Friday open thread: favourite written works of the year

[dolorosa_12]

My out-of-office email autoresponse is set, I'm slowly filling the house with delicious things to eat over the next couple of weeks, and the town is blanketed in crisp ice and frost. In other words, things are very much in holiday mode, and I'm very much in the mood to reflect and wrap up the year.

With that in mind, today's open thread prompt is another one asking for people's best of 2022 media. This time, I'm asking about written work — something you read or listened to this year. Which was your favourite?



I feel as if I might not have read my favourite thing yet, as I have a tendency to store things up for the holiday period if I feel I'm going to especially enjoy them. But I went back to my Goodreads list to remind myself of the books I read this year, and of the listed books, there is a clear winner so far. Excluding rereads, the best book I read in 2022 was The House with the Golden Door by Elodie Harper, the second in her historical fiction trilogy about women working in a brothel in ancient Pompeii. I had intended to write a longer review of this book soon after I read it, but things got away from me and the review remains unwritten. In short, the book is a marvellous recreation of a very specific time and place, and it digs into things that I always enjoy seeing explored in fiction: the injustices of extreme power imbalances, the ways that the powerless (especially groups of women) build connections and community unnoticed in the margins, and the various dystopian compromises and bargains disempowered people have to make to survive a world which denies them their humanity, and the toll these bargains and (on occasion) hypocrises take on them. The book is excellent, and I am very much looking forward to the follow up.

Comments

[naye]

The Hands of the Emperor is the thing I read that meant the most to me this year. Possibly because of the timing. I started reading it the night before my surgery, when I was in a shared hospital room with people doing even worse than myself, and so hardly got any sleep. Once I was back in a private recovery room, I kept reading. The morphine kept the pain away, and Victoria Goddard's characters kept me company. That book is what I read when I practiced getting out of bed and sitting up in a chair. It was so engaging and so good that it transported me somewhere warm and bright and fragrant. (And kind. That is the most important thing of all.) I have the sequel ready to go for my next hospital visit, and I hope it will offer the same kind of necessary escape from physical unpleasantness.

[goodbyebird]

♥

[dolorosa_12]

It's so important to have books that give you what you need at the right time, and it sounds like this one came along for you at exactly the right moment. I hope the sequel give you exactly the same nourishment as the first!