Books I Read in 2022

This is only the second time I’m publishing a list of books I read. I started doing this in 2021 – here’s the list for that year – partly because I had never kept such a list before, and, perhaps, partly because of covid. Here’s this year’s list with an updated introduction to last year’s post.

I read a lot. I own more than one thousand books, and I regularly cull my library. I also enjoy watching movies and TV – in the past year, I’ve been watching more, though the streaming services haven’t been great. (One exception is Mubi, which has arthouse films and foreign films. This link will get you a free month to try it out, and extend my subscription by one month.)

This year, I read more than 140 books, up on 2022. I read fairly quickly, and some of them – mostly mysteries and thrillers – were books I read in a single evening, or two at most. Some of the books were fairly short, but others were quite long. And I left a few books in the list that I abandoned after about one quarter of their length, just as notes to remind me that I didn’t finish them. Books with asterisks before the titles are recent books, published in the last year or so (at the time of my reading). I often read multiple books concurrently, so there are a few in the 2022 list that I haven’t finished. I only started the last book on the list on December 30, so I haven’t gotten for, but I’ll include it anyway.

You’ll notice a number of books in French; I lived in France for nearly three decades, so read in French regularly, mostly classical literature. Many of these French books are long, and I read a bit less quickly in French than in English. One of my goals for 2022 was to read more in French, and I did so. You’ll also notice a number of plays; I list each one of these as a book even though they aren’t as long as books.

About half my reads were non-fiction, though I haven’t included cookbooks or some books I’ve read for my work. And this also doesn’t count a few dozen photobooks that “read” or “re-read,” since I don’t really count them as reading. Though perhaps if I keep a list next year, I will include them…

My big project for the coming year might be Dickens. I’ve never gotten into his work, and decided to give him another chance with David Copperfield, which I began reading on December 30. Check back next year to see if I’ve read more than one of his novels.

If I’d had more time, I’d include Amazon affiliate links for anyone who wants to contribute to my ongoing book habit. Since I’m not including individual links, if you go to your local Amazon with these links (if you shop from one of these three countries), I’ll get a small percentage: Amazon UK, Amazon US, Amazon FR.

So, here’s the list:

  1. *The Book of Form and Emptiness, Ruth Ozeki
  2. Essence of the Heart Sutra, Dalaï Lama
  3. The Dream of Reason: A History of Western Philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance, Anthony Gottlieb
  4. Shobogenzo, Dogen
  5. *Dogen: Japan’s Original Zen Teacher, Steven Heine
  6. The Iliad, Homer (Caroline Alexander)
  7. *Upholland, Michael Kenna
  8. *Metabolical, Robert Lustig
  9. Le tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours, Jules Verne
  10. Poems of the Masters, Red Pine
  11. The Platform Sutra, Red Pine
  12. Walking, Erling Kagge
  13. *Jews Don’t Count, David Baddiel
  14. The Zen Teachings of Bodhidharma, tr. Red Pine
  15. Bitters, Brad Thomas Parsons
  16. Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, Shunryu Suzuki
  17. Philosophy in the Garden, Damon Young
  18. On Getting Off: Sean and Philosophy, Damon Young
  19. Shakespearean, Robert McCrum
  20. Life, Part Two, David Chernikoff
  21. The Russia House, John Le Carré
  22. Les Mouches, Jean-Paul Sartre
  23. Huis Clos, Jean-Paul Sartre
  24. L’insoutenable légèreté de l’être, Milan Kundera
  25. Morts sans sépulture, Jean-Paul Sartre
  26. La Putain réspectuese, Jean-Paul Sartre
  27. *Modern Instances, Stephen Shore
  28. Marguerite Duras, Laure Adler
  29. Putin’s People, Catherine Belton
  30. Les mains sales, Jean-Paul Sartre
  31. The Taijiquan Classics, Barbara Davis
  32. There Are No Secrets, Wolfe Lowenthal
  33. Appeasing Hitler, Tim Bouverie
  34. Dreaming Yourself Awake, B Alan Wallace,
  35. Call for the Dead, John Le Carré
  36. *How to Be Perfect, Michael Schur
  37. Les fleurs du mal, Charles Baudelaire
  38. Inner Work, Robert Johnson
  39. The Red Book, CG Jung
  40. L’existentialisme est un humanisme, Jean-Paul Sartre
  41. Les mandarins I, Simone de Beauvoir
  42. Le soleil naît derrière le Louvre, Léo Malet
  43. The Broker, John Grisham
  44. The Street Lawyer, John Grisham
  45. The Archer Files, Ross McDonald
  46. *To You: Zen Sayings of Kodo Sawaki
  47. Nightmare Alley, William Lindsay Gresham
  48. Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu (Cleary)
  49. To You, Kodo Sawaki
  50. Deep Blues, Robert Palmer
  51. *Elizabeth Finch, Julian Barnes
  52. Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, Samin Nosrat
  53. Au bord de l’eau, Shi Nai-an, Luo Guan-zhong
  54. *After Steve, Tripp Mickle
  55. Climbing the Steps to Qingcheng Mountain, Wang Yun
  56. The Tai Chi Book, Robert Chuckrow
  57. Tai Chi Concepts and Experiments, Robert Chuckrow
  58. Life for Sale, Yukio Mishima
  59. In the Court of King Crimson, Sid Smith
  60. The Cut, Christopher Brookmyre
  61. The Sense of an Ending, Julian Barnes
  62. *How to Spend a Trillion Dollars, Rowan Hooper
  63. The Bird Way, Jennifer Ackerman
  64. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
  65. Sky Above, Great Wind, Kazuaki Tanihasi
  66. Good to Go: What the Athlete in All of Us Can Learn From the Strange Science of Recovery, Christie Aschwanden
  67. Awakened Cosmos, David Hinton
  68. The Partner, John Grisham
  69. *The Cut, Christopher Brookmyre
  70. Silverview, John Le Carré
  71. Armadillo, William Boyd
  72. Casanova, Maxime Rovere
  73. L’anomalie, Hervé le Tellier
  74. *Reality+, David Chalmers
  75. Galileo’s Error, Philip Goff
  76. Dopamine Nation, Anna Lembke
  77. At the Existentialist Café, Sarah Bakewell
  78. The Sea, The Sea, Iris Murdoch
  79. The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie
  80. The Fellowship of the Ring, JRR Tolkien
  81. L’Age de raison, Jean-Paul Sartre
  82. *How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, Bill Gates
  83. *The Awoken, Katelyn Monroe Holmes
  84. *Suspect, Scott Turow
  85. Crow with No Mouth, Ikkyū
  86. Dewdrops on a Lotus Leaf, Zen Poems of Ryokan
  87. Wabi-sabi, Leonard Koren
  88. *The Mindful Photographer, David Ulrich
  89. Camino Island, John Grisham
  90. Camino Winds, John Grisham
  91. Wabi Sabi, Further Thoughts, Leonard Korean
  92. In Praise of Shadows, Junichciro Tanizaki
  93. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C Clarke
  94. Ways of Seeing, John Berger
  95. The Beauty of Everyday Things, Soetsu Yanagi
  96. Samuel Pepys, The Unequalled Self, Claire Tomalin
  97. *Lessons, Ian McEwan
  98. 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism, Ha-Jon Chang
  99. The Guardians, John Grisham
  100. Mortality, Christopher Hitchens
  101. Can’t Buy Me Love: The Beatles, Britain, and America, Jonathan Gould
  102. Entretiens, Cioran
  103. Sur les cimes du désespoir, Cioran
  104. The Science of Storytelling, Will Storr
  105. The Cuckoo’s Calling, Robert Galbraith
  106. Entretiens avec Sylvie Jaudeau, Cioran
  107. Cioran ou le Dernier Homme, Sylvie Jaudeau
  108. Play It As It Lays, Joan Didion
  109. Save the Cat! Writes a Novel, Jessica Brody
  110. *The Last Chairlift, John Irving
  111. *Life Time, Russel Foster
  112. Le livre des leurres, Cioran
  113. Upgrade, Blake Crouch
  114. How to Blow Up a Pipeline, Andreas Malm
  115. The Summons, John Grisham
  116. The Rainmaker, John Grisham
  117. The Silkworm, Robert Galbraith
  118. The Romantic, William Boyd
  119. The Racketeer, John Grisham
  120. *The Waste Land – A Biography of a Poem, Matthew Hollis
  121. The Last Juror, John Grisham
  122. Life Is Hard, Kieran Setiya
  123. Career of Evil, Robert Galbraith
  124. Le mythe de Sisyphe, Albert Camus
  125. Apology, Plato
  126. Lethal White, Robert Galbraith
  127. Troubled Blood, Robert Galbraith
  128. The Mountain Poems of Stonehouse, Red Pine
  129. The Waste Land, T.S. Eliot
  130. Beethoven for a Later Age, Edward Dusinberre
  131. *The Ink Black Heart, Robert Galbraith
  132. The Book of Tea, Kakuzo Okakura
  133. The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain, tr. Red Pine
  134. A Murder of Quality, John LeCarre
  135. Zen questions, Zazen, Dogen, and the spirit of Creative Inquiry by Taigen Dan Leighton
  136. One Robe, One Bowl: The Zen Poetry of Ryōkan
  137. *A Very Nice Girl, Imogen Crimp
  138. Watchmen, Alan Moore
  139. V for Vendetta, Alan Moore
  140. Bread, Ed McBain
  141. Les précieuses ridicules, Molière
  142. Hamlet (Q1), William Shakespeare
  143. Why Buddhism Is True, Robert Wright
  144. No One Knows, JT Ellison
  145. Mayflies, Andrew O’Hagan
  146. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens