The end of another year signifies the end of many things for many people. For me, the end of 2022 marks another year of reading quite a few books and looking back at those I read over the last 12 months. Having an account on Goodreads, something I started in 2021, allows me to not only save books I want to read but also see the books I have read since creating an account.

After completing a book, I open my Goodreads app and mark it as complete. I rate the book out of five stars and it then moves to my Read shelf. My friends and I connect with one another across Goodreads so we can see what books everyone is currently reading, what books we have all read and what books we want to read. This allows for personalized recommendations and the chance to discover books I may not spot in my local bookstore.

At the end of each year, Goodreads compiles the books I have read over the last 12 months, showing me different statistics about them, from the shortest book read to the longest book read to the most and least popular books read. The most and least popular doesn’t mean the most or least liked books; instead, it means the most well-known and obscure books.

This year I covered a wide range of genres and topics. While I didn’t read nearly as many books as I would have liked (just 15 books total), upon looking back at each of these 15 books, I soon understood why I took a bit longer to complete them. Many delved into deep and complicated subjects and required me to read just a chapter at a time.

Bookshelf image credit: © Kittichai Boonpong | Dreamstime.com

My 2022 books were:

• The Color Purple by Alice Walker
• The Evening and the Morning by Ken Follett
• The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
• Emma by Jane Austen
• In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
• The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
• Discipline and Punishment by Michel Foucault
• The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
• 1984 by George Orwell
• The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
• The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch
• Fire & Blood by George R.R. Martin
• Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
• Leonardo Da Vinci by Walter Isaacson
• The First Kingdom by Max Adams

— Aoife O’Riordan, associate editor