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🏆 FAVOURITES OF 2022 🏆
It’s time! For the best in show! Here are my favourite novels, poetry collections and non-fiction books of the year.
All of these books hooked me from page 1 and kept me reading in one sitting, which is no small feat in a year when I struggled very badly to complete any book through to the final page.
Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters – I have not stopped thinking about this book since I finished it
The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century by Kirk Wallace Johnson – Mind-blowing real life true crime about a group of collectors who become obsessed with using real rare birds’ feathers in their fly-fishing hooks. This leads to a heist on the natural history museum archives. A great look at the hysteria of collectors, the isolated echo chambers of internet forums, and a really iconic gentleman thief.
Witch by Rebecca Tamás – Queer, witchy poetry with a visceral, dark tone. I ate this up.
Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts by Christopher de Hamel
The Employees by Olga Ravn – sci-fi horror at its best.
C+nto and Othered Poems by Joelle Taylor – angry, strident and uplifting poetry about womanhood, in the form of cantos.
And outside reading, what have I been doing this year? As always, I started writing this thinking the answer was ‘nothin’, and then wrote a whole load of stuff.
In 2022, I:
- Became a royal literary fellow at Aston University
- Worked in a TV writers room
- Watched my best friend’s book become the bestselling series in the UK 😭💖
- Drafted and structurally edited my next novel, Last Seen Online
- Edited a collection of stories
- Learnt to crochet, mudlark, make sushi and play DnD
- Consulted on climate fiction storytelling for the BBC and the Story Museum
- Cut off all my hair, got a piercing and a second tattoo
- Developed and wrote a sample on commission for an Intellectual Property
- Finished drafting an adult horror novel
- Made a new best friend
- Released 30 issues of the newsletter for my activism group the Climate Fiction Writers League
- Travelled to Amsterdam, Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Bath, London, Leeds, Winchester, Kent and Wales
- Sold book rights in two new territories and sold a new novel
- Went on submission with a Christmas romcom movie script, unsuccessfully (so far!)
- Saw Lorde in concert (twice)
- Earnt out my advance on The Quiet at the End of the World and The Starlight Watchmaker
- Went to my first Pride! Relatedly, went clubbing several times.
- Was nominated for the Carnegie medal and shortlisted for the Hollywood Climate Pitchfest for Green Rising
- Developed a TV pitch for the story and pitched it live to 8 LA producers
- Restored an antique French mirror, framed a giant crewelwork piece and wallpapered my bedroom
- Met Jacqueline Wilson; cried
And there it is. Phew! I hope you all have a wonderful holidays, and here’s to lots of exciting things in 2023!
Next up for me:
Wren James 