Worst Reads of 2022

Overall, 2022 was a good year. I made a lot of progress in most areas of my life, from work to my personal life, my dogs, my reading and my writing. But we’re not here to talk about that now, I’ll give you a full life update later. For now, I’m going to be talking about the parts of 2022 that were bad…

Because yeah, I read some bizarre books this year.

(for my worst reads of 2019, 2020 and 2021, see here).

Let’s get into it!

China Dream by Ma Jian

China Dream? More like Fever Dream.

This book is absolutely bizarre, and its literally like one of those horrendous dreams you have when you have the flu (or covid) and your temperature is 40 degrees Celsius and you wake up sweating and immediately forget everything about the dream except that it was weird and you never, never want to repeat that experience.

Ok. That’s enough rambling. I read this book for a reading challenge for the category of Asia. And I still have no idea what it was about or why I continued reading it. It was also my first book of the year, which I guess means I started the year with a bang.

In fairness, I believe this book was originally written in Mandarin and satire often doesn’t translate well, which may have been the issue here. Whatever it was, reading this was more of a nightmare than a dream.

Looking Back on my 2021 Goals (And Looking Forward to 2022 Goals!)

Hello and welcome back to this blog where I sporadically share my thoughts with the rest of the world.

Today marks a week since we entered the New Year, so I thought it was high time I updated you on how my 2021 goals went, and tell you all about my 2022 goals.

All right, let’s get into it! First up…

What were my 2021 Goals (and did I achieve them?)

Reading Goals

Read 80 Books (this is going to be my official Goodreads goal! But I’ll be sort of aiming for 100 books)

I ended up reading 109 books! So, kinda smashed this goal, if I do say so myself.

Read more diverse fiction (particularly with a focus on Ownvoice disabled books. I’ve got a list!)

I mean…kinda? I read pretty diversely in terms of settings and POC characters, but the disability rep was sadly lacking. Maybe this year?

Complete a Lord of the Rings reread and finish those childhood faves.

I did a LOTR reread and I did reread some of those childhood faves, but I’m still not finished with them yet!

Best Reads of 2021 (Part 2)

We’re back again today with Part 2 of my favourite reads of 2021 (part 1 can be found here).

I read a lot of books in 2021, and the majority of them were really good. But there were a couple that just stood out from the crowd. These are the five stars out of the five stars. The books that I know will be going on my reread lists in the coming years.

If you want to see a more comprehensive view of all the books (good and bad) that I read last year, you can take a look at my Year in Books . Also, I will note that I’m not including rereads on this list, even though all my rereads were five stars, simply because I’ve gushed about those books in other posts (such as 2020 and 2019) and this post is already monstrous.

Let’s get into it!

Best Reads of 2021 (part 1)

A few days ago, we examined my least favourite books of 2021, but today we’re going more positive and looking at my favourite reads!

I read a lot of books in 2021, and the majority of them were really good. But there were a couple that just stood out from the crowd. These are the five stars out of the five stars. The books that I know will be going on my reread lists in the coming years.

If you want to see a more comprehensive view of all the books (good and bad) that I read last year, you can take a look at my Year in Books . Also, I will note that I’m not including rereads on this list, even though all my rereads were five stars, simply because I’ve gushed about those books in other posts (such as 2020 and 2019) and this post is already monstrous.

Without further ado, let’s get into it!