What I Want to Read in 2022

I don’t want to say this is a TBR for 2022 but like a long list of some books & authors I would like to get around to. This isn’t an anticipated reads list either since I have quite a few backlist reads & older books mentioned here. Okay I guess it is pretty much a TBR but I like to make things complicated and be overly ambitious as possible.

I have a lot to talk about so I quickly want to mention some things I want to read in 2022 that I don’t want to overexplain. 1) Reread some favorites 2) Read & complete a series. Let me know some of your favorites and ones to keep an eye out for. 3) Read poetry. 4) Read non-fiction.

Literary Fiction / SFF / Romance / Thrillers & Mysteries / Historical Fiction

The past couple of years I’ve read some amazing books such as Mexican Gothic, The Year of the Witching, The Wolf and the Woodsman, and Sally Rooney’s books (yes I will give my thoughts on those one day). I genuinely feel that while I am not moving 100% away from YA books, I do want to read more adult-oriented books. I want to read books about people my age!! Doing semi-adult things!!

Literary fiction and SF/F (science-fiction & fantasy) is pretty much my bread and butter and I know what to look for in those genres. However, romance is an area where its so vast and there’s A LOT to dig through. While I’m not anti-romance I am pretty picky about what kind of romance I would like to read. BEACH READ by Emily Henry worked for me because it was a super quick contemporary read that I read in a day. I would love to venture into historical romance and maybe some more contemporary romances. I actually don’t know where to begin with romance, so if y’all have any recs please link me to your blog posts, articles, YouTube videos. I have Awkwaeke Emezi’s adult romance in mind because I love their writing from reading PET.

Young Adult

As a mid-twenty something year old, YA is starting to get to be “not my thing” and reflecting on it this year, I have *somewhat* moved on from it. There’s still plenty of YA that I have on my TBR and I will continue to read YA. I am keeping an eye on it because ultimately, I want to write some YA stories, and in my opinion, reading YA is an essential part of being a young adult writer. (As of writing this, some “interesting book twt discourse has happened so a little note: PLEASE DO NOT TAKE THIS AS ME SAYING I HATE YA NOW. I SWEAR. DO NOT BRING THAT DISKHORSE INTO MY HOUSE. TAKE IT OUTSIDE.) I know my taste in books so I know which ones that will not work for me and ones that will. I would like to honestly reflect on that topic in a future post but I also do not want to invite the discourse right now so maybe I will hold off. But there are plenty of titles that pique my interest.

IN CONCLUSION: There’s plenty of adult and young adult books I want to read, I even tweeted about it here:

(also follow me on Twitter, I mostly/only retweet content I like but you might get something out of me one of these days. honestly this tweet was probably my most liked tweet in recent memory)

some 2022 releases i’m excited to read! 💫

template is from @bubblybooknerd ✨✨✨ pic.twitter.com/z5zkGcg0v2

— Savanna ❄️ (@savvy_reads) December 29, 2021

Books in Translation

I read an excellent translated book this year, Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica. I have always wanted to read more books in translation I just haven’t pushed myself into those yet. There’s plenty to name off like Isabel Allende, Elena Ferrante, Mieko Kawakami, Sayaka Murata, Xiaolu Guo, Haruki Murakami, etc. I hope to maybe read at least 2 a month. I think that’s reasonable.

Authors

I have many authors in mind that I have always wanted to read but I just haven’t given myself the time to for some reason. These are just a few authors & selected titles that I would like to prioritize in 2022. Let me know if there are any authors you’d like to get around to finally reading for the first time in 2022.

• Octavia E. Butler (Kindred; Earthseed series; Lilith’s Brood; Fledgling)
• Eve Babitz (Black Swans; Slow Days, Fast Company; Eve’s Hollywood; L.A. Woman; Sex & Rage)
• Joan Didion (The White Album; Play It As It Lays; Slouching Towards Bethlehem)
• bell hooks (All About Love; Feminism is for everybody; Ain’t I a Woman; The Will to Change)
• Madeline Miller (Circe; The Song of Achilles)
• Xiaolu Guo (Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth; A Lover’s Discourse; A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers)
• Ottessa Moshfegh (My Year of Rest & Relaxation; Eileen; Death in Her Hands; Lapvona)
• Emily St. John Mandel (Station Eleven; The Glass Hotel; Sea of Tranquility; )
• Mieko Kawakami (Heaven; Breasts & Eggs; All the Lovers in the Night)
• Erin Morgenstern (The Night Circus; The Starless Sea)
• Nnedi Okorafor (Binti trilogy; Who Fears Death; Akata Witch series)
• Nina LaCour (Watch Over Me; Hold Still; We Are Okay; Everything Leads to You; Yerba Buena)
• Toni Morrison (Paradise, Sula, The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon)

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“Themed” Reading / Monthly Reading

I kind of want to do a monthly thing where I read books based on a theme I make up or whatever arbitrary meaning I put behind it lol. I have some ideas below such as the seas (books that take place by the sea or where the sea is a key element in the story), books on writing, books by Virgo authors (aka The Virgo Canon), books about/on art & artists, etc. It would be cool if anyone could help me out with themes feel free to suggest any ideas for this. I mostly got some ideas from previous years prompts via the PopSugar Reading Challenge.

Books about artists (fiction + non-fiction)

I was partly inspired by a reading prompt from PopSugar’s 2021 Reading Challenge, which was to read a book about art or an artist.

• Starting Point: 1979-1996 by Hayao Miyazaki
• Turning Point: 1997-2008 by Hayao Miyazaki
• The Impending Blindness of Billie Scott by Zoe Thorogood
• Blood Water Paint by Joy McCullough (reread)
• Just Kids by Patti Smith

Books on writing

• Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg
• Wild Mind: Living the Writer’s Life by Natalie Goldberg
• Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott
• Steering the Craft by Ursula K. Le Guin
• The Writing Life by Annie Dillard
• On Writing by Stephen King

Books that take place by or on the seas

• The Seas by Samantha Hunt
• The Bass Rock by Evie Wyld
• The Ones We’re Meant to Find by Joan He
• The Last True Poets of the Sea by Julia Drake
• The Sea is Salt and So Am I by Cassandra Hartt
• Persuasion by Jane Austen
• Fable by Adrienne Young

Books by Virgo authors

• NK Jemisin
• Mary Oliver (whom I’ve already read a bit in 2021)
• Agatha Christie
• Angie Thomas
• Mary Shelley
• A.S. Byatt

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There’s SO MUCH TO READ OUT THERE. Hopefully 2022 will be my year to read, take in what I read, and actually feel good. Not that 2020/2021 were bad years for reading, I found a lot of new favorites but I also felt sort of empty (sorry about to get personal here), and my mental health has not been at its finest these past couple of years and I’m sure a lot of y’all have felt the same way. So let’s just try to survive in 2022 and read books. Fuck and find out I guess.

Thanks for reading and comment down below whatever you plan on reading in the new year! – SAV