handily, to be in the Midlands today for a meeting, to drive me to Burton-upon-Trent instead. (I have a faint, slightly unhinged hope that, by proving my love with a pilgrimage, the powers that be will relent and let me in for a look-see.) In return, I’m keeping her company at a spa hotel she’s working with in Staffordshire; which puts me in pole position for one of the county’s famous oatcakes tomorrow morning.
Applying an equally generous coating of Marmite, I sandwich the rolls together and wrap them back up. I have no idea whether Tess likes Marmite (there are some things too sensitive to jeopardise a friendship with) but if she doesn’t I’m happy to eat two while quietly calling a cab and never calling her again.
There’s a hoot outside. I blow Eddy a kiss, tell Gemma I’ll be back for him some day, and hobble out to meet Tess and my salty, yeasty destiny. (pg. 125 - 126)

Q’s Legacy: A Delightful Account of a Lifelong Love Affair with Books by Helene Hanff
(Started on 8 December 2022. Finished on 20 December 2022.)

Q's Legacy is in many ways a companion book to 84, Charing Cross Road though it's also so much more. Helene Hanff writes about her journey to becoming a writer and how this journey started once she’d found a literary mentor, nicknamed "Q", amongst the stacks of the Philadelphia Public Library. It’s important to note that Q was a professor at Cambridge who’s lectures were published. It was these volumes that would serve as Hanff’s literary roadmap for books she wanted to read and learn from, and it would be through his lectures and tips that she’d become the writer we know her to be. Q’s Legacy also tells the story of how Hanff came to write to Marks & Co. in the first place, what inspired her to write 84 and later it’s somewhat sequel the Duchess of Bloomsbury Street, and all that came after both books were published.

It is a book about so many of the books Hanff loved but also wrote. It's a travel journal of Helene's trips to London. For someone who had only ever dreamed of traveling to London before writing 84, she’s surprised by how many times she’ll make the trip over. It’s about the magic that a bookshop can have on one's life. And it’s a book about a writer and her process. I really loved it. It was so wonderful to be reunited with Hanff’s writing and voice - she’s one of those writers who I am know trying to read everything she’s written - and I very much enjoyed learning about all the behind the scenes-ness of how her books were made.

[Hanff is in London for the taping of the BBC TV adaptation of 84, Charing Cross Road and is seeing the Marks & Co. bookshop set for the first time]
‘The two Marks and the set designer,’ Chris told me as we walked, ‘went to all the secondhand bookshops in London to talk to people who had once worked at Marks & Co. They quizzed them about where every desk and door and staircase had been. Then the designer went home and drew a sketch of the shop and took it back to them for correction till he’d got every detail right. So,’ he finished,'what you’ll see is an exact replica of your bookshop, reduced to scale.’
And he walked me around to the bookshop’s glass front door and opened it for me and I walked into my bookshop. It was shabby and comfortable, with old desk and lamps and a solid oak staircase. The bookshelves were exactly as my friend Maxine had described them to me in a letter — heavy oak that had turned grey with ‘must and dust and age.’ I gravitated to the shelves and found them crammed with books. Not the usual state ‘prop’ books — dilapidated junkshop volumes collected at random to fill up the shelves. The books on these shelves were those of a genuine antiquarian bookshop, many with fine bindings, some just old, with the musty smell of buried treasure.
‘They were all lent to us by London booksellers,’ Chris said. ‘They feel a proprietary interest in the show.’
He then left me and I started to browse the books. I was still at it when Mark came for me at ten, and led the way up a ladder to the glass-enclosed control booth. (pg. 70 - 71)

FAVORITES OF 2022

At the time of writing, these are my favorite books of 2022. I am not counting re-reads in this list. I think it’s important to say that this list could look different depending on what day you asked me, what books were coming more immediately to mind, or how much time has passed since last year. Sometimes favorite books have a way of emerging long after the fact as they’ve become the ones you remember the most.

Listed in no particular order or preference: