Amazingly, I read 43 books this year. That is 2 more than in 2015, when I was actually attempting to read 52 books in my books challenge. Turns out that joining the local library will give you access to a massive amount of books, some good and some not so good, some of which you'd never thought of to read by yourself, others you're sure you'll never read again. Added to that, 2022 was quite a poor year in reading so I still had loads of books waiting to be read (including 3 Man Booker winners, as it turns out).
So, without further ado, let's look at the list:
1 Great Circle
2 The Last White Man
3 Flights of Fancy
4 Faalmoed & andere filosofische overdenkingen
5 Sorrow and Bliss
6 Men without Women
7 Little fires everywhere
8 Altijd iets the vinden
9 The No-Show
10 De Kooi
11 The Color Purple
12 Wall and Piece
13 The Miniaturist
14 Welkom bij de club
15 Gegijzeld
16 The Secret History
17 You have a friend in 10A
18 Sea of Tranquility
19 Monet - Op zoek naar het licht
20 Love Marriage
21 The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
22 Monet - Een feest voor het oog
23 The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida
24 The End of the World is a Cul de Sac
25 Becoming
26 Liefdesbang
27 The Long View
28 Parable of the Sower
29 Foster
30 Parable of the Talents
31 Crying in H Mart
32 Daisy Jones & the Six
33 Companion Piece
34 Trespasses
35 Love on the Brain
36 Last Night in Montreal
37 Our Missing Hearts
38 The Love Hypothesis
39 Shuggie Bain
40 Birnam Wood
41 Project Hail Mary
42 The Switch
43 The Promise
Just two rereads in the entire pile; a children's book (Gegijzeld, which would now probably be labelled 'young adult') that I wanted to reread and a Beth O'Leary snack (The Switch) during NaNoWriMo. That makes for a total of 41 entirely new books, fiction and non-fiction, English and Dutch, in a year. This may well be my best reading year of the last 10 years, if not more.
Best English novel
1 Great Circle
2 Trespasses
3 Sea of Tranquility
Not surprisingly, I've written about all these three books earlier, as they made quite an impression. Great Circle is just one of the best books I've ever read; wholly fictional, but it feels like you've lived an entire life with these characters. Trespasses feels equally real but is rooted in a past not all that long ago, which makes the impression it leaves somehow feel more real. Sea of Tranquility is another one of Emily St. John Mandel's best works, although nothing will ever top Station Eleven.
But this was a hard choice to make. The good thing about GoodReads is that it tracks your reviews, so I've ended up with the books that I gave five star reviews when I just read them, but honorable mentions must go out to Project Hail Mary (see also below), Companion Piece, Little fires everywhere, The Last White Man and Love Marriage. All great books that made a lasting impression this year.
Best Dutch novel
1 Welkom bij de club
So Thomas van der Meer calls his book a novel, and I will treat it as such, but it feels more like an autobiography of the author in his transformation from woman to man and from office worker to healthcare professional. He faces so much judgement and prejudice, it is a miracle this story is as light and funny as it is.
Best classic
Well... I read a couple of novels that could be considered classics this year; The Color Purple, The Secret History, maybe even Parable of the Sower? But I wasn't really overwhelmed by any of these books, especially the first two, which have become quite famous. I enjoyed Parable of the Sower for the most part, but then at the end it fizzled away into nothing much and the sequel, Parable of the Talents, didn't improve much. So despite actually reading some classics for the first time in years, I won't be appointing a 'best' among them.
Best non-fiction
1 Faalmoed & andere filosofische overdenkingen
2 Liefdesbang
3 Altijd iets te vinden
The library has a wealth of non-fiction books I would never actually buy but enjoy reading very much. These three books al taught me something in their on field; philosophy, relationships and art. This is no strict order, I enjoyed and learned from all of them, and several of the other non-fiction books I read too.
Best autobiographical
1 Becoming
2 De Kooi
3 Crying in H Mart
It's been a while since I could actually separate non-fiction and autobiographical into two piles, but here we are. I very much enjoyed Michelle Obama's autobiography, although it could have been a bit shorter. But it gave a good insight into her life and the process of running for president of the United States. De Kooi is written by a special forces man who is famous because of a tv programme he participates in. This book felt like a covid-project; not much else to do, so time to put your memories to paper, but it gave an interesting insight in a small group of specialised agents who keep society safe. Crying in H Mart has become somewhat of a BookTok phenomenon and as I didn't really know the author I couldn't really relate to it all that much, but it was an enjoyable read.
Best short-story collection
1 The End of the World is a Cul de Sac
2 You have a Friend in 10A
3 Men without Women
I read The End of the World is a Cul de Sac before reading Trespasses and I was a bit confused about what Louise Kennedy was on about. Some of these stories were great, some not so much. But this was the right way around, as reading You have a Friend in 10A, the story collection of Maggie Shipstead, sent me into doubts about her writing. Some authors just excel in writing longer stories, although again some of the short stories were really good. I've written about Men withouth Women before and it only made the list because it does contain some nice stories. But none of these collections are really that great, especially compared to last year's 'winner' Story of your life and others.
Best scifi/fantasy
1 Project Hail Mary
2 Sea of Tranquility
3 Parable of the Sower
I've written about Project Hail Mary and about Sea of Tranquility before; they are that wonderful combination of great writing, smart plots, interesting characters and a wholly new setting, which the author created just for us. Parable of the Sower is the last on the list because as a scifi novel, especially a dystopian one, I did enjoy it. It just left me annoyed at the open ending and religious overtones. But it is one of those novels that has been around for ages and you wonder how you never knew it existed (until someone metioned it in a conference talk, in my case).
Best 'new' author
1 Maggie Shipstead / Louise Kennedy
2 Celeste Ng
3 Taylor Jenkins Reid
I'm putting two authors on the first place here, as both produced a wonderful novel and a somewhat mediocre short story collection. Can't really decide between them. I am looking forward to reading more of their novels, as that is apparently where their strenghts lie.
Celeste Ng's Little fires everywhere must have been on my to-read pile for literally years before I picked it up and then I was mad at myself for not doing so earlier, because it is a great story. I then read Our Missing Hearts, which made less of an impression than I would have thought given the subject matter. Taylor Jenkins Reid is another BookTok phenomenon; I enjoyed both of her novels but they seem a bit too catered to the current sentiments in young adulty reading; I hope to find something that has truly 'her' voice in the coming year.
Most disappointing novel
1 The Color Purple
2 The Miniaturist
3 Birnam Wood
As mentioned above, The Color Purple is now considered a classic and even won the Pullizer Prize, but I'm afraid I'm missing the hype here. I didn't care for any of the characters, the style felt stilted and the plot really wasn't going anywhere. The Miniaturist was one of those novels that spent a lot of time in the 'top 10' piles in the book store but I'm happy I didn't buy it, because it was a silly story, set in an unrealistic Amsterdam of the seventeenth century. It feels like a book Americans would read to 'understand' the Netherlands or the Dutch somehow. Both these books were among my firsr library readings, which just goes to show how easy it is to borrow something you're not entirely sure you will actually like.
I wrote about my disappointment with Birnam Wood earlier; I probably would have rated it a lot higher if it hadn't been written by Eleanor Catton, which just proves that writing one good book is no guarantee for further success. There were books I disliked far mor than Birnam Wood, such as The Love Hypothesis (which is basically Ali Hazelwood's earlier novel, Love on the Brain, in another jacket) or The Long View (which is Elizabeth Jane Howard's least rated book) but since my expectations for these books were so much lower, they just receive an honorable mention here.
And as a special bonus category:
Best Man Booker winner
1 The Promise
2 The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida
3 Shuggie Bain
I had quite a pile of Man Booker winners still to read (2020, 2021 and 2022), and despite the large number of other books I read this year, I fitted them all in. All of them felt like 'real' Man Booker winners in their own rights, although I probably would have picked other books from the short list in these respective years (Maggie Shipstead! Claire Keegan!). But I can see why they won. I enjoyed The Promise best of all; a well-structured plot without it being too obvious and a nice tie-in between the novel's events and historical milestones. I look forward to reading other books by Damon Galgut, especially if they have the same stream-of-conscious-like writing style. The Seven Moons... took me a while to get through, but it shed light on a part of the world, and on a history of that part of the world, which I'd never read about before. Shuggie Bain I wrote about before; I still haven't fully made up my mind about that one.
Authors I read more than once:
- Maggie Shipstead (2x)
- Celeste Ng (2x)
- Beth O'Leary (2x)
- Emily St. John Mandel (2x)
- Louise Kennedy (2x)
- Taylor Jenkins Reid (2x)
- Octavia E. Butler (2x)
- Ali Hazelwood (2x)
Apart from Beth O'Leary and Emily St. John Mandel, these are all new authors I read for the first time in 2024. And apparently, their first novels gave me an appetite for more. And next year I will probably read more from all of these authors and many more, although I don't think I will ever manage 43 books in one year again for quite some time!
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