Verity's Book IV

2022 Reads

Somehow this accidentally became a tradition. As traditions go, it's a fabulous one.

I read less than any year since at least 2017, and I'm gonna be the last person to diss myself about that. I spent much of 2022 working even longer hours than 2021 (50 hour weeks all summer and upwards of 55 during the fall). Also went through a publisher crisis midsummer and ended up severing all my ties with them by the beginning of November, so there was that not-at-all-mentally-draining-thing. Also dealt with a remarkable amount of family stress and internal turmoil over the course of the year. In my free time I tended to gravitate towards visual media rather than books, something that took less energy and actually turned out to be remarkably helpful for re-orienting the storytelling part of my brain and getting me out of the "zoomed-in" mode that I'd been stuck in for years.

Should I do a lil recap/analysis of my movies/shows of the year as a part 2 to my 2022 story absorption?

I think it's an 11/10 idea so I'll probably do it anyway but you know, let's see what the people say.

Onward, then:

*not ranked by any special order, as usual, least of all chronological*

1. The Lord of the Rings
J.R.R. Tolkien

I finished my reread of LOTR a few months into the year. It was a peculiar sort of reread, given that I started it in December 2020, dropped it until December 2021, read through the Two Towers specifically with my buddy-read friend over video call, and then in mid-February began to read the entire thing to my youngest sister. It's such a beautiful book. I bore away from this reread an even deeper and more mature appreciation for it than I think I had before. Some highlights:

"He saw no colour but those he knew, gold and white and blue and green, but they were fresh and poignant, as if he had at that moment first perceived them and made for them names new and wonderful."
- The Fellowship of the Ring, 341