Fully booked
From anti-romcoms and horror to razor-sharp essays and state-of-the-nation novels, it's been a brilliant year for books. Here are BBC Culture's top picks.
Rebecca Laurence and Lindsay Baker, BBC Culture
As 2022 draws to a close, thoughts turn to the 39 best books of the year so far. Except they don't, because our fearless culture vultures, Rebecca Laurence and Lindsay Baker, actually present us with The 50 best books of the year 2022. Oh goody gumdrops!
Not breaking from past practice in any way whatsoever, the twosome take it in turns to regurgitate other critics' critiques. After all, they can't be expected to read fifty books between themselves and write something brainy about them. If someone else has already done the leg-work, it would be foolish not to copy/paste it share best practice.
So, fifty books. Some with pretty covers, others not. Some are probably longer, some shorter. All of them worthy of propping up a wonky table. Stacked together, they might allow more diminutive owners to access otherwise out-of-reach objects on high shelves; although a stepstool would be safer.
Just hope that you've been a good boy or girl this year, and Santa might smile benevolently on you. And if you're height-challenged, put a stepstool on your wish list instead.
The URL thingy for this entry into BBC Culture's collection is the same as before: https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20220407-the-best-books-of-the-year-2022
This means, of course, that it overwrites the thirty-nine best books list, which in turn overwrote the twenty-six best list, which overwote the fourteen—(exclamation)—best list that we started the year with. But it also gives us hope that the BBC's frugality won't extend to overwriting this list with the best of 2023.
Bloody hell! That was quick! (LOL)