Best books of 2022 + yearly round up

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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:

Published by Wren James

Wren James is the award-winning British author of eleven science fiction & fantasy novels, including The Quiet at the End of the World and The Next Together (previously published as Lauren James). Their books have sold over 200,000 copies in ten languages, and The Loneliest Girl in the Universe was optioned for film by Amazon MGM. Wren is a story consultant on Netflix’s Heartstopper, which was awarded an Emmy for Outstanding Writing. Also a RLF Royal Fellow, Wren is the founder of the Climate Fiction Writers League and member of the Society of Authors’ Sustainability steering Committee. They work as a consultant on climate storytelling with a focus on providing optimism and hope. They have won the Sustainable Story Award and been shortlisted for the YA Book Prize, Carnegie Medal and STEAM Book Award. Wren’s writing has been described as ‘gripping romantic sci-fi’ by the Wall Street Journal and ‘a strange, witty, compulsively unpredictable read which blows most of its new YA-suspense brethren out of the water’ by Entertainment Weekly. Their latest titles are Last Seen Online, a crime thriller set in the world of fandom, and The Victors, a cosy fantasy graphic novel illustrated by Beth Fuller. Wren was born in 1992, and has a Masters degree from the University of Nottingham, where they studied Chemistry and Physics. They run a Queer Writers group in Coventry. Follow them on Instagram & TikTok at @wrenjameswriter or find out more at wrenjames.co.uk.

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