In 2020, faced with the pandemic lockdown, I kicked my love for reading into hyperdrive and read one book per week. (These are the 55 books I finished.) Invigorated by all the stories I devoured, I tried reading one book per week again the following year. However, the slow return to “normal life” made it harder to find reading time so I only finished 31 books in 2021, a little more than half the goal.
2022 marked the third year of my annual “One-Book-Per-Week Challenge.” This year I found a better book-life balance and while my tally increased dramatically from last year, I once again missed my quota. That said, I consider it a very successful year of reading. For starters, I finished a respectable 46 books (see full list below). More importantly, my reading list achieved diversity of genre, literary complexity, and focus. Lastly, I found a new favorite author: Sloane Crosley. Sloane is an American writer known for her fiction and non-fiction tongue-in-cheek commentary inspired by/about her life. My first experience reading Sloane’s writing was in “Cult Classic,” The Booze and Book Club‘s pick for July. Upon finishing that book, I purchased her four other books and finished three. It was such a joy finding an author whose writing and voice really resonated with me.
While Sloane’s books were the highlight of my year, I enjoyed most of the books that made their way into my home this year. Other repeat authors from this year’s list include Jennifer Egan, Jean Hanff Korelitz and Paolo Coelho. There were stories about sports, war, relationships, ghosts, sociopathy, and innovation, among others. My favorite memory was reading Paolo Coelho’s “The Pilgrimage,” a memoir about his trek on El Camino de Santiago, while my mom and I completed our pilgrimage along its Portuguese route. Our journey on foot was memorable for a number of reasons and sharing my joy of reading with my mom during this once-in-a-lifetime experience was among them.
I look forward to what 2023 will bring between two covers. To inspire your reading this coming year, here is every book I read in 2022 (in order of completion). I marked The Booze and Book Club selections with an asterisk and those I absolutely adored in bold. Did any of these make your reading list? Which books are you most looking forward to reading this coming year?
Every Book I Read in 2022
- “The Catcher in The Rye” by J. D. Salinger
- “By The River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept” by Paolo Coelho
- “Infinite Country” by Patricia Engel*
- “Wahala” by Nikki May*
- “A Burning” by Meghan Majumdar
- “But You Seemed So Happy: A Marriage in Pieces and Bits” by Kimberly Harrington
- “Lord of the Flies” by William Golding
- “Boundary Boss” by Terri Cole
- “Notes On An Execution” by Danny Kukafka*
- “A Man Called Ove” by Fredrik Backman
- “A Visit from The Goon Squad” by Jennifer Egan
- “The Candy House” by Jennifer Egan*
- “Manual Del Guerrero De La Luz” by Paolo Coelho
- “Fleishman Is In Trouble” by Taffy Brodesser-Akner
- “Cues” by Vanessa Van Edwards
- “The Hacienda” by Isabel Cañas
- “Conspiracy: A True Story of Power, Sex and A Billionaire’s Secret Plot To Destroy A Media Empire” by Ryan Holiday
- “Jack Reacher: Better Off Dead” by Lee Child and Andrew Child
- “The Final Girl Support Group” by Grady Hendrix
- “Their Eyes Were Watching God” by Zora Nele Hurston
- “The Pilgrimage” by Paolo Coelho
- “The Latecomer” by Jean Hanff Korelitz*
- “The Club” by Ellery Lloyd
- “Cult Classic” by Sloane Crosley*
- “I Was Told There’d Be Cake” by Sloane Crosley
- “The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley’s Pursuit of Power” by Max Chafkin
- “How Did You Get This Number” by Sloane Crosley
- “Scar Tissue” by Anthony Keidis
- “Carrie Soto Is Back” by Taylor Jenkin Reid*
- “Bird by Bird” by Anne Lamott
- “Three Women” by Lisa Taddeo
- “Greenlights” by Matthew McConaughey
- “Confessions of a Sociopath” by M.E. Thomas
- “Hidden Pictures” by Jason Rekulak*
- “El Amor En Tiempos De Like” by Romina Sacre
- “Siddhartha” by Herman Hesse
- “Meeting The Shadow: The Hidden Power of The Dark Side of Human Nature” by Various
- “Look Alive Out There” by Sloane Crosley
- “When We Cease To Understand The World” by Benjamin Labatut
- “An Honest Living” by Dwyer Murphy*
- “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien
- “Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior” by Ori Brafman and Rom Brafman
- “You Should Have Known” by Jean Hanff Korelitz
- “Now Is Not The Time to Panic” by Kevin Wilson*
- “The Sentence” by Louise Erdrich
- “Tell Everyone on This Train I Love Them” by Maeve Higgins
Hi, I'm Margarita. 