As the year ends, please consider supporting this free podcast at Buy Me a Coffee. Your support is helpful financially, obviously, but it also boosts my spirits and keeps the show going. 

Today’s show is my special wrap-up episode where I share my top 10 books of the year. I read 65 books in 2022, as of December 19, and narrowed down my favorite to 10. Eight of the top 10 were published in 2022, while two were published in 2021. Those were two books I didn’t finish in 2021 and purposely scheduled to read early in 2022, and I’m so glad I did. 

I also share which book I hated and wanted to throw across the room, a few disappointing books, and a few extras that were great books, even though they didn’t make my top 10. And I end with a few books that I’m looking forward to that will be published in 2023.

Join us in the Deliberate Freelancer Facebook group where we’ll be talking about our best and worst books of 2022! 

I don’t want to spoil where my top 10 books fell in the list, so the following books are ones I recommended during this episode, but you’ll have to tune in to hear the top 10. Also, I didn’t list the books I hated below because I don’t want people to think I’m recommending them.  

Nonfiction:

• Unmasked: My Life-Solving America’s Cold Cases by Paul Holes
• I’ll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara
• How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America by Clint Smith
• Midnight in Chernobyl by Adam Higginbotham
• All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung (memoir)

Fiction:

• Wrong Place Wrong Time by Gillian McAllister
• The Violin Conspiracy by Brendan Slocumb
• Before She Disappeared by Lisa Gardner
• The Night Shift by Alex Finlay
• Notes on an Execution by Danya Kukafka
• Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
• Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
• The Measure by Nikki Erlick
• How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu
• Bewilderment by Richard Powers
• Hell of a Book by Jason Mott
• Exit West by Mohsin Hamid
• Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
• Iona Iverson’s Rules for Commuting by Clare Pooley
• Flying Solo by Linda Holmes
• Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes
• The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai
• The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix
• The Dry (first in the Aaron Falk series) by Jane Harper
• Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane

2023 Books I’m Looking Forward to:

• How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix, publishes January 17 
• Exiles by Jane Harper, publishes January 31 
• I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai, publishes February 21 
• A Living Remedy by Nicole Chung (memoir), publishes April 4
• The Half Moon by Mary Beth Keane, publishes May 2

Resources:

• Chat books (and freelancing!) in the Deliberate Freelancer Facebook group. 
• Support Deliberate Freelancer at Buy Me a Coffee.
• Episode #122 of Deliberate Freelancer: My Best Books of 2021 (and Anticipated 2022 Releases)
• Episode #104 of Deliberate Freelancer: Best Books of 2021 So Far—and New Releases This Fall
• Episode #87 of Deliberate Freelancer: My Most Anticipated 2021 Books (and Fave 2020 Books)
• Episode #17 of Deliberate Freelancer: My Favorite Books of the Year So Far (2019)