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2022 in Review

I hope to have read my 100th book by Dec. 31, 2022, but as of now, I have read 99 books. My Good Reads goal was an ambitious 100 books.

I probably shouldn’t have selected a chunky Stephen King book, If It Bleeds, for my last read of the year, but I wanted to end the reading year on a high note or at least a book I thought I would love.

  • Children/YA books: 16
  • Memoir/Nonfiction: 12
  • Adult Fiction: 24 (25 if I finish book #100)
  • Poetry: 47

Breakdown of Ratings this Year:

  • 5 Stars: 57
  • 4 Stars: 29
  • 3 Stars: 11
  • 2 Stars: 1
  • 1 Star: 1

Top Memoir/Nonfiction:

Top Children/YA Books:

Top Adult Fiction:

Top Poetry: (this category is always the hardest for me to pick from)

Share your favorite reads from 2022!

A Room of Your Own by Beth Kephart, Illustrated by Julia Breckenreid

Source: Purchased
Hardcover, 32 pgs.
I am an Amazon Affiliate

A Room of Your Own by Beth Kephart, illustrated by Julia Breckenreid, is a gorgeous book that explores all the different kinds of room we can find in our lives for creativity. Those rooms can be in the house, in the garden, in a barn, in a bath tub, in a cabinet, in a tree, under the bed, or even simply in the pages of a book.

Kephart was inspired by Virginia Woolf’s essay, A Room of One’s Own, to write this children’s picture book, which is beautifully illustrated by Breckenreid. The images are colorful and alive. Readers follow Virginia from her home and into the gardens where the steel sky gives way to blue. She sits and thinks and dreams and then comes the question for the reader: “Where do you go to think, to dream, to be?”

There’s an illustrated imagining of what those places could be and maybe are for many. And the illustrations bring these places to life and demonstrate that each place is important for each person and that no two places are alike, but all are vital for self, imagination, and more. Some of the rooms are not even rooms at all, but moments between action or in action. Below is my favorite illustration in the entire book:

A Room of Your Own by Beth Kephart, illustrated by Julia Breckenreid, is a delight, and I love that Virginia Woolf is here in these pages, but that the story gives way to the reader and explores the places they could have that are all their own.

RATING: Cinquain

About the Author:

Beth Kephart is the award-winning author of three dozen books in multiple genres and an award-winning teacher at the University of Pennsylvania. Her new memoir in essays is Wife | Daughter | Self (Forest Avenue Press). Her new craft book is We Are the Words: The Master Memoir Class, from which this essay was adapted. More at bethkephartbooks.com.

Mailbox Monday #695

Mailbox Monday has become a tradition in the blogging world, and many of us thank Marcia of The Printed Page for creating it.

It now has its own blog where book bloggers can link up their own mailbox posts and share which books they bought or which they received for review from publishers, authors, and more.

Velvet, Martha, and I also will share our picks from everyone’s links in the new feature Books that Caught Our Eye. We hope you’ll join us.

Here’s what I received:

A Room of Your Own by Beth Kephart, illustrated by Julia Breckenreid, which I purchased.

A picture book about the places we go to create, inspired by Virginia Woolf and her noted essay

Sometimes Virginia Woolf wrote her stories in a garden shed. Sometimes she wrote them among stacks of books in a cool basement. And you? Where do you go to think, to dream, to be? The shade beneath a tall tree? The brick step on a city stoop? The cozy spot beneath the kitchen table? Or inside the night’s deep dark? Not all rooms require four walls and a roof. Inspired by the writer Virginia Woolf and her celebrated essay, “A Room of One’s Own,” A Room of Your Own is about the importance of claiming a space for oneself.

What did you receive?