Reading List · Lisanne Swart
Best Books of 2022
In February 2022 a radio producer from This American Life published the book she wrote after being told, at thirty, that she had complex PTSD. In April Viola Davis went back to a childhood in Central Falls, Rhode Island, and her reading of it won her a Grammy and made her the eighteenth person to hold an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony. In August a former Nickelodeon star called her memoir I’m Glad My Mom Died and sold more than 200,000 copies in its first week. In September Hua Hsu published a book about a friend killed in 1998; it went on to win the first Pulitzer Prize ever given for memoir. These five are the books first published in 2022 that I still hand to people — books about real lives, difficult pasts, and what people do with them.
By Lisanne Swart · 5 books · Memoir & Nonfiction · All first published in 2022
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Finding Me
Viola Davis was born in South Carolina, on the plantation where her grandparents had been sharecroppers, and grew up in dire poverty in Central Falls, Rhode Island. Finding Me goes back to that childhood and forward through every room she was told she did not belong in. It reads nothing like a celebrity memoir: Davis does not perform gratitude or victory, she tells the truth about what it cost. Her narration of the audiobook won the Grammy on 5 February 2023, which made her the eighteenth person, and the third Black woman, to hold an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony.
What sets this apart from almost every other memoir of its kind is that Davis refuses the redemptive arc where everything difficult becomes useful in retrospect. The pain is allowed to just be pain. That honesty is rare, and it is what makes this book stay with you.
What My Bones Know
Stephanie Foo was an award-winning radio producer at This American Life when, after turning thirty, she was diagnosed with complex PTSD — the result of years of childhood abuse and abandonment. This book is the story of what she did next: years of research, treatment and self-examination, told with the precision of a reporter turned inward. It covers the science of complex PTSD and of trauma passed down through generations alongside the lived experience of it, and does both with exceptional clarity. It was her first book.
This is the book I would give to anyone trying to understand complex trauma — either in themselves or in someone they love. Foo writes about the nervous system the way good science journalists write about the world: making the difficult accessible without making it simple.
Stay True
Hua Hsu met Ken as a student at the University of California, Berkeley. Less than three years later, in 1998, Ken was killed in a carjacking. Stay True is the memoir of that friendship and of the years Hsu spent trying to hold on to it. In 2023 it won the first Pulitzer Prize ever awarded for memoir or autobiography, a category the board had only just created, as well as the National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography.
A book about grief that is mostly about friendship — the ordinary days, the arguments, the things that seemed too small to matter — which is exactly why the loss lands so hard. It sits naturally next to The Grieving Brain further down this list.
I’m Glad My Mom Died
Jennette McCurdy played Sam Puckett on Nickelodeon’s iCarly from 2007 to 2012. This is the story of what was happening behind that — an eating disorder, an emotionally abusive mother, and an industry that let it continue. The title tells you where the book ends up. The pages in between are devastating and, frequently, very funny. It sold more than 200,000 copies in its first week, went to number one on the New York Times list and won the Goodreads Choice Award for memoir that year. It was her first book.
McCurdy writes with a directness that makes you forget this is a book — it reads like someone finally saying out loud what they have been holding for years. That it is also darkly comic throughout is a testament to how good a writer she is.
The Grieving Brain
Mary-Frances O’Connor is a psychology professor at the University of Arizona, where she directs the Grief, Loss and Social Stress Lab, and her neuroimaging research has looked at what bereavement does to the brain. The Grieving Brain explains it for everyone else: what actually happens when we lose someone we love, and why the brain has to learn the loss the way it learns anything else. It is rigorous and warm in equal measure — the kind of science writing that gives you language for things you have felt but never been able to name.
This is the book I wish had existed when I needed it. Not as a how-to or a five-stage framework, but as a genuine attempt to understand what grief is — biologically, neurologically, humanly. It sits comfortably alongside What Happened to You? as essential reading on how the body carries experience.
Where to begin with the best of 2022
If you want the memoir that will stay with you longest
→ Finding Me by Viola Davis. She writes with a rawness that is rare in the genre.
If you want the best book on trauma in years
→ What My Bones Know by Stephanie Foo. The science and the personal story are equally good.
If you want the prize-winner
→ Stay True by Hua Hsu. The first Pulitzer ever given for memoir.
If you want something faster, funnier and just as devastating
→ I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy. Clear an afternoon — you will not stop.
If you want to understand grief rather than just feel it
→ The Grieving Brain by Mary-Frances O’Connor. Read it after Stay True.
Books first published in 2022
Eighteen more books whose first publication genuinely falls in 2022, fiction and nonfiction, for when you want breadth rather than a recommendation.
Stolen Focus
Johann Hari · Bloomsbury, 6 January
Why so many people are losing the ability to pay attention.
South to America
National Book Award 2022
Imani Perry · Ecco, 25 January
A journey through the American South, and the argument that it explains the nation.
Glory
Booker shortlist
NoViolet Bulawayo · Viking, 8 March
A political fable set in a country of animals.
Lessons in Chemistry
Bonnie Garmus · Doubleday, 5 April
A chemist in the 1960s becomes the host of a television cooking show. Her first novel.
Sea of Tranquility
Emily St. John Mandel · Knopf, 5 April
A time-travel novel that spans some five hundred years, written during the pandemic.
Young Mungo
Douglas Stuart · Grove Press, 5 April
The second novel by the author of Shuggie Bain, set in Glasgow.
The Candy House
Jennifer Egan · Scribner, 5 April
A companion to A Visit from the Goon Squad.
Trust
Pulitzer Prize 2023
Hernan Diaz · Riverhead, 3 May
A New York fortune of the 1920s and 1930s, told in four linked documents.
His Name Is George Floyd
Pulitzer Prize 2023
Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa · Viking, 17 May
The life of George Floyd and the movement that followed his death.
An Immense World
Ed Yong · Random House, 21 June
How animals sense the world.
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
Gabrielle Zevin · Knopf, 5 July
Thirty years of friendship between two video-game designers.
The Rabbit Hutch
National Book Award 2022
Tess Gunty · Knopf, 2 August
An apartment block in the invented town of Vacca Vale, Indiana. Her first novel.
Babel
Nebula Award
R. F. Kuang · Harper Voyager, 23 August
An Oxford of the 1830s where translation powers the empire.
The Marriage Portrait
Maggie O’Farrell · Tinder Press, 30 August
Lucrezia de’ Medici, married at sixteen and dead within a year.
Solito
Javier Zamora · Hogarth, 6 September
His journey from El Salvador to the United States as an unaccompanied nine-year-old.
Demon Copperhead
Pulitzer Prize 2023
Barbara Kingsolver · Harper, 18 October
David Copperfield retold in present-day Appalachia, in the years of the opioid crisis.
The Passenger and Stella Maris
Cormac McCarthy · Knopf, 25 October and 6 December
Two paired novels, his first new fiction since The Road in 2006.
First books published in 2022
Five writers who arrived in 2022 — and one who is often counted among them but is not.
I’m Glad My Mom Died
Jennette McCurdy
Her first book. Her first novel followed in 2026.
What My Bones Know
Stephanie Foo
Her first book.
Lessons in Chemistry
Bonnie Garmus
Her first novel and her first book.
The Rabbit Hutch
Tess Gunty
Her first novel. It won the first Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize as well as the National Book Award.
Solito
Javier Zamora
His first memoir, not his first book: the poems of Unaccompanied came in 2017.
Stay True
Hua Hsu
Not a debut. His first memoir, but he had published A Floating Chinaman in 2016.
Often filed under 2022, published another year
The prize winners and bestsellers of 2022 that turn up on every list of that year — and were first published in another.
Empire of Pain
Patrick Radden Keefe · Doubleday, 13 April 2021
The Sackler family and the opioid crisis. An earlier version of this page listed it as a book of 2022 because of the paperback; it is a book of 2021.
The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida
Booker Prize 2022
Shehan Karunatilaka · first published January 2020
It came out in India as Chats with the Dead; the revised British edition of August 2022 won the Booker.
The Netanyahus
Pulitzer Prize 2022
Joshua Cohen · 2021
The fiction Pulitzer handed out in 2022.
It Ends with Us
Best seller of 2022
Colleen Hoover · Atria, 2 August 2016
The best-selling print book in America in 2022, six years after it came out.
2022 in books, in short
- Nobel Prize
- Annie Ernaux, announced on 6 October 2022, “for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory”
- Booker Prize
- The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, Shehan Karunatilaka, announced on 17 October 2022 — a revised edition of a novel first published in 2020. The shortlist also held Glory, The Trees, Treacle Walker, Small Things Like These and Oh William!
- National Book Awards
- The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty for fiction and South to America by Imani Perry for nonfiction. Both are books of 2022
- Pulitzer, fiction
- The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen, a book of 2021. The fiction Pulitzer for books of 2022 was shared in 2023 by Demon Copperhead and Trust, the first time two novels had shared it
- Pulitzer, memoir
- A new category, first awarded in 2023, to Stay True by Hua Hsu, a book of 2022
- Women’s Prize
- The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki, announced on 15 June 2022
- Prix Goncourt
- Vivre vite by Brigitte Giraud, on 3 November 2022 — the thirteenth woman to win in the prize’s 120 years
- Best seller
- It Ends with Us by Colleen Hoover, 2,729,007 print copies in America — a book of 2016. Hoover held the top three places and sold 14.3 million print copies at outlets counted by BookScan
- And three events
- Salman Rushdie was attacked on stage at Chautauqua on 12 August. On 31 October a federal judge blocked Penguin Random House’s $2.2 billion purchase of Simon & Schuster. And the American Library Association recorded 1,269 demands to censor library books, targeting 2,571 titles, both records
The prize year is not the publication year. The fiction Pulitzer handed out in 2022 went to a book of 2021, the Booker of 2022 went to a revised edition of a novel from 2020, and the best-selling book of the year was six years old. The prizes for the books of 2022 came in 2023: the shared fiction Pulitzer for Demon Copperhead and Trust, and the first memoir Pulitzer, for Stay True.
Frequently asked questions about the best books of 2022
What were the best books published in 2022?
For memoir and nonfiction, the books first published in 2022 that have lasted include Finding Me by Viola Davis, What My Bones Know by Stephanie Foo, Stay True by Hua Hsu, I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy and The Grieving Brain by Mary-Frances O’Connor. The novels of the year include Demon Copperhead and Trust, which shared the Pulitzer, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow and The Rabbit Hutch. This list covers the titles that, in my reading, best reward the time spent with them.
What was the best memoir of 2022?
Stay True by Hua Hsu won the first Pulitzer Prize ever awarded for memoir or autobiography, in 2023. I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy won the Goodreads Choice Award for memoir in 2022, and Viola Davis’s narration of Finding Me won a Grammy that made her an EGOT.
Is Empire of Pain a book of 2022?
No. Doubleday published Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe on 13 April 2021; the paperback followed later. It is a book of 2021, and an earlier version of this page listed it here by mistake.
Who won the Booker Prize in 2022?
Shehan Karunatilaka, for The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, announced on 17 October 2022. The novel was first published in India in January 2020 as Chats with the Dead; the revised British edition came out in August 2022.
Which 2022 novels won the Pulitzer Prize?
Two. The fiction Pulitzer announced on 8 May 2023 was shared by Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver and Trust by Hernan Diaz, both first published in 2022 — the first time two novels had shared the prize. The fiction Pulitzer announced in 2022 went to The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen, a book of 2021.
What was the best-selling book of 2022?
It Ends with Us by Colleen Hoover, with 2,729,007 print copies sold in America in 2022, although it was first published in 2016. Hoover held the top three places on the year’s bestseller list.
Which writers published their first book in 2022?
Jennette McCurdy, with I’m Glad My Mom Died, Stephanie Foo, with What My Bones Know, and Bonnie Garmus, with Lessons in Chemistry. Tess Gunty published her first novel, The Rabbit Hutch. Two to be careful with: Javier Zamora’s Solito was his first memoir but not his first book, and Hua Hsu had published a book before Stay True.
What else happened in books in 2022?
Salman Rushdie was attacked on stage at the Chautauqua Institution on 12 August. On 31 October a federal judge blocked Penguin Random House’s purchase of Simon & Schuster. The American Library Association recorded 1,269 demands to censor library books, targeting 2,571 titles, both records. And Annie Ernaux won the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Footnotes
Finding Me 3 facts
HarperOne published it on 26 April 2022.
This page said Davis grew up in rural Rhode Island. She was born in South Carolina and grew up in Central Falls, Rhode Island, a city.correction
Her narration won the Grammy on 5 February 2023, making her the eighteenth person and the third Black woman to become an EGOT.
What My Bones Know 4 facts
Ballantine published it on 22 February 2022. Foo was diagnosed with complex PTSD after turning thirty.
She was an award-winning producer at This American Life.
The book covers complex PTSD from years of childhood abuse and abandonment, its science, and trauma across generations.
What My Bones Know is Stephanie Foo’s memoir on living with complex PTSD — NPR
It was her first book.
Stay True 5 facts
Doubleday published it on 27 September 2022.
It won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Memoir or Autobiography.
The memoir category was new that year, and Stay True was its first winner.
Pulitzer Prize Board announces new category for memoir — Biographers International Organization
Hsu met Ken at Berkeley; Ken was killed in a carjacking in 1998. The book also won the National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography.
It was not Hsu’s first book: A Floating Chinaman came out in 2016.
I’m Glad My Mom Died 3 facts
Simon & Schuster published it on 9 August 2022. It sold more than 200,000 copies in its first week and reached number one on the New York Times list.
This page called it “the most read memoir of 2022”. I could not source that. What can be sourced: it won the Goodreads Choice Award for memoir in 2022.correction
McCurdy played Sam Puckett on iCarly from 2007 to 2012.
The Grieving Brain 3 facts
HarperOne published it on 1 February 2022.
O’Connor is a psychology professor at the University of Arizona and directs its Grief, Loss and Social Stress Lab.
Grief as a learning experience — University of Arizona Psychology
This page said every book on it had a Goodreads rating of 4.5 or higher. The Grieving Brain stands at 4.16, and a rating that moves every day is not a reason to recommend a book, so the claim is gone.correction
Often filed under 2022 6 facts
This page listed Empire of Pain as “2021 (paperback 2022)”. Doubleday published it on 13 April 2021; it has moved to the list of books from other years.correction
The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida is a revised edition of a novel first published in 2020.
That first edition came out in India as Chats with the Dead.
The Netanyahus is a book of 2021.
It won the fiction Pulitzer announced on 9 May 2022.
Joshua Cohen’s satirical novel The Netanyahus wins Pulitzer Prize for fiction — JTA
It Ends with Us was the best-selling print book of 2022, at 2,729,007 copies; it was published in 2016.
2022 in books 10 facts
Annie Ernaux’s Nobel Prize was announced on 6 October 2022, with the citation quoted on this page.
The Nobel Prize in Literature 2022, press release — NobelPrize.org
The Booker Prize 2022 was announced on 17 October, and the shortlist is as given above.
The National Book Awards of 2022 went to The Rabbit Hutch and South to America.
The fiction Pulitzer announced on 8 May 2023 was shared by Demon Copperhead and Trust; the same year His Name Is George Floyd won general nonfiction.
Ruth Ozeki won the Women’s Prize for Fiction on 15 June 2022.
Ruth Ozeki wins the 2022 Women’s Prize for Fiction — Women’s Prize
Brigitte Giraud won the Prix Goncourt on 3 November 2022, the thirteenth woman in 120 years.
Prix Goncourt: Brigitte Giraud wins France’s top literary prize — Euronews
Colleen Hoover held the top three places of 2022 and sold 14.3 million print copies at BookScan outlets.
Colleen Hoover was queen of 2022’s bestseller list — Publishers Weekly
Rushdie was attacked on 12 August 2022.
A federal judge blocked Penguin Random House’s purchase of Simon & Schuster on 31 October 2022.
The American Library Association recorded 1,269 demands to censor library books in 2022, targeting 2,571 titles.
First books 3 facts
Lessons in Chemistry was Bonnie Garmus’s first novel.
The Rabbit Hutch was Tess Gunty’s first novel and won the first Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize.
Javier Zamora’s first book was the poetry collection Unaccompanied, in 2017.
Last verified 25 September 2026. Everything marked “correction” above is a place where this page said something different before. The ones that mattered: Empire of Pain is a book of 2021, not 2022, and has been replaced on the shelf by Stay True; Viola Davis grew up in Central Falls, a city, not in rural Rhode Island; and the promise that every book here had a Goodreads rating of 4.5 or higher was not true of The Grieving Brain, and has gone. Where a source contradicts the version that circulates, the source wins. Anything I could not source to a named publisher, prize body, archive, library record, newspaper or reference work is not on this page. Where a Wikipedia article is the source, that is what the footnote says.
The notes on this page are all mine,
and the books are all theirs.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021. See more on her personal bookshelf.
Where to go next
Pages on this site that pick up where 2022 leaves off.
The Nobel citation of 2022
“For the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory.” — The Swedish Academy, on Annie Ernaux
If this list resonated with you, you’ll find more books like these on my personal bookshelf — hand-picked for readers who want books that stay with them long after the last page.
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