I read a lot of books this year, mostly crime/thriller/mystery stuff. When I went back through them on the Kindle I could hardly remember most of them. In fact, several times this year I began a new sample or one already in my library and realized 20-30 pages later that I’d already read it. I guess it’s probably time to find an additional hobby.
The best of that genre were The Dark Hours by Michael Connelly (I read all of his books); The Thursday Murder Club; and The Last Thing He Told Me. Special mention for Billy Summers by Stephen King; I’ve always liked his writing but I don’t like his usual supernatural fare. This one isn’t, it’s straightforward thriller stuff. Very good.
That’s four I liked, I probably read forty or more in that category. As for the other stuff…
The Lincoln Highway was a charming little adult fairy tale. Amor Towles writes beautiful, feel-good books.
Last month I got really pissed off that my local schools were banning Lawn Boy by Jonathan Evison, a book that I remembered liking. So I read it again, and it is wonderful. I’m so glad that so many young people, and adults too, will read it because they banned it. You should too.
Way back in January I read How Lucky, by Will Leith. It’s a good book for guys who don’t read books, but pretty good for women, and readers, and women readers as well. Plenty of humor and warmth.
This brings me to my favorite books of the year. The best thriller by far was Dream Girl by Laura Lippman, of whom I have become a big fan. In addition to being a compelling story, I thought the writing was brilliant. But still straightforward and easily accessible. It was haunting and powerful.
Early Morning Riser by Katherine Heiny is just laugh out loud funny from start to finish. So I read her previous book, Standard Deviations, and I liked it even more. Perfect cures for a pandemic that doesn’t have any intentions of waning.
Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a couple of years old. I really enjoyed it, thought I learned a lot from it about the perspective of an African immigrant dealing with America. I just finished Sankofa about an Afro-Brit, which was also good.
The Count of Monte Cristo is more than a couple of years old, but I had heard it is still is eminently readable. And indeed it was. I’m still in awe of the author, Alexandre Dumas. The book has tension, humor, pathos, grief, sarcasm, compassion, every element of drama. Not since my Tolstoy days 40 years ago had I read anything like it. Some of those old boys were pretty sharp. Try it if you have roughly 40 hours to spare.
So that’s it, that’s the list. Hope you will try a couple of them, and I’d love to here your feedback and recommendation. On to 2022!
