What I read in 2022

As 2022 draws to a close, it's time to revisit the books I read this year. Once again, I set myself a goal at the beginning of the year to read 100 books. I managed to hit that goal, with 102 books read this year.

The average rating for the books I read was 4.04 stars, a hair higher than the 4.03 average from 2021's books read. The breakdown by star rating was:

• 5 stars - 33 books
• 4 stars - 40 books
• 3 stars - 29 books

The numbers are uncannily similar to 2021's, the difference being that I read one fewer 3-star book in 2022.

As I mentioned in the last post, the books I read as part of the Goodreads Choice Awards reading challenge did not make as great an impact to the yearly average as it did in 2021, but it did skew the distribution. The percentage of 4-star books would have been even greater if not for the reading challenge since there were more Goodreads Choice Awards books that I gave 5-star or 3-star ratings to than 4 stars.

I'll list my top ten reads of 2022 in my next post. Stay tuned! 

 

2022 Goodreads Choice Awards reading challenge recap

After reading all the great books from last year's Goodreads Choice Awards reading challenge, I decided to do it again. My goal was to read at least two books a month from the list of 2021 Goodreads Choice Awards finalists, for a total of 24. I ended up reading 28.

The books I read were (in alphabetical order by title):

• The Anthropocene Reviewed - John Green
• Apples Never Fall - Liane Moriarty
  
• Appleseed - Matt Bell
• Beautiful World, Where Are You - Sally Rooney
  
• Bewilderment - Richard Powers
  
• The Book of Accidents - Chuck Wendig
  
• Cloud Cuckoo Land - Anthony Doerr
• Come With Me - Ronald Malfi
  
• The Cousins - Karen McManus
• Crying in H Mart - Michelle Zauner 
• The Final Girl Support Group - Grady Hendrix 
  
• Golden Girl - Elin Hilderbrand
• The Good Sister - Sally Hepworth
• The Hawthorne Legacy - Jennifer Lynn Barnes
• Iron Widow - Xiran Jay Zhao 
• The Last House on Needless Street - Catriona Ward
• The Last Thing He Told Me - Laura Dave
• Local Woman Missing - Mary Kubica 
• The Lost Apothecary - Sarah Penner  
• Malibu Rising - Taylor Jenkins Reid 
• My Heart is a Chainsaw - Stephen Graham Jones
• The Night She Disappeared - Lisa Jewell
  
• The Push - Ashley Audrain
• Rock Paper Scissors - Alice Feeney
• The Rose Code - Kate Quinn 
• The Sentence - Louise Erdrich
  
• A Slow Fire Burning - Paula Hawkins 
• Under the Whispering Door - T.J. Klune

Of the 28 books, I rated 11 as 5 stars, 8 as four stars, and 9 as three stars. The average rating came out to be 4.07, which is higher than my overall average of about 4.0 stars for the books I read outside the challenge. However, it wasn't as high as the 4.11 average from last year's Goodreads Choice Awards finalists. Still, this was a great way to read books that I wound up liking.

I made two observations from last year that held true again this year. The category winners didn't perform as well as the other finalists, and there were more 5-star and 3-star ratings than 4-star ratings. This seems to just be how the list of finalists work for me. 

A new observation this year is the shift in genres I read. As I mentioned in a previous post, I've found that I read more thrillers in 2022. This was reflected in the reading challenge since eight of the 28 books were part of the Mystery & Thriller category.