My 2022 in Books (and Stories)

Since I had success with my 2020 reading plan, I made a spreadsheet to track my reading more in depth, and here’s how my 2022 in reading went:

Holy shit (again).

I cracked open 176 books, and finished 173 of them. Down from 2021’s ridiculous (and unlikely for me to ever top) total of 216, but still, I’m pretty pleased with the total. Of those 176 books, 13 were rereads (about a third as many as last year), and 70 were graphic novels (roughly the same as last year), which inflates the number a bit, but books are books, and I’m counting them.

I read 30 books by BIPOC authors (the same as 2021) and 30 by authors I know to be LGBTQ2S+ (weirdly also the same as 2021). I was hoping to improve both of those numbers in 2022, and so am mildly disappointed, but they also represented a larger percentage of my reading in 2022 than 2021, so that’s not nothing.

92 of my books read were by women (up from 83 last year), and I exceeded my goal of 50% of my reads being books by women! After two years of getting close to this mark, I was glad to finally get there.

I caught up on 17 books written by friends (a bit down from last year, sorry friends). Sorry it took me so long! I also read 56 books by authors who were new to me (meaning I’ve never read their work before, not that I’ve never heard of them), weirdly, again the same number as last year.

Non-fiction was a bit of a disappointment again. I read 10 non-fiction books in 2022, down from 2021 and still a slim percentage of my total reads. I tend to read non-fiction much more slowly than fiction, as I often make notes to myself of things I’d like to remember, or things that give me story ideas, this hasn’t changed, I don’t expect it to change. Short of completely revising my to-read stacks to include more non-fiction, I won’t see significant gains here. Still, I’m reading more non-fiction in general than I have in years.

I read a whopping 28 roleplaying game handbooks in 2022, almost twice as many as last year, which means once again I read more RPGs than I played in game sessions. Another bad year for gaming for me, sadly. What games I played were fun, but pandemic brain definitely caused me to step back from actual game sessions (and as good as Roll20 is at what it does, I vastly prefer to have my gaming take place in person). I only played three different roleplaying games in 2022, and none of them new to me. Still, I was able to be a mostly-regular player in my two ongoing campaigns, and had a fucking phenomenal final game of the year with some friends from my old university group. Looking forward to revisiting that new campaign.

Of the 173 books I finished in 2022, I liked 104 of them enough to recommend to others, and there were no real stinkers. Even the books I set down had some pretty admirable qualities, they just weren’t for me.

Here’s the books and stories I enjoyed the most in 2022 (not necessarily published in 2021, obviously).

Favourite Fiction Reads

Once Removed by Andrew Unger
In the Dark We Forget by Sandra SG Wong
When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain by Nghi Vo
Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo
The City of Brass by S.A.Chakraborty
Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire
The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi
Red X by David Demchuk
Flight Risk by Cherie Priest
Spear by Nicola Griffith
My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones
Steeped to Death by Gretchen Rue

Favourite Non-Fiction Reads:

Packing for Mars by Mary Roach
The Secret Life of Fungi by Aliya Whiteley
Yours Cruelly, Elvira by Cassandra Peterson

Favourite Graphic Novel Reads:

Bitch Planet Book One: Extraordinary Machine by Kelly Sue DeConnick
Lore Olympus Volume One by Rachel Smythe
A Blanket of Butterflies by Richard Van Camp, Scott B. Henderson
Die Volume 1: Fantasy Heartbreaker by Kieron Gillen
Four Faces of the Moon by Amanda Strong
Shadow Life by Hiromi Goto
Fangs by Sarah Anderson
The Autumnal by Daniel Kraus
Far Sector by N.K. Jemisin
Cold Bodies by Magdalene Visaggio

Favourite RPG Reads:

The Black Hack by Gold Piece Publications
9 Lives to Valhalla by Gem Room Games
Pathfinder 2nd Edition Absalom City of Lost Omens by Paizo
Exploring Eberron by Keith Baker
Savage Worlds Rifts: The Tomorrow Legion Player’s Guide by Pinnacle Entertainment

As for short fiction, one of my 2022 reading goals was to read at least 50 short stories. I blew that goal out of the water. In 2022 I started reading a total of 211 stories and finished 203! Of these stories, 34 were by BIPOC authors, 28 by authors I know to be LGBTQ2S+, 43 by friends, and 100 by women (again, just short of that 50-50 parity I wanted). I liked 115 of those stories enough to recommend them, and only 8 were pieces I chose not to finish. The majority of the stories, 85 of them, came from anthologies (one of my 2022 reading goals was for each of my to-read stacks for the year to contain an anthology). Otherwise, my top venues were Lightspeed (14), Nightmare Magazine (13), and Beneath Ceaseless Skies (11).

Favourite Short Fiction Reads:

Le Cygne Baiseur by Molly Tanzer, Lightspeed Magazine
The Ones Who Got Away by Stephen Graham Jones, Nightmare Magazine
The Good Girls by S.M. Beiko, Alternate Plains
Bloodbath (VHS, 1987, DIRECTOR UNKNOWN) by David Demchuk, Alternate Plains
Of Men, Women, and Chainsaws by Stephen Graham Jones, Tor.com
That Story Isn’t the Story by John Wiswell, Uncanny Magazine
How to Become a Witch-Queen by Theodora Goss, Lightspeed
The Eternal Cocktail Party of the Damned by Fonda Lee, Uncanny Magazine
10 Steps to a Whole New You by Tonya Liburd, Fantasy Magazine
The Root Cellar by Maria Haskins, Beneath Ceaseless Skies
Give Me Cornbread, or Give Me Death by N.K. Jemisin, Lightspeed
Every Tiny Tooth and Claw (Or: Letters From the First Month of the New Directorate) by Marissa Lingen, Beneath Ceaseless Skies
Guidelines for Appeasing Kim of the Hundred Hands by John Wiswell, Fireside
Research Log ~~33 by Rowena McGowan, Air: Sylphs, Spirits, & Swan Maidens
The Sea Half-Held by Night by E. Catherine Tobler, Dead North