It's interesting you both liked The Lincoln Highway so much. I remember thinking it was pretty dull and now I can't remember enough about it to know why I thought that! LOL

Donna

LOL....Donna, that is the epitome of "dull" when you can't even remember how dull it was !

I've enjoyed the first two Towle novels but this last one never appealed to me.

One of my favorite books this year : Remarkably Bright Creatures.

Yoyobon, I have Remarkably Bright Creatures on my Christmas list. I'm looking forward to reading it.

I have a long list of four stars on Goodreads. The three five stars are Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver, The Diamond Eye by Kate Quinn, and The Queen's Gambit by Walter Trevis.

I agree with those of you who didn't like The Lincoln Highway as well as the other two Towles books.

Books I read this year that I shall always remember not necessarily in the order that I read them:

The House in the Cerulean Sea -TJ Klune

West With Giraffes - Lynda Rutledge

A Town Called Solace - Mary Lawson

Never - Ken Follett

Fox and I -Catherine Raven

The Sentence - Louise Erdrich

Anxious People - Fredrik Backman

The Searcher - Tana French

The Stranger in the Lifeboat - Mich Albom

The Strange Inheritance of Lea Fern - Rita Zoey Chin

and an oldie but goodie reread...

A Year by the Sea - Joan Anderson

I read a lot of books I mildly enjoyed, and a few that were a distinct pleasure, but I would have to agree that the best book I read this past year was The Lincoln Highway. It resonated with me the way Piranesi did the year before. (Or did I read that one in 2020?).

I would put Project Hail Mary in the distinct pleasure category, but I have a sneaking suspicion I actually read that in 2021.

I really ought to keep lists. But I know that I will not.

The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles was the first book I read this year, it having been a Christmas gift in 2021. I did like it, but was not swept off my feet by it. My favorite reads this year were:

All The Lonely People – Mike Gayle

Big Little Lies – Liane Moriarty

In an Instant – Suzanne Redfearn

Under the Banner of Heaven – Jon Krakauer

I've put off answering this in the hope that a last minute read might have brought up something outstanding. It hasn't!

On the reading front 2022 has been a so-so year with nothing that made me want to drop everything and find a quiet corner to just get on with that special book.

So in no particular order:

Hamnet - Maggie O'Farrell

Miss Austen - Gill Hornby

The Cazelet Chronicles - Elizabeth Jane Howard

The Soul of Discretion. Comfort of Home. Change of Circumstance - Susan Hill

The Howard and Hill books were not read one after another. I always take a break between a 'series' but the in-between books were often quite unmemorable.

It took me a while to settle on my best-of, but I finally went with Herve Le Tellier's The Anomaly, translated by Adriana Hunter. An elegant mix of sci-fi and metaphysical thriller that was both thought-provoking as well as including a few sly humorous passages that I still can't repeat out loud without laughing uncontrollably.

Runners-up were Nnedi Okorafor's Remote Control, Jason Reynolds/Jason Griffin Ain't Burned All the Bright (tour-de-force of art & language),J.G. Ballard's The Drought, Ardnt & Tautz Wild Honeybees (the ultimate coffee table book - what spectacular photos with interesting & informative text), and finally for pure pleasure Lois McMaster Bujold's Sharing Knife series.

Winter, I agree with you on The House on the Cerulean Sea! I read it last year and remember it fondly.

Donnamira, The Anomaly has been on my book radar for a while now. I'm glad to hear you liked it so much and I will definitely pick it up.

So many great recommendations here, thank you all!

I've decided to include The King Arthur Case: A Brittany Mystery by Jean-Luc Bannalec in the top three best books I read in 2022. I don't ordinarily include a book that is part of a series -- this one is #7 featuring Commissaire Georges Dupin of the Brittany police. Particularly Dupin's chief assistant Nolwenn has an important role. She's a Breton who has thoroughly immersed herself in the lore and legends of her native region. She's out to educate most of her cohorts but especially her boss Dupin. She succeeds very well indeed! So well, I think, that I read this book twice in 2022.

Vee, I will note Hamnet as an honorable runner-up. I finally read it after hesitating for several months. Books that get a lot of praise often make me suspicious of their popularity. I am just a jaded old cynic sometimes! O'Farrell's Hamnet exceeded my expectations.

Frieda, my choice of Hamnet, was not for a stand-out read, just slightly better than many of those I had read last year.

Sheri, I think you should offer a prize to the person who has read the most books during 2022.

Judging from the lists here I would nominate Carolyn Would someone second that?

Vee, I shall. She gets through a lot!

I should get the wooden spoon as I haven't read much or even listened to many this year.

I can be excused though!

I can't recall any special standouts and didn't like The Anomaly, in fact I skipped through it to read the end.

I did enjoy the Richard Osman Thursday Murder Club series. Some kind resident donated all three to our Village library.

Vee, re: Carolyn, I would agree! There's a radio contest on one of the Sirius Radio stations that awards "PRIDE, not PRIZE" when you answer the daily trivia questions correctly. As the RP budget doesn't stretch to actual prizes, we'll go with that ;-)

I'm amazed at being awarded anything except for being the laziest RP member ever. I was bad before the pandemic, but staying home so much really did me in. Now with downloadable books from the public library, I don't even have to go out to pick them up--so I don't. Once in a great while I walk through a department store and find that even in the expensive lines I don't like a thing I see. It took me three days to put up the Christmas tree. I used to enjoy walking, but now I don't. DD and I have been trying to go to Wales since 2020; we even gave each other the same Wales coffee table book for Christmas in 2019. I'm a pure mess, but I'm honored to accept the RP Pride Prize!

Back to business, Frieda, I'm interested in your Bannelec King Arthur book. I only read the first two of that series and felt they were more of a travelog that a mystery, but I love King Arthur stories and will give that one a try.

P.S. I'm currently reading An Irish Hostage by Charles Todd. This is the most recently published and may be the last one. I was sorry to learn that the mother of this mother-son combo died last summer, and no one knows if the son will continue. I have liked the Ian series better than the Bess ones (he a damaged WWI soldier returned to his detective job and she a battlefield nurse}. I had hopes the two of them would get together!

Someone needs to start a January reading thread. I am unable to start RP threads; they will only let me to go to Garden Web.

I also read The Anomaly last year and enjoyed it a lot.

I've read a few of Bannalec's books, so I'm also interested in the King Arthur one.

Donna

My three star books (my highest rating) for 2022 were:

Lionheart by Sharon Penman

Checkmate by Dorothy Dunnett

Piranesi by Susannah Clarke

The Invisible Life of Addie La Rue by V E Schwab

A King's Ransom by Sharon Penman

Shrines of Gaiety by Kate Atkinson

Ancestry by Simon Mawer

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

My favourite of these was the last one.