Gotta be honest: 2022 wasn’t a great reading year for me. I read 22 books, which was much worse than 31 in 2021 and just barely better than the 18 in 2020.

A lot of my potential reading opportunities were either taken up by movie watching, Cinema Sugar, or other leisure activities. Not a bad thing, to be clear—just the result of the ongoing calculus I have to make with my limited free time.

But reading is about quality, not quantity. And because my quantity of titles released in 2022 doesn’t justify a top 10 list, I’m gonna try something different and just list the titles I did read this year according to the star rating I gave them out of 5.

There were no 5-star books for me this year (my main man Steven Johnson got the closest), but enough good reading to keep me turning pages. Enjoy!

4.5

Extra Life: A Short History of Living Longer by Steven Johnson (2021)

Haven by Emma Donoghue (2022)

4

Blood, Sweat & Chrome: The Wild and True Story of Mad Max: Fury Road by Kyle Buchanan (2022)

Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín (2009)

How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America by Clint Smith (2021)

The Nineties: A Book by Chuck Klosterman (2022)

Office BFFs: Tales of The Office from Two Best Friends Who Were There by Jenna Fischer & Angela Kinsey (2022)

Salty: Lessons on Eating, Drinking, and Living from Revolutionary Women by Alissa Wilkinson (2022)

The Twilight World by Werner Herzog (2022)

Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life by Lulu Miller (2020)

A World Lit Only By Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance by William Manchester (1992)

The Writing of the Gods: The Race to Decode the Rosetta Stone by Edward Dolnick (2021)

3.5

Book Lovers by Emily Henry (2022)

The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School by Neil Postman (1995)

3

The Bowery: The Strange History of New York’s Oldest Street by Stephen Paul Devillo (2017)

Everyday Sisu: Tapping into Finnish Fortitude for a Happier, More Resilient Life by Katja Pantzar (2022)

Hero on a Mission: A Path to a Meaningful Life by Donald Miller (2022)

Index, A History of the: A Bookish Adventure from Medieval Manuscripts to the Digital Age by Dennis Duncan (2021)

The Story of You: An Enneagram Journey to Becoming Your True Self by Ian Morgan Cron (2021)

We Had A Little Real Estate Problem by Kliph Nesteroff (2021)

The World’s Worst Assistant by Sona Movsessian (2022)

2.5

American Buffalo: In Search of a Lost Icon by Steven Rinella (2008)