Colorful fireworks against a night sky with overlay: 2022

Welcome, 2022!

(Feature Photo by Moritz Knöringer on Unsplash )

After the debacle of 2021, I’ve been awaiting the arrival of 2022 with high ambivalence. When I woke up this morning and remembered that today is the first day of 2022, the phrase guarded optimism immediately came to mind. 

So, in the spirit of guarded optimism, I wish you all Happy New Year. I’ll be striving toward optimism—but without letting my guard down, of course.

fireworks: Happy New Year

You know how much I love lists (some things never change), so here are some links for your reading pleasure on a lazy New Year’s Day.

Book Club newsletter, Washington Post

In his weekly newsletter Book Club for the Washington Post, Ron Charles discusses some of the classic books whose copyrights will expire in 2022. 

This Friday arrival in my email inbox is one of the highlights of my week, and if you haven’t yet discovered it, I highly recommend it. If you like what you see at this link, there’s a spot at the top where you can click to subscribe for yourself. It’s free!

Meteor showers, eclipses, full moons: All of the reasons to look up in 2022

“The new year is sure to be a sky-gazer’s delight with plenty of celestial events on the calendar,” declares CNN. Learn when to expect total lunar eclipses, meteor showers, and supermoons.

New Books Explore the Many Ways Covid Has Altered Our Lives

By Eve Fairbanks for The New York Times.

Omicron’s New Years cocktail: Sorrow, fear but hope for 2022

Sorrow for the dead and dying, fear of more infections to come and hopes for an end to the coronavirus pandemic were — again — the bittersweet cocktail with which the world said good riddance to 2021 and ushered in 2022.

12 books I should have reviewed this year: A critic’s lament

I especially appreciated this article because, when compiling my list of the best books I read in 2021, I realized that I’d only reviewed 2 (so far . . .). My reasons are different from the critic’s, but most book bloggers probably understand, at least somewhat.

Readers recommend 2021’s best books and explain how their reading habits changed

  • Readers were more likely to abandon books
  • Readers wanted lighter fare as a counterpoint to real-world devastation
  • For some, reading was nearly impossible at the start of the pandemic. In 2021, it got easier.
  • Audiobooks were a popular choice
  • Some people shared ingenious reading ideas you might want to steal

The article ends with a list of the “top books of 2021, according to our readers.”

© 2022 by Mary Daniels Brown

7 thoughts on “Welcome, 2022!”

    1. Mary Daniels Brown

      Is “guardedly speaking” anything like “damning with faint praise”? (because I wouldn’t blame you if, in context, they are = !)

  1. Thanks for this post Mary. I really enjoyed it and wish you all the best for 2022 as well. I like the idea of “guarded optimism”.

    I particularly liked your summary of the last article you listed. Interestingly I found it harder to read this year, even though I had more time to read and I found that quite frustrating. However, it didn’t really change what I wanted to read and I read quite a lot of gritty stuff. Content didn’t seem to be the problem in terms of not finding time to read. It was more being distracted, for me. However, quite a few in my reading group found our selection this year far too gritty for their liking. I’m not sure though how much of that was pandemic caused and how much was due to as increasing predilection for “nicer” as they get older!

    1. Mary Daniels Brown

      I’m a big fan of gritty literature! For me, reading did get a bit easier in 2021 than in 2020, but I still had trouble summoning the concentration necessary for writing reviews. Thanks for reading and commenting.

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