In 2022, the books I was able to finish tended to be on the shorter side, compared to previous years. You’ll find several books on this list hovering around or under 200 pages.
I don’t feel like I had a shorter attention span, so much as I had a lot competing for my attention in 2022: Mourning the death of a parent; welcoming the arrival of my first child; transitioning back to an in-person office environment during a global pandemic; changing jobs and working from home for a new organization. I still read for pleasure, but I had other priorities to attend to.
That said, there were plenty more books I did finish that did not make this list. Those tend to be of the board book and picture book variety. I left off the reading aloud to my little one since it marks a drastic deviation from my previous years’ lists. I also lost track of the titles and number of times I read each one.
That does not diminish the importance of this kind of reading. My favorite of the board books was Little Owl’s Night, by Divya Srinivasan. I think my daughter’s favorite was probably What’s for Breakfast? by Steph Stilwell.
As always, here is a guide to the emojis in this list: ⭐ Endorsement 📖 Read hardcover or paperback 📱 Read as ebook or PDF 🎧 Listed to audiobook
- The South: Jim Crow and its Afterlives
by Adolph L. Reed, Jr.
📖 Finished on
160 pages
- Arbitrary Stupid Goal
by Tamara Shopsin
📖 Finished on
336 pages
- Worn: A People’s History of Clothing
by Sofi Thanhauser
🎧 Finished on
400 pages
- Devo’s Freedom of Choice (33⅓ series by Bloomsbury)
by Evie Nagy
📖 Finished on
168 pages
- Citizen Cash: The Political Life and Times of Johnny Cash
by Michael Stewart Foley
🎧 Finished on
384 pages
- South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation
by Imani Perry
📖 Finished on
432 pages
- The Idiot
by Elif Batuman
🎧 Finished on
423 pages
- The Shame Machine: Who Profits in the New Age of Humiliation
by Cathy O’Neil
🎧 Finished on
272 pages
- Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
by Oliver Burkeman
🎧 Finished on
288 pages
- Toxic Positivity: Keeping It Real in a World Obsessed with Being Happy
by Whitney Goodman
🎧 Finished on
304 pages
- Bird on Fire: Lessons from the World’s Least Sustainable City⭐
by Andrew Ross
📱 Finished on
312 pages
- Severance
by Ling Ma
🎧 Finished on
304 pages
- The Scorpion’s Sting: Antislavery and the Coming of the Civil War⭐
by James Oakes
📖 Finished on
207 pages
- Detail in Typography
by Jost Hochuli
📱 Finished on
64 pages
- They Knew: How a Culture of Conspiracy Keeps America Complacent
by Sarah Kendzior
📖 Finished on
256 pages