The Best and Worst Books of 2022

Readers love the “Best and Worst Books of the Year” lists.  I enjoy waking up on a winter morning and (virtually) rustling the newspaper pages for “Best of” lists.   I  prefer the lists, meant for Christmas shopping, to the actual holidays.

The lists are published earlier every year, however.   A few newspapers and magazines published their “Best of’s” before Thanksgiving, which is much too early. The amateurs – Goodreads reviewers, bloggers, and vloggers – are usually more traditional and wait till December.  For the first time, I saw a few bloggers and vloggers posting their lists before Halloween!

And that is a huge turn-off.

That said, I have posted my “Best and Worst Books of 2022”  list appropriately- in December. I posted links to my reviews at Thornfield Hall and Thornfield Hall Redux, and, in a few cases, Goodreads.

THE BEST AND WORST BOOKS OF 2022!

BEST NEW NOVELS

1.  Elizabeth Finch, by Julian Barnes.  

2.  French Braid, by Anne Tyler

3.  The Exhibitionist, by Charlotte Mendelson

4.  The Book of Mother, by Violaine Huisman

5.  Free Love, by Tessa Hadley

BEST NEW “GENRE” BOOKS

1.  Termination Shock, by Neal Stephenson

2.  Agatha Christie:  An Elusive Woman, by Lucy Worsley  (A biography of a genre writer!)

3.  A Restless Truth, by Freya Marske

BEST OLDIES

1.  The Matchmaker, by Stella Gibbons

2.  Rule Britannia, by Daphne du Maurier

3.  The Malayan Trilogy, by Anthony Burgess

4.  How Green Was My Valley, by Richard Llewellyn

5.  The Revolt of the Angels, by Anatole France

BEST CLASSICS 

1.  Bleak House, by Charles Dickens

2. Life and Fate, by Vasily Grossman

3.  The Captain’s Doll, by D. H. Lawrence

4.  Lady Susan, by Jane Austen

5.  Katherine Mansfield:  Letters and Journals

THE WORST OF THE YEAR

1.  The Bloater, by Janet Tonk

2.  The Half Sisters, by Geraldine Jewsbury

Happy Holidays!  You can go to the LargeHearted Boy blog for links to more Best of the Year lists.