Best of 2022

There is no lack of "Best of's" come January.  Almost all are forgettable. Here, I hope is a contrapositive.  My top 10 reads of 2022. I found each of these books both entertaining and thought provoking.  I know your taste in reading does not match mine, but I hope you find something in this list that touches you. 

In alphabetical, not ranked order.

Sebastian Barry - A Thousand Moons

Novel. Winona Cole, a Lakota Indian orphan, unconventionally raised in Tennessee by adoptive parents John Cole & Thomas McNulty

Maria Benedict & Victoria Christopher Murray  - The Personal Librarian

Historical Fiction. Belle de Costa Greene, J.P. Morgan's personal librarian and curator of New York's Morgan Museum, a black woman passing as white

Robert Cary - Master of the Senate

Biography. Lyndon B. Johnson, 1949-1960. Pulitzer.

Barbara Kingsolver - Pigs in Heaven

Novel. Turtle and Taylor Green, a Native American girl and a her adoptive white mother.

James McBride - Deacon King Kong

Novel. A black, cranky church deacon in 1969 Brooklyn "projects"

Emily St. John Mandel - Station Eleven

SciFi. A nomadic group struggling to survive after a plague wipes out 98% of the world's population. [This book was published in 2014]

N.Scott Momaday - House Made of Dawn

Novel. Abel, a young Native American, home from war, struggles with his identity. Pulitzer.

Irene Nemerovsky - Suite Français

Novel. France, under German occupation 1940.  Author died in Auschwitz

Per Petterson - Out Stealing Horses

Novel.  Trond, living in an isolated cabin on Norway's border with Sweden, reflects on his role in 1940 under German occupation.

Maggie Shipstead - Great Circle

Novel. Marian Graves, in love with flight, attempts a north-south traversal of the globe.

Good reading.

Copyright ©  2023  Dave Hoplin