best (and not so best) reads of 2022

We’re almost 93% of the way through year, and it’s time for more Best Of lists, because I say so. So here are the books I read in 2022 (for the first time) which I found particularly excellent:

  • Project Hail Mary
  • Pretty much everything by qntm: There Is No Antimemetics Division, Ra, Fine Structure, Ed, Valuable Humans In Transit
  • Inverted Frontier series: Edges, Silver, Memory, Needle
  • A Prayer for the Crown-Shy
  • What If? 2
  • The Lost Metal

Books I enjoyed well enough:

  • The Blacktongue Thief
  • A Master of Djinn
  • She Who Became the Sun
  • Quantum of Nightmares
  • Foundryside (and its sequel, Shorefall)
  • Skyward Flight
  • Dreams Bigger than Heartbreak
  • A Thousand Steps Into Night
  • Iron Widow
  • Nona the Ninth (the first two books are in the top category though)
  • The This

Books I had mixed feelings about:

  • Dune
  • Termination Shock
  • Escape from Yokai Land
  • The Just City
  • The Grey Bastards
  • The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
  • The Union

Books that I barely or don’t even remember reading, but apparently I did:

  • The Raven Spell
  • The Ruthless Lady’s Guide to Wizardry
  • Persephone Station
  • The Betrayals

Books I mostly didn’t like:

  • From Scratch: Writings in Music Theory
  • Technic and Magic: The Reconstruction of Reality

These were all on Kindle. If I read any new paperback or hardcover books this year, I honestly don’t remember them right now. I did reread several. But I’m mostly a convert to ebooks — they’re lighter to carry around, don’t take up storage space, and don’t have to be shipped.