Best and Worst Books of 2022

So normally I give these Best of Year reviews a generic 5 stars because there’s usually been enough to say that it’s been another fine year for reading. But this year? This year has been noticeably bad for fans of culture. And not just the overall quality of books that have been published this year but all forms of entertainment released in 2022 have been crappy - movies, my god…

And it’s probably the after-effects of the recent and ongoing plague that’s derailed so much of everyday existence and whose ripples we’re still seeing, and will continue to see, for years to come.

I used to do Top 10 lists - one for regular books and one for comics - but the number of actually good books of any kind this year has been so lacking that I don’t have enough picks for either list and, to make up the numbers, I’ve had to include books published outside of this year (and even then one author provides three of the recs)!

Honestly guys, it’s not from lack of trying on my part to find good books either. I’ve picked up all of the latest offerings from creators whose work I’ve enjoyed in the past but, for whatever reason, they weren’t able to replicate their previous magic this time around. To anyone who thinks it’s easy to find good books simply by choosing writers whose work you’ve enjoyed in the past - it ain’t that simple! And this is why it’s important to read writers you haven’t read before because if I hadn’t done that I’d have missed out on some of my favourite books of the year.

Rutu Modan (Tunnels), Juan Diaz Canales/Juanjo Guarnido (Blacksad: They All Fall Down, Part 1), Tom King/Greg Smallwood (The Human Target, Vol 1), Matt Fraction/Steve Lieber (Perry White), Gengoroh Tagame (Our Colors), Christophe Chaboute (Yellow Cab), Jason (Upside Dawn), Ed Brubaker/Sean Phillips (Reckless: Follow Me Down), Robert Kirkman/Ryan Ottley (Rick Grimes 2000), Tom King/Bilquis Evely (Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow), Jason Aaron/Jesus Saiz/Paul Azaceta (Punisher: King of Killers, Book One), Robert Harris (Act of Oblivion), Anthony Horowitz (With a Mind to Kill), Haruki Murakami (Novelist As a Vocation), Cormac McCarthy (The Passenger) and George Saunders (Liberation Day) all produced disappointingly poor books.

I’d say the following are worth checking out if you like the creator’s work but don’t expect much with them. Nick Drnaso (Acting Class), Kate Beaton (Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands), Jason Shiga (Leviathan), and Tom King/Mitch Gerads (One Bad Day: The Riddler #1) returned to produce so-so comics, while TC Boyle (I Walk Between the Raindrops), Chris Hedges (The Greatest Evil is War), Geoff Dyer (The Last Days of Roger Federer and Other Endings), Will Self (Why Read: Selected Writings 2001 - 2021), David Sedaris (Happy-Go-Lucky), Anthony Horowitz (The Twist of a Knife), and Quentin Tarantino (Cinema Speculation) wrote middling books.

Which brings us to the actually good books. Here are my picks for the Top 7 “regular” books of 2022:

7) The Forester’s Daughter - Claire Keegan
6) Creative Types and Other Stories - Tom Bissell
5) Small Things Like These - Claire Keegan
4) Anything is Possible - Elizabeth Strout
3) A Little Life - Hanya Yanigahara
2) Dickens and Prince - Nick Hornby
1) Foster - Claire Keegan

I’m usually lucky enough to discover at least two new writers I’ve never read before each year and that pattern held true this year. I looked up Elizabeth Strout initially because I liked the cover to her book Oh William!, couldn’t find a copy at the liberry and ended up picking up I Am Lucy Barton instead (which turned out to be the first book in a series featuring Lucy Barton of which Oh William! was book three). Good thing I did because, if I had started with Oh William! it might’ve been years before I tried Strout again - Oh William! (and its sequel Lucy By the Sea) was so bad I abandoned it long before the end, whereas I Am Lucy Barton was decent enough to make me check out the next book, and the best one, in the series, Anything is Possible.

Claire Keegan is the other author I discovered after sampling the Booker Prize shortlist this year and found Small Things Like These to be the best of the bunch (so of course it didn’t win). That led me to pick up her other books, including Foster which is the best book I’ve read this year overall. She’s a fantastic author and I can’t recommend her work more highly.

I’ve read Nick Hornby before but he hasn’t written anything I’ve loved in some time so it was a pleasant surprise to find his nonfiction work on Dickens and Prince so enjoyable. I’d never read Hanya Yanigahara before but I often see the cover to A Little Life on shelves and I always suspected I’d probably enjoy it, and I try reading one giant book a year, so I was glad I finally got around to reading it (though it’s a shame her other two novels aren’t nearly as good). I’d never read Tom Bissell before but it turns out he’s a fine short story writer and Creative Types and Other Stories bucks the trend of most collections by having more good stories than bad!

Onto the comix - here’s my Top 8 of 2022.

8) Sakomoto Days, Vol 1 - Yuto Suzuki
7) Alice in Borderland, Vol 1 - Haro Aso
6) Down to the Bone - Catherine Pioli
5) Boxers - Gene Luen Yang
4) Below Ambition - Simon Hanselmann
3) I Hate This Place - Kyle Starks/Artyom Topilin
2) Revenge of the Librarians - Tom Gauld
1) Keeping Two - Jordan Crane

Couple solid mangas worth checking out (though, as is typical of most manga titles, only the first volumes are any good), that workhorse Simon Hanselmann put out another funny Megg & Mogg book and Kyle Starks wrote a fine mystery/horror comic at Image. Catherine Pioli’s comic is a powerful read about her battle with cancer. Like A Little Life, I’d been aware of Gene Luen Yang’s Boxers & Saints series for a while but finally got around to reading it this year - but I’d only recommend Boxers, of the two.

Tom Gauld’s Revenge of the Librarians is his best collection in years with a lot of funny strips. I only just read Jordan Crane’s Keeping Two, so it’s a fortuitous photo-finisher for comic of the year, but it’s definitely the best out of all of them - a brilliant tale of loss and love.

You can see from the list that there’s nothing from Marvel or DC, two from Fantagraphics, just the one from Image and Drawn & Quarterly, and nothing from Boom and IDW. That’s how bad it is out there right now. At least DC, Image and D+Q still put out comics I’m interested in reading even if they’re generally terrible and mediocre at best. Marvel is going through the worst drought in good content in the company’s history. They’ve never put out so much that wasn’t worth reading - and it’s bleeding over into their sweetest plum, the MCU, which had a woeful run of movies in its underwhelming continuation of movies post-Endgame, Phase 4. Boom and IDW don’t usually have anything that appeals to me, especially since Giant Days ended, and they kept up that lack of interest in 2022.

Best overall book of the year: Foster by Claire Keegan

Worst overall book of the year: I read a lot this year that’s bad but no one comic stands out as egregiously terrible so let’s just give this award to the year instead. Up yours 2022!

Have a good one guys! Thanks for all the kind words, general support and for sticking with me - here’s hoping 2023 has better books in store for all of us!