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Awards, News & Best of 2022

Library Journal names its best books of 2022. 

NYT compiles its critics’ best-of-the-year lists. 

WSJ highlights “The Best Reading of 2022.”

The New Yorker updates its 2022 best books list. 

NYPL releases its best books of 2022. 

The 2022 GoodReads Choice Awards winners are announced. 

CrimeReads shares the best psychological thrillers of the year. 

Finalists are named for the This Is Horror Awards 2021. Readers can vote for the winners here. 

The National Book Foundation looks ahead in a new strategic plan for 2022–25.

Penguin Random House CEO Markus Dohle Steps Down. NYT reports. PW, Publishers Lunch, Publishing Perspectives, and Vulture also have coverage. Plus, there is more on Dohle’s resignation in today’s Shelf Awareness.

Big Books of the Week

Into the West by Mercedes Lackey (DAW) leads library holds this week.

Other titles in demand include:

Devil’s Delight by M. C. Beaton and R.W. Green (Minotaur)

Secrets Typed in Blood by Stephen Spotswood (Doubleday)

A Mother Would Know by Amber Garza (MIRA)

A Death in Tokyo by Keigo Higashino, tr. by Giles Murray (Minotaur: St. Martin’s)

These books and others publishing the week of Dec. 12, 2022, are listed in a downloadable spreadsheet.

Librarians and Booksellers Suggest

One LibraryReads selection publishes this week: 

A Death in Tokyo by Keigo Higashino, tr. by Giles Murray (Minotaur: St. Martin’s)

“A man is stabbed but keeps walking past a police station to die in the middle of a nearby bridge. Later an accident victim is found with the victim's wallet on him. Looking beyond the logical connection, Detective Kaga keeps digging to determine what really happened. A deliciously puzzling mystery that will be perfect for fans of Sherlock Holmes.”—Vicki Nesting, St. Charles Parish Library, Destrehan, LA

In the Media

People names its top 10 books of the year: Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng (Penguin Pr.; LJ starred review), Trust by Hernan Diaz (Riverhead), The Man Who Could Move Clouds by Ingrid Rojas Contreras (Doubleday), Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm by Laura Warrell (Pantheon; LJ starred review), The Hero of This Book by Elizabeth McCracken (Ecco), Lost & Found by Kathryn Schulz (Random), The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty (Knopf; LJ starred review), If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery (MCD; LJ starred review), An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us by Ed Yong (Random), and Vladimir by Julia May Jonas (Avid Reader: S. & S.). 

Also, Maya-Camille Broussard, Justice of the Pies: Sweet and Savory Pies, Quiches, and Tarts plus Inspirational Stories from Exceptional People (Clarkson Potter), and Brendan Pang, This Is a Book About Noodles (Page Street), share recipes.  

Reviews

The Washington Post pairs reviews of two books about war: War By Other Means: The Pacifists of the Greatest Generation Who Revolutionized Resistance by Daniel Akst (Melville House), and Mercy: Humanity in War by Cathal J. Nolan (Oxford Univ.): “Each author, perhaps in ways that might not be recognizable to the other, or at least the other’s subjects, finds heroism in actions that are about the individual person facing a choice.” They also review The Persuaders: At the Front Lines of the Fight for Hearts, Minds, and Democracy by Anand Giridhardas (Knopf): “Structured as profiles of exemplary figures, the book presents these persuaders in turn as they discuss political and social boundaries that seem immutable and present ways to overcome them.” Also, Ghost Town by Kevin Chen, tr. by Darryl Sterk (Europa; LJ starred review): “The literary equivalent of a suitcase jammed full to the point of bursting. Characters, memories, regrets, choices, consequences, secrets, history, politics, real estate, sex: They’re all pressed together close, like unwashed clothes after a long trip. Open the case up even a little bit and the dirty laundry starts spilling out.”

NYT reviews Eccentric Lives: The Daily Telegraph Book of 21st Century Obituaries, ed. by Andrew M. Brown (Unicorn Publishing): “It’s a book about oddballs and joy-hogs and the especially drunken and/or irascible, and it may be the best yet”; Freedom’s Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power by Jefferson Cowie (Basic): “Freedom’s Dominion is local history, but in the way that Gettysburg was a local battle or the Montgomery bus boycott was a local protest”; and Hollywood: The Oral History by Jeanine Basinger & Sam Wasson (Harper): “This is Basinger and Wasson’s and the AFI’s oral history of Hollywood, and it’s a fine one. But remember, as the man said, Nobody knows anything.”

BookMarks shares “The Best Reviewed Memoirs and Biographies of 2022.”

Briefly Noted

B&N shares an excerpt from Queen of Myth and Monsters by Scarlett St. Clair, due out from Bloom Books next week. 

People talks with Brooke Smith about her new book of photographs of the “authentic punk scene,” Sunday Matinee (Radio Raheem).

LeVar Burton talks with Entertainment Weekly about his “Emmy award, Reading Rainbow, and the authors that changed his life.”

Crime writers Val McDermid, Ian Rankin, and Sophie Hannah, among others, share their favorite detectives with The Guardian. 

USA Today picks five books for the week.

CrimeReads suggests five books out this week.

PopSugar highlights 42 Christmas books. 

BookRiot has “fun books to read during Hanukkah.”

Tor shares Jo Walton’s reading list for November 2022.

NYT has obituaries: “Lee Lorenz, 90, Cartoonist and Gatekeeper at the New Yorker, Dies.”

“Marijane Meaker, 95, Who Helped Launch Genre of Lesbian Fiction, Dies.” 

“Dominique Lapierre, 91, Dies; Popular Author Wrote Is Paris Burning?”  

Authors on Air

NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday chats with Bora Chung about her story collection Cursed Bunny, tr. by Anton Hur (Algonquin), and explores “how to get into comics for the upcoming holiday season.”

House of the Dragon co-creator teases secrets about The Winds of Winter at Entertainment Weekly. 

The BookRiot podcast explores the books of the year. 

Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times (Crown), visits Jimmy Kimmel Live. 

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