Top 15 Books of 2022
my two reading goals for 2023
I said I was going to share my top 10 books of 2022 but, instead, you’re getting my top 15 and I’m not even apologizing. One, because who can’t use a few more book recommendations and, two, because I included both fiction and non-fiction. When you scroll down to the image, you’ll notice that several of the books aren’t there. I don’t own Project Hail Mary or Ender’s Game and I want to fix that. I take the assembling of books in our home very seriously and if they made my “best of” list, I’d love to have them on the shelf. A couple of others aren’t there because they are sitting on my desk at church or I loaned them to a friend.1
I flipped through my whole list of reading from the year and contemplated what made the difference between “ok, I’m glad I read that” to “this is one of the best I read this year.” I read 87 books in 2022 and one was Anna Karenina so that is a lot of reading.2 Like last year though, it was an easy process to read through the list and mark the ones that stood out. They were stories that lingered, persuasive arguments that shifted my thinking, practical outworking that changed how I live out my faith. They were books that were alive, that met me in a need, that shaped how I view the world. Gah, I love books. I have stacks of stuff piling up for next year and looking at them makes me want to hole up and start reading, but instead I’m going to continue reading as part of my regular life.
It’s a new year but I still don’t set reading goals. My only aim in reading is to read a diversity of authors and follow my interests. Here’s to another year of reading!
In the order that they were read this year, here are 2022’s top 15 books!
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
The Girl with the Louding Voice by Abi Dare
Centered-Set Church by Mark Baker
Truth’s Table by Ekemini Uwan, Christiana Edmondson, and Michelle Higgins
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture by Ellen Davis
How God Sees Women by Terran Williams
The Girls at 17 Swann Street by Yara Zgheib
A Curious Faith by Lore Wilbert
Divergent Mind by Jenara Nerenberg
Women and the Gender of God by Amy Peeler
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
Please pop in the comments and tell me what your favorite books have been in 2022.
Happy New Year!
I’m trying to start reading on my Kindle again but when I buy Kindle books I feel like I’m not getting anything. You can’t even take good pictures of them.
Anna Karenina was really good. But it’s a big commitment.
Wow! Thank you friend =) That means a lot.
So many great titles on this list. Glad to see you enjoyed A Curious Faith. Also love that a couple of these titles appear to be seminary reads.
I gravitated to crime fiction as a respite from academic reading this year. My most memorable fiction reads were outside that genre though: Black Cake, Lessons in Chemistry, Matrix, Let’s Not Do That Again, Small Things Like These, Dearly Beloved.
The book that resulted in the biggest mindset change for me: Start with Hello by Shannan Martin.