Best Fiction of 2022

Like every year, I was super disappointed by the winners of the GoodReads Awards. Another year of publishing showing that they don’t do their due diligence promoting diverse books and diverse authors. Here is my own favorites of 2022 list!

Reading break down

Every year, I like to take a look at the books I have read and break them down to see how diversely I have read. Without the help of Story Graph because those stats aren’t actually what I’m interested in.

Clocking in at 94 books (thanks mostly to audiobooks), here is a break down of how diversely I read:

64% of my books were written by Black Authors, 30% of my books were written by authors of color (up 10% from last year, yay!), and 64% of my books were written by Black women. 13% of the books I read centered queer or trans characters or were written by queer authors, up 7% from last year, but I still need to do better. 55% of my books were 2022 releases, 20% of which were by indie authors or publishers. As far as other interesting patterns I noticed, 20% of the books I read were romance, and I read 15% less nonfiction than in 2021.

2023 Reading Goals

Based on my breakdown, I would definitely like to read more books about queer, trans, and nonbinary characters, and I want to continue to read more indie books. While I keep reading more and more new releases, I want to take the time and read more classic Black books (like The Salt Eaters and bell hooks and Audre Lorde’s entire catalog). And I have let some sequels to some bomb books still go unread. *smh*

This year I set my goal on GoodReads to be 85 books in a year. I want to see if I can break 100 again like I did in 2019. Still setting my GoodReads goal to 85, so I don’t feel as bad though 😅

*drum roll* Best Books of 2022

I read some really good books this year! Here are 10 of my favorite fiction reads, superlative style (not all are new to 2022):

Keep an eye out for a separate post about my favorite nonfiction reads (because even though I read less than last year, I still read a bunch)!

What were your favorite books this year and how diversely did you read? What are your reading goals for 2023?

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