At the beginning of the new year, I like to look back over my list and reflect on the books I enjoyed the most and thought were the best written. Most of them are recent works. They are novels with a few nonfiction titles tossed in. Here are my top 10 favorite books of 2022 arranged alphabetically by title.
2022 FAVORITE BOOKS
Dinners with Ruth by Nina Totenberg. A wonderful evocation of a long friendship between Totenberg and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Daughters of the Flower Fragrant Garden by Li Zhiqing. An excellent family biography of two accomplished Chinese sisters separated by civil war.
The Diamond Eye by Kate Quinn. A gripping historical novel about a WWII female Red Army sniper.
Fellowship Point by Alice Elliott Dark. A Maine novel of the lasting friendship between two women now in their early 80’s.
Leaving Coy’s Hill by Katherine Sherbrooke. An engaging historical novel about Lucy Stone, activist for women’s rights and abolition.
Lucy by the Sea by Elizabeth Strout. Lucy spends the pandemic with her ex-husband in Maine in this meditative novel on love and grief.
Miss Benson’s Beetle by Rachel Joyce. A mismatched pair of women travel to Caledonia in search of a beetle in this humorous yet poignant novel.
Oh, William by Elizabeth Strout. A predecessor to the other Strout novel about Lucy’s marriage to and divorce from her husband William. (Strout is obviously one of my favorite authors!)
The Palace Papers: Inside the House of Windsor by Tina Brown. A balanced account of the trials and tribulations of the British royals from Diana to Meghan.
Something to Hide by Elizabeth George. The latest mystery in the Lord Lynley/Barbara Havers series dealing sensitively with Nigerian immigrants and infibulation.
RECENT READING
April in Spain by John Banville
When the first two sentences read: “Terry Tice liked killing people. It was as simple as that,” you know you are in for something different. Irish writer, Banville’s recent crime story, April in Spain, is set in San Sebastian in the Basque region and in London. Terry Tice is the first character to appear, but the focus is really on pathologist Quirke and his psychiatrist wife, Esther, who are are on vacation in Spain. When reluctant vacationer Quirke believes his sees a young woman who was murdered, he calls his daughter Phoebe in London to alert her to his April sighting. Phoebe feels compelled to inform several others, and the plot literally thickens as a government minister, civil servants, and a detective become involved.
Banville is great at sketching out both the physical details and the personality traits of his characters. How the various players overlap in a surprise ending is masterful. Initially, I found the book a bit slow going, but got propelled forward once I got farther into it. And I loved the punning on the April of the title! (~JWFarrington)
Note: Header photo of readers is from lifeisthisway.com
