Top Five (give or take) Fiction Reads of 2022

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Top Five (give or take) Fiction Reads of 2022

1MrsLee
Déc 28, 2022, 6:13 pm

I will post mine later when I'm at a computer. Wanted to get this rolling though. I do realize there are three more days of 2022, so feel free to wait all you positive thinkers that know the best is yet to come.

2clamairy
Déc 28, 2022, 7:12 pm

>1 MrsLee: Thank you for starting these threads. I'll try to get back in here on Friday and post mine.

3Jim53
Déc 29, 2022, 12:00 am

In no particular order:

Arcadia by Iain Pears
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
The Killing of Innocents by Deborah Crombie
The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi
A World of Curiosities by Louise Penny

Honorable mention to The Overstory, The Dinosaurs, The Bean Trees, and several cozies by Donna Andrews. Special award to Daughters of the Deep, which was recommended by my eleven-year-old granddaughter (!)

4reconditereader
Modifié : Déc 29, 2022, 1:49 am

I read so many things that in order to make a list, I had to mostly limit it to books published in 2022.

They are:
Portrait of a Thief by Grace D. Li
Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher
When I'm Gone, Look for Me in the East by Quan Barry
A Dark and Starless Forest by Sarah Hollowell
You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty by Akwaeke Emezi

Honorable mention to The Hands of the Emperor by Victoria Goddard, not published this year.

5hfglen
Déc 29, 2022, 7:16 am

In the order in which I added them to my LT list.

Feet of Clay -- I'm sure I read this while I was still in Pretoria, which is how I missed adding it. So, a re-read.
The Last Hero -- How did I miss this?
Dragonflight and three more Pern re-reads
The Late Scholar -- good enough to be a real Dorothy L. Sayers!
Od Magic and Alphabet of Thorn; I'm cheating shamelessly here again, but they belong together.

Not sure if I should include Stephen Francis's latest cartoon satire, Madam & Eve Unmasked here or under non-fiction.

6Karlstar
Déc 29, 2022, 10:40 am

In order with my favorite first.

Into the Narrowdark by Tad Williams
Od Magic by Patricia McKillip
Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens
The Grief of Stones by Katherine Addison
The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi

7tardis
Déc 29, 2022, 1:04 pm

It was a hard choice, and I almost had to blindly stick pins in the list to get it down to five, but my top five (in no particular order) were
The Grief of Stones by Katherine Addison
Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher
Into the Broken Lands by Tanya Huff
And What Can We Offer You Tonight? by Premee Mohamed
Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree

The runners-up were
Illuminations by T. Kingfisher
When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill
All the Seas of the World by Guy Gavriel Kay
The Spare Man by Mary Robinette Kowal
Station Eternity by Mur Lafferty
Blitz by Daniel O'Malley
Seasonal Fears by Seanan McGuire
The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi

8pgmcc
Déc 30, 2022, 4:02 am

In no particular order, and at the exclusion of other books that should be on the list.

ARCADIA by Iain Pears
Uncle Silas by Charles Maturin
Leaves for the Burning by Mervyn Wall
Art of Losing by Alice Zeniter
Winter by Len Deighton
Walking on Glass by Iain Banks
First Person Singular by Haruki Murakami
The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins.

The other books that should be on the list include twelve pieces of fiction from Ciamh McDonnell, South of the Border, West of the Sun by Haruki Murakami,

it was a very good reading year for me.

9clamairy
Modifié : Déc 30, 2022, 7:02 pm

Posting in no particular order:

The Witness for the Dead and The Grief of Stones by Katherine Addison
Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell
The World That We Knew by Alice Hoffman
The Hands of the Emperor by Victoria Goddard
The Sentence by Louise Erdrich

Special mention: The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo

I have to add that I just noticed that The Hands of the Emperor has a rating of 4.7 stars here on LibraryThing.

10infjsarah
Déc 31, 2022, 6:57 am

Happy New Year everyone.

Here are my top 10 & a few honourable mentions :)

1. A River Enchanted (Ross)
2. Children of Time (Tchaikovsky)
3. All the Seas of the World (Kay)
4. Tyrant’s Throne (de Castell)
5. Saint’s Blood (de Castell)
6. Knight’s Shadow (de Castell)
7. Theft of Sunlight (Khanani)
8. Excalibur (Cornwell)
9. Relentless Moon (Kowall)
10. Where the Crawdads Sing (Owens)

Honourable mentions – Cibola Burn (Corey), Desert Star (Connelly), and North and South (Gaskell).

Greatcoats winning the series prize here. Am planning to get to the 2 Argosi books asap in 2023.

11majkia
Déc 31, 2022, 7:40 am

Iron Widow - Xiran Jay Zhao
Wanderers - Chuck Wendig
Project Hail Mary - Andy Weir
The Kaiju Preservation Society - John Scalzi
Assassin's Fate - Robin Hobb

12jillmwo
Modifié : Déc 31, 2022, 11:54 am

hemming and hawing over this category today (and as with so many others here, listed in no particular order):

Definitely memorable reading experiences in terms of both quality as well as thematic focus:
The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo
Babel by R.F. Kuang
No-Name by Wilkie Collins
Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux
A Desolation Called Peace by Martine Arkady (follow up to A Memory Called Empire)

Lighter weight but holding their own
The Hands of the Emperor by Victoria Goddard
Witness for the Dead and Stones of Grief by Katherine Addison (ETA: As clam points out below, it should have read as The Grief of Stones. Insufficient caffeine or perhaps too much self-indulgence in woolgathering and chocolate)

Memorable as a Group Read
Arcadia

13clamairy
Déc 31, 2022, 11:36 am

>12 jillmwo: Psst. It's 'The Grief of Stones,' but the touchstone is working.

14jillmwo
Modifié : Déc 31, 2022, 11:59 am

>13 clamairy: As always, you are a woman of erudition and tact. Correction noted. Thank you for the polite rephrasing rather than bluntly just shaking your head and muttering, Hey, Jill, you're a nitwit. We've hung out here on LT for long enough that you'd be entirely permitted to do so.

15ScoLgo
Déc 31, 2022, 3:09 pm

Going with top-10 here...

16Bookmarque
Modifié : Déc 31, 2022, 4:50 pm

This was a low year for reading with the eyes and a lot of my audio was either radio drama type stuff or podcasts, so it took a little time to come up with books that resonated, but here they are -

The Trees: A Novel by Percival Everett - a strange novel, but one that works well to encapsulate how old wrongs can haunt people for a long time.

Sundial by Catriona Ward - not quite as perfectly executed as Needless Street, but a creepy, unsettling, intricate and odd horror tale. But in a good way.

In the Night Room - nobody does meta better than the late Peter Straub and this book is an excellent example of his ability to bend your brain. Read Lost Boy, Lost Girl first though.

Feast Your Eyes: A novel by Myla Goldberg - sensitive and quite distinctive look into what drives a photographer to be the quiet force she turned out to be. Makes me wonder how much of this was driven by the discovery of the great unknown Vivian Maier who’s massive output was not discovered, much less recognized, until after her death.

Comic book series - Rachel Rising by Terry Moore was really excellent! Good artwork, story and characters with a pretty memorable plot, too. What else can we want in graphic novels?

17Sakerfalcon
Jan 3, 2023, 9:34 am

Just catching up after a few days away over new year ...

My top five fiction reads were:
Legends and lattes by Travis Balder
Hands of the Emperor by Victoria Goddard
Plain bad heroines by Emily Danforth
Firekeeper's daughter by Angeline Boulley
Drive your plow over the bones of the dead by Olga Tokarczuk

It was tough choosing just five.
Honorable mentions to
Nona the Ninth by Tamsin Muir
Witness for the dead by Katherine Addison
Fenny by Lettice Cooper

18pgmcc
Jan 3, 2023, 10:34 am

>17 Sakerfalcon:
I have Drive your plow over the bones of the dead, so I am happy to see it in your top five of 2022. I enjoyed her Flights.

19MrsLee
Jan 4, 2023, 9:41 am

OK, top fivish (five star, not counting rereads) fiction books from 2022:
A Tolkien Miscellany by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
The Collected Short Stories of Louis L' Amour, Volume 1 by Louis L' Amour
Paladin of Souls by Lois McMaster Bujold
Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini
Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather

Honorable mentions (4 1/2 stars)
All the books I read by Caimh McDonnell and C.K. McDonnell, same guy, different series. They are book candy for me.
O' Pioneers by Willa Cather
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

20reading_fox
Jan 4, 2023, 9:51 am

Mine were mostly re-reads of previous favourites - which still held up.

New to me this year
the fate of mice - a collection of death themed short stories, all very inventive and clever
catfishing on catnet which was silly but again great fun - an AI gets released onto a social media site, and discovers connections to real people. touchingly charming in many places.

re-reads - Avians and signatures I think the only two ER titles I've ever awarded 5* out of a few hundred reads
read player one still great fun

4.5* several but the highlight is Adrian Tchaikovsky of whom I'll probably read everything he's written, SF and F

21AHS-Wolfy
Jan 5, 2023, 6:57 am

No 5★ reads for me but fortunately I have 5 books that rated (or will when I get round to it) 4½★'s for me in 2022. They are (in reading order):

The Price You Pay by Aidan Truhen
Nemesis Games
Babylon's Ashes both by James S. A. Corey
The Sudden Appearance of Hope by Claire North
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin