Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile by Bernard Waber (1965) Houghton Mifflin

The second book about Lyle the Crocodile.  It completes the storyline in the movie of the same name.  Only here, Mr. Grump lives a couple of doors done from the Prims (not in the same building).  Mr. Grump really does find a way to get Lyle sent to the zoo.  But the resolution is different, yet still satisfying.

Best Books I Read in 2022:

This year I read 89 books.  These are what I consider the best of the list (in the order I read the books).

1.      The House on the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune (2020) Tor Books

This was the first book I read in 2022 and it still hits my best of the year.  It's a book about how prejudice and hatemongering affect the most innocent of lives.  In a world where there are magical beings, a government branch is responsible for the orphanages where magical children are kept – ostensibly to keep them safe from the world and the world safe from them.  An inspector, who has closed some orphanages because they abused the children, is sent to the most secret of these on an island.  There, he encounters beings like he never has before.  These are considered the most dangerous of magical beings.  But they are all children and they’re just doing what children do; they dream of a better life.

2.      Britt-Marie was Here by Fredrik Backman (2016) Simon & Schuster

Two months went by before I found a book worthy enough of hitting this list.  It's about a woman who was cheated on and insists on making a new life elsewhere and finds it hard to change, and then finds herself changed anyway, by life, by people, by understanding more about herself.

Britt Marie has let life pass her by, watching her father, then her mother, give-up over time since the death of their other daughter, spending her time raising her husband’s children, and taking care of him  Then he had a heart attack and the other woman called her.  Britt-Marie saw that he was on the mend, then went home, packed a bag and left.  Now she’s in Borg, a small town that has been shutting down, working as the caretaker of the Recreation Center.  She’s inherited a soccer team, actually just a group of local kids.  She likes things to be neat and tidy.  So, she changes Borg, and it changes her.

3.      The Magician's Lie by Greer Macallister (2015) Sourcebooks Landmark

An interesting take on magic and illusion.  A woman who performs illusions runs from the scene where a man who is assumed to be her husband has been killed with the tools of sawing the man in half.  But is she a murderess, or the victim of domestic violence who has been pursued by a man who is not her husband?  This kept me on the edge of my seat throughout the book.

4.      A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles (2016) Viking

Half-way through the year I found another gem, one I had avoided.  At first glance, this book seemed off-putting in that the subject appeared to be rather boring.  It is anything but boring.  We follow the life of a Russian Count after the Bolsheviks have come to power.  If not for a poem attributed to him, they would have summarily shot the aristocrat.  Instead, they exile him to the Metropol hotel for life.  Instead of going crazy in his confinement, he makes friends.  He dines with a man from the KGB.  He lets a little girl drag him all over the hotel.  She grows up and has a child, which he must raise after the mother follows her exiled husband to Siberia.  He waits tables in the hotel's restaurant.  All through the narrative, his observations, his wit, his charm is evident.  Mr. Towles has done such a superb job with characterization, that it takes but a sentence to know who is speaking or thinking.  Easily the best book I've read in the past year, this should have gone up for a Pulitzer.

5.      The Magician's Elephant by Kate DiCamillo (2009) Candlewick

Two more months went by before I read this book.  DiCamillo is a wonderful writer.  There is a distinct plot, there is a full cast of characters who are important to the story and who you come to care about, including the elephant, a dog, an orphan, a boy, a policeman and his wife, even an old soldier and a beggar, and of course, a magician.  Every promise in the book is fulfilled, even those you do not realize are promises until they are fulfilled.

6.      The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams (2022) Random House

There are few books that I label as important - this is one of them.  The story follows Esme, the daughter of a worker on the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary.  As a child, she sits below her father’s desk and looks at the word slips the fall from the tables.  At one point she is sent to a boarding school with disastrous effect on her life.  She notices over time that the words not included in the printed work are about women.  She becomes friends with a brother and sister in the suffrage movement.  With him, she bears a child, who is adopted by friends who move to Australia.  She starts collecting these lost words and eventually they become a book titled Women’s Words and their Meanings.  At the same time as this immense project takes place, the world changes.  War comes and with it is the loss of many of the workers on the dictionary, including a compositor with whom she fell in love.  You will laugh at parts, be angry at others, and cry tears.  But you will read a very well written book and find it a satisfying read.

7.      Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford (2009) Ballentine Books

A marvelously intriguing book.  This is the story of a Chinese American boy in Seattle who befriended a Japanese American girl in 1942.  It follows the journey of the boy whose father is viciously anti-Japanese since they took over his native China.  Parallel to this is the same boy grown into a man who has lost his Chinese wife and discovers that the Panama Hotel has artifacts in its basement that were left by Japanese families when they were ‘evacuated’ during the war.  A jazz saxophone player provides a connecting role between the two time periods.  The writing is rich with poetic similes and observations of the human condition between generations and with young and old love.

8.      The Diamond Eye by Kate Quinn (2022) William Morrow

Ms. Quinn becomes better with each book.  Her blend of accurate historical fact with fiction teaches us about lesser known, but important people in history and makes their stories memorable.  In this book we learn about a heroic woman who wanted to be a historian but would not let the invasion of her country go unanswered.  She responded by becoming one of World War II’s best snipers.  Read her story as she became Lady Death to the Nazi’s and did everything she could, even when not carrying a gun, to help defeat the worst megalomaniac in the twentieth century.

9.      Fairy Tale by Stephen King (2022) Scribner

Stephen King wrote a masterful tale, reminiscent of his collaboration with Peter Straub,  that involves a boy, a dog, other worlds, and something out of H.P. Lovecraft.  The hero is a seventeen-year-old boy who saves an old man’s life and finds his own life changed.  There are secrets and more dangerous secrets.  There are worlds of discovery, and more people who need the hero’s help.  A coming-of-age story that shapes a boy into a man.  This gripping tale kept me awake late into the night wanting to know what happens next through more than 600 pages.

10.   The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna (2022) Berkley

In the last month of the year I found this book and liked the title.  I liked the book even better. The witches only meet on the third Thursday of every third month.  And they never meet in the same place twice.  This is very inconvenient, but very safe, or so the leader, Primrose, tells them.  Witches should live alone and stay away from entanglements.  Which is all very good, except their youngest member, Mika Moon, has been asked to tutor a set of three young witches who have been hidden by a very powerful witch.  This can change everything, for the three girls, for Mika, for Primrose, and all the other witches.  A good read, it combines urban fantasy and romance.

 As you can see in this list, I read current books as well as books published in earlier years.  I don't finish a book I don't like, so winnowing the list down to the best requires extraordinary writing.  If I were to add a non-fiction book to the list, it would be the audio version of Stephen King's On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft - it includes after words by his sons and is a delight to hear.

My reading list will keep me busy for the next decade and will grow as good books become available.  

The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna (2022) Berkely

The witches only meet on the third Thursday of every third month.  And they never meet in the same place twice.  This is very inconvenient, but very safe, or so the leader, Primrose, tells them.  Witches should live alone and stay away from entanglements.  Which is all very good, except their youngest member, Mika Moon, has been asked to tutor a set of three young witches who have been hidden by a very powerful witch.  This can change everything, for the three girls, for Mika, for Primrose, and all the other witches.  A fun read, it combines urban fantasy and romance.

The House on East 88^th Street (Lyle Crocodile) by Bernard Waber (1962) Houghton Mifflin

This is the story of a performer and a crocodile that can do what other crocodiles don’t do.  The movie followed the book closely, plus embellishments to fill-out the time and give the main character a fuller story.  The family that moves into the apartment on East 88^th street is the same, and Lyle’s lovability is the same.  But the story in the book is much shorter.  Still, it makes me want to read the other books in the series.

Murder Past Due by Miranda James (2010) Berkley

The first of the Cat in the Stacks cozy mystery series.  The amateur sleuth is a widowed library archivist at a Mississippi college.  He has a Main Coon cat that is very people friendly and boarder who is going to college.  Then there is the guy no one liked in high school or college or since who has gone on to be a famous best-selling thriller writer who is the biological father of the boarder, the boarder’s mother, a half-brother that very few people knew about, the chief librarian, whose ex-wife married the writer, the chief librarian’s assistant also known has the gossip clearing house for the town, and someone who has a big secret related to the writer.  There is also the archivist’s housekeeper and her daughter who is the interim chief of detectives in the sheriff’s office who wants to find the murderer – of the writer.

Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldree (2022) Cryptid Press

A very entertaining first novel.  An orc who doesn’t want to go adventuring or fighting anymore, opens a coffee shop, hires a succubus as a barista, gets help converting a livery to her store and faces the local protection racketeer.  Her former crew is a mixed blessing of help and danger.  But the lesson here is one we can all use.  I hope to see more from Mr. Baldree.

The Ogress and the Orphans by Kelly Barnhill (2022) Algonquin Books

This is a book that everyone needs to read.  Ms. Barnhill gives us much more than a fairy tale about creatures that understand goodness and greed.  In my opinion, the story is on a par with Gulliver’s travels as satire on our current world.  Here creatures can be something other than they look.  Happiness depends on goodness and children can start remarkable behavior amongst neighbors.

The Case of the Left-Handed Lady by Nancy Springer (2007) Phiolem Books

An Enola Holmes story about her tracking down a ‘kidnapped’ lady from an aristocratic family.  This is during unrest in London fomented by workers who feel they are being taken advantage of by the upper classes.  At the same time, Enola continues to try to contact her missing mother and evade the clutches of her brothers, Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes.

The Case of the Missing Marquess by Nancy Springer (2006) Philomel Books

Enola Holmes is introduced as the young sister of Sherlock and Mayfield Holmes.  Her mother has disappeared, and the brothers expected a full staff at their estate.  But there is only a Butler, his wife, the cook, and their son.  The brothers intend to send Enola to a boarding school, which appalls her so, she runs away – to London, and solves the case of the kidnapping of Tweksbury, who was not kidnapped, but ran away himself.  Only Enola gets kidnapped by the same two men who kidnapped Tweky after he arrived at the docks of London hoping to get on a ship for adventure.  Will she get away, will she save Tweky, will she evade her brothers?  And why didn’t her mother take Enola with her?

Abhorsen by Garth Nix (2008) Harper Teen

The third volume in the Abhorsen series set in the old kingdom and Ancelstierre, where Lirial must use her powers as the Abhorsen in waiting and as a Remembrancer to defeat the ultimate evil that seeks to destroy the world. Sabriel, the Abhorsen, and Touchstone are threatened with assassination. Sameth and Ellimere, their children are left in charge. Samuel wants nothing to do with the dead. Moggert is along for the ride and a Disreputable Dog. The tension winds up all the way to the end - this is epic fantasy.

Recitatif by Toni Morrison (1983) in Confirmation: An Anthology of African American Women 

A story about two girls raised like orphans in a shelter because their mothers could not take care of them.  One mother spent her nights dancing, the other was sick.  They tend to stay closer to each other because they’re not like the other kids, or each other.  They overcome the fact that they’re two different races, but like all eight-year-olds who become friends, they have good times and bad.  Eventually one leaves before the other and they don’t see each other again until they are grown.  But by then, they have different viewpoints on life.  The biggest difference is how they want to look back and see their pasts.  Eventually they reconcile over the past.  But they understand that their present and future are necessarily going to be foreign to one another.

Wobble to Death by Peter Lovesey (1970) W. Clement Stone 

A six-day race is organized in London with two prominent pedestrian racers and a group of known local racers.  One of the top men is being cuckolded by his own man.  Part way in, there is a death by poisoning.  Some racers take a small amount of strychnine as a tonic, but this man had way too much for it to be of his own application.  Then his trainer dies by way of gas in his tent.  Only he has a bloody dent in the back of his head.  On the last day of the race, it appears the promoter’s assistant has made off with the winnings.  It’s up to Sargent Cribb and Constable Thackeray to catch the thief and solve the murders.

Scarlet by Marissa Meyer (2013) Feiwel & Friends

The granddaughter of a farmer/space pilot who went to the moon on a diplomatic mission is looking for her.  She’s been missing for three weeks, and the authorities are giving her the run-around.  What she doesn’t know is that her grandmother brought a horribly burned princess back with her and hid her for years as scientists strove to keep her alive.  Now the evil queen of the Lunars is looking for her to eliminate the last possible threat to her throne, sending an army of genetically modified humans with wolf traits and killer instincts to threaten Earth.  Will she find her grandmother?  Will she find the missing princess?