This is a list of my favorite books I read this year. Not The Best Books Released in 2022. You will not find many new releases on this list; as you can see, my focus remains on older books. To choose to read only those books published in the last thirty, or even the last seventy years is to reject the wisdom, struggle, and inheritance compiled over thousands of years of the pursuit of the good, the just, and the beautiful.
My top ten books read this year, in no particular order:
Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman 1985
The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger 1997
Elizabeth the Queen:The Life of a Modern Monarch by Sally Bedell Smith 2012
The Medieval Mind of C.S. Lewis by Jason M. Baxter 2022
Letters to a Young Poet, Ranier Maria Rilke 1909
Emma by Jane Austen 1815
On Photography by Susan Sontag 1977
Of Wolves and Men by Barry Lopez 1978
The Witches by Stacy Schiff 2015
The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction by Alan Jacobs 2011
Fiction favorites of the year:
I had to make a space for this handful of fiction titles which particularly blew me away this year, as well.
The English Understand Wool by Helen DeWitt
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Dracula by Bram Stoker
Photo by Ugur Akdemir on Unsplash
