2022: The Year In Books

As we wrap up 2022, my second full year of remote working, I managed to surpass my previous records by completing a whopping 55 books, an increase of one book over last year and my second consecutive year completing the 52 books in 52 weeks challenge.  I surpassed last year’s total with a mere three days remaining in 2022.  I read (or listened) to 19,328 pages, by far my highest total of all time and only the third time I’ve passed 10,000.

Of those books, fifteen were non-fiction and, of the remaining 40 novels, only two were tied to a TV show, either as the source material or as a tie-in.  None of the books came out of my dwindling “to-read” drawer, with 44 e-books and three audiobooks.  I continued to take advantage of my library card, which helped me procure 37 of the books I consumed throughout the year.

A little more than half of the books I read this year were by authors I had read before. The 31 authors that I read for the first this year were:

Adam Nedeff Kelsey McKinney Simone St. James Laura Dave
Jeff Warren Carlye Adler Matt Paxton Jordan Michael Smith
Alyssa Milano Alex Finlay Taylor Jenkins Reid Emily Ratajkowski
Samantha Downing Dave Grohl Mary Lynn Rajskub Stephanie Perkins
Michael Schur Joseph Henrich V.E. Schwab Brianna Madia
Jimmy Piersall Richard Whittingham Richard Osman Colleen Hoover
Jenette McCurdy Sally Rooney Josh Malerman Alice Sebold
Katie Mack Penn Jillette Elin Hilderbrand Nita Prose

Alex Finlay, Simone St. James, Karin Slaughter, Megan Goldin, Jeffery Deaver, and Richard Osman were the only authors that I read multiple titles from during 2022.

16 of the books I read were released this year, while only two of them were released last century, with the oldest first published in 1953.

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Book 46 (of 52) – Daphne

Daphne – Josh Malerman

The town of Samhattan has a secret, one that hides in the back recesses of townspeople’s brains.  When that secret comes out, the members of the local high school’s girls’ basketball team start paying the price.  While the detective assigned to the case, not locally born and raised, tries to get to the bottom of both the secret before there is no one left from the team, the remaining girls try to come to grips with what is after them and how they alone can stop it.

Just in time for Halloween, Daphne was recommended to me by some article as a recent horror entry that was a worthy read this time of year.  Unfortunately, I don’t quite agree.  Apparently, author Josh Malerman originally wrote this as a novella and was convinced to build it out to novel length.  That, I think, did some harm, as the tale did feel repetitive in parts.  On the other hand, they mystery of who was responsible for the killings was kind of ambiguous, bouncing back and forth between a human perpetrator and the supernatural being known as Daphne.  Anyway, this was my first, and probably going to end up being my only, exposure to Malerman’s work.