Year-End Lists

Literary Hub: Our 38 Favorite Books of 2022, although I only count 37

[see also Our 48 Favorite Books of 2021 • Our 65 Favorite Books of 2020 • The 20 Best Novels of the 2010s • The 20 Best Works of Nonfiction of the 2010s • Favorite Books of 2018]

• The Marriage Portrait
  Maggie O'Farrell
• The School for Good Mothers
  Jessamine Chan
• Saint Sebastian's Abyss
  Mark Haber
• Elderflora

  A Modern History of Ancient Trees
  Jared Farmer
• Getting Lost
  Annie Ernaux
• Dinosaurs
  Lydia Millet
• Babel

  An Arcane History
  R.F. Kuang
• Scorched Earth

  Beyond the Digital Age to a Post-Capitalist World
  Jonathan Crary
• Patricia Wants to Cuddle
  Samantha Allen
• Haven
  Emma Donoghue
• My Three Dads

  Patriarchy on the Great Plains
  Jessa Crispin
• Fight Like Hell

  The Untold History of American Labor
  Kim Kelly
• Diary of a Void
  Emi Yagi
• Stay True

  A Memoir
  Hua Hsu
• The Candy House
  Jennifer Egan
• O
  Zeina Hashem Beck
• How High We Go in the Dark
  Sequoia Nagamatsu
• A Woman's Battles and Transformations
  Édouard Louis
• Also a Poet

  Frank O'Hara, My Father, and Me
  Ada Calhoun
• The Bond King

  How One Man Made a Market, Built an Empire, and Lost it All
  Mary Childs
• The Disappearance of Josef Mengele
  Olivier Guez
• Fen, Bog and Swamp

  A Short History of Peatland Destruction and Its Role in the Climate Crisis
  Annie Proulx
• The Rabbit Hutch
  Tess Gunty
• Our Wives Under the Sea
  Julia Armfield
• Vladimir
  Julia May Jonas
• Sea of Tranquility
  Emily St. John Mandel
• Weasels in the Attic
  Hiroko Oyamada
• Kibogo
  Scholastique Mukasonga
• The Swimmers
  Julie Otsuka
• Paradais
  Fernanda Melchor
• An Honest Living
  Dwyer Murphy
• Either/Or
  Elif Batuman
• The Red Arrow
  William Brewer
• Brother Alive
  Zain Khalid
• The Books of Jacob
  Olga Tokarczuk
• The Book of Goose
  Yiyun Li
• But for I Am a Woman
  Sophia Stid

Vulture: The Best Books of 2022, as published by New York Magazine

1. Manhunt
   Gretchen Felker-Martin
2. Easy Beauty
   Chloé Cooper Jones
3. The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On
   Franny Choi
4. Strangers to Ourselves

   Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us
   Rachel Aviv
5. Siren Queen
   Nghi Vo
6. The Furrows
   Namwali Serpell
7. 2 A.M. in Little America
   Ken Kalfus
8. All This Could Be Different
   Sarah Thankam Mathews
9. Seduced by Story

   The Use and Abuse of Narrative
   Peter Brooks
10. X
    Davey Davis

Honorable Mentions (by U.S. release date)

• Fiona and Jane
  Jean Chen Ho
• Last Resort
  Andrew Lipstein
• Dilla Time

  The Life and Afterlife of J Dilla, the Hip-Hop Producer Who Reinvented Rhythm
  Dan Charnas
• Pure Colour
  Sheila Heti
• Vladimir
  Julia May Jonas
• Then the War

  And Selected Poems, 2007-2020
  Carl Phillips
• The Employees
  Olga Ravn
• Checkout 19
  Claire-Louise Bennett
• Run and Hide
  Pankaj Mishra
• Oedipus Tyrannos
  Sophocles
• The Doloriad
  Missouri Williams
• Glory
  NoViolet Bulawayo
• The Candy House
  Jennifer Egan
• Constructing a Nervous System

  A Memoir
  Margo Jefferson
• A Tiny Upward Shove
  Melissa Chadburn
• Love Marriage
  Monica Ali
• The Women's House of Detention

  A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison
  Hugh Ryan
• It Was All a Dream

  Biggie and the World That Made Him
  Justin Tinsley
• DJ Screw

  A Life in Slow Revolution
  Lance Scott Walker
• An Island
  Karen Jennings
• Avalon
  Nell Zink
• You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty
  Akwaeke Emezi
• Fruiting Bodies
  Kathryn Harlan
• Mothercare

  On Obligation, Love, Death, and Ambivalence
  Lynne Tillman
• Afterlives
  Abdulrazak Gurnah
• My Phantoms
  Gwendoline Riley
• Bright Unbearable Reality

  Essays
  Anna Badkhen
• Toad
  Katherine Dunn

Annabel Gutterman: The 10 Best Nonfiction Books of 2022, as published by Time Magazine

[see also The 10 Best Fiction Books of 2023 • The 10 Best Nonfiction Books of 2023 • The 10 Best Fiction Books of 2022 • The 10 Best Fiction Books of 2021 • The 10 Best Nonfiction Books of 2021]

1. In Love

   A Memoir of Love and Loss
   Amy Bloom
2. South to America

   A Journey Below the Mason Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation
   Imani Perry
3. Ducks

   Two Years in the Oil Sands
   Kate Beaton
4. The Escape Artist

   The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World
   Jonathan Freedland
5. An Immense World

   How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us
   Ed Yong
6. Constructing a Nervous System

   A Memoir
   Margo Jefferson
7. His Name Is George Floyd

   One Man's Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice
   Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa
8. How Far the Light Reaches

   A Life in Ten Sea Creatures
   Sabrina Imbler
9. The Invisible Kingdom

   Reimagining Chronic Illness
   Meghan O’Rourke
10. The Revolutionary

    Samuel Adams
    Stacy Schiff

Christopher Borrelli: The 10 Best Books of 2022, as published by The Chicago Tribune, in order of authors' names

[see also 2023 • 2021 • 2020 • 2019 • 2018]

• Planes
  Peter C. Baker
• Ducks

  Two Years in the Oil Sands
  Kate Beaton
• Glory
  NoViolet Bulawayo
• The Philosophy of Modern Song
  Bob Dylan
• The Rabbit Hutch
  Tess Gunty
• The Devil Takes You Home
  Gabino Iglesias
• South to America

  A Journey Below the Mason Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation
  Imani Perry
• My Phantoms
  Gwendoline Riley
• Super-Infinite

  The Transformations of John Donne
  Katherine Rundell
• Sandy Hook

  An American Tragedy and the Battle for Truth
  Elizabeth Williamson

Plus 10 more notable books and honorable mentions

• Trust
  Hernan Diaz
• American Midnight

  The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy's Forgotten Crisis
  Adam Hochschild
• Fairy Tale
  Stephen King
• What Moves the Dead
  T. Kingfisher
• Art Is Life

  Icons and Iconoclasts, Visionaries and Vigilantes, and Flashes of Hope in the Night
  Jerry Saltz
• His Name Is George Floyd

  One Man's Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice
  Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa
• Lost & Found

  A Memoir
  Kathryn Schulz
• Camera Man

  Buster Keaton, the Dawn of Cinema, and the Invention of the Twentieth Century
  Dana Stevens
• An Immense World

  How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us
  Ed Yong
• Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
  Gabrielle Zevin

Jessica Ferri: The 5 Best Books of 2022, as published by The Los Angeles Times

[see also 2021]

• Strangers to Ourselves

  Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us
  Rachel Aviv
• Sandy Hook

  An American Tragedy and the Battle for Truth
  Elizabeth Williamson
• The Kingdom of Sand
  Andrew Holleran
• The Longcut
  Emily Hall
• Love Me Tender
  Constance Debré

Mary Ann Gwinn: The 5 Best Nonfiction Books of 2022, as published by The Los Angeles Times

[see also 2021]

• Path Lit by Lightning

  The Life of Jim Thorpe
  David Maraniss
• I Used to Live Here Once

  The Haunted Life of Jean Rhys
  Miranda Seymour
• The Bald Eagle

  The Improbable Journey of America's Bird
  Jack E. Davis
• Who Killed Jane Stanford?

  A Gilded Age Tale of Murder, Deceit, Spirits and the Birth of a University
  Richard White
• The Revolutionary

  Samuel Adams
  Stacy Schiff

Bethanne Patrick: The 5 Best Fiction Books of 2022, as published by The Los Angeles Times

[see also 2023 • 2021]

• All This Could Be Different
  Sarah Thankam Mathews
• How High We Go in the Dark
  Sequoia Nagamatsu
• Our Missing Hearts
  Celeste Ng
• Human Blues
  Elisa Albert
• If I Survive You
  Jonathan Escoffery

Mark Athitakis: The 5 Best Novels of 2022, as published by The Los Angeles Times

[see also 2023 • 2021]

• Trust
  Hernan Diaz
• Very Cold People
  Sarah Manguso
• The Book of Goose
  Yiyun Li
• Paradais
  Fernanda Melchor
• The Furrows
  Namwali Serpell

Dan Kois: The 10 Best Books of 2022, as published by Slate

[see also 2023 • 2020 • 2019]

• All This Could Be Different
  Sarah Thankam Mathews
• Did Ye Hear Mammy Died?

  A Memoir
  Séamas O'Reilly
• Didn't Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta
  James Hannaham
• The English Understand Wool
  Helen DeWitt
• A frog in the fall (and later on)
  Linnea Sterte
• A Half-Built Garden
  Ruthanna Emrys
• Last Resort
  Andrew Lipstein
• Mothercare

  On Obligation, Love, Death, and Ambivalence
  Lynne Tillman
• Peter Hujar's Day
  Linda Rosenkrantz
• There Are No Accidents
  Jessie Singer

Laura Miller: The 10 Best Books of 2022, as published by Slate

[see also 2023 • 2021 • 2020 • 2019 • 2018 • 2017]

• The Book of Goose
  Yiyun Li
• The Candy House
  Jennifer Egan
• An Immense World

  How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us
  Ed Yong
• The Mountain in the Sea
  Ray Nayler
• Sandy Hook

  An American Tragedy and the Battle for Truth
  Elizabeth Williamson
• Scary Monsters

  A Novel in Two Parts
  Michelle De Kretser
• Shrines of Gaiety
  Kate Atkinson
• Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
  Gabrielle Zevin
• Tell Me Everything

  The Story of a Private Investigation
  Erika Krouse
• Trust
  Hernan Diaz