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Posted on by Debbie

The books with the ‘most’ this year #WOYBS

Welcome to another month of WOYBS!

It’s been great to have you join us for another month, and year, of our What’s On Your Bookshelf Challenge (WOYBS), #whatsonyourbookshelfchallenge. This is our final linkup for 2022 and I look forward to reading your posts.

I’m happy to co-host this link party with my good friends, Sue, Donna,  & Jo and enjoy discovering new books to add to my ever increasing pile. We all love reading!!

Last month I talked about what makes a book a good book, one that you can’t put down and I really appreciated all your thoughts and comments.

Do you read too much?
Do you read too much?

What are my Most… books for the year?

Back in August 2021 my first post for this new series was all about the Most book….you can read it here: WOYBS so I thought it fitting to end the year with an updated version and share my favourite books from 2022.

📚 Most compelling series: The Matilda Saga by Jackie French – The story of our country, and a love song to our land, told by the strong women who forged a nation. A series of 9 books which I’ve mentioned quite a few times during the year – all very enjoyable and I was sad to finish the final one in September.

📚 Most worthy of a mention: Philly Barker Investigates – Joanne Tracey’s latest(yes our very own co-host Jo) – a cosy crime that had me hooked from the start!

My review:

I loved Jo’s latest book, Philly Barker Investigates. It was a great mix of cosy crime, a budding romance and friendship, all set in a quaint village in an antique shop. I was given an advance copy of this book to read and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Jo is a very clever author creating interesting characters, relatable locations and a few twisty bends that keep the reader guessing and makes the book unputdownable.

I have enjoyed all Jo’s books in the past and this one didn’t disappoint at all. Highly recommended and I can’t wait to read what Philly does next.

📚 Most heartbreaking (but uplifting): Love Stories by Trent Dalton

I loved everything about this book and especially the way he went about writing it: Trent Dalton, Australia’s best-loved writer, goes out into the world and asks a simple, direct question: ‘Can you please tell me a love story?’

📚 Most scary: Working Class Boy by Jimmy Barnes – only because it was all true! Such a harrowing story of his young life, how he survived to adulthood I do not know. He read the audio book which I feel gave it more gravitas and made it far more real than if I’d just read it myself. Jimmy Barnes is a Scottish born Australian rock singer with a real history!

📚 Most inspiring: The People on Platform 5 by Clare Pooley

My review: This was a book I NEEDED to read at the moment. I’ve had a few bad starts lately, but this book, recommended by a good friend (thanks Jo) made up for them all. It was fresh, feel-good, kind, hopeful, and a pure delight which I just couldn’t put down. You know sometimes you read a book at just the right time and everything clicks? This was it, great timing thanks Iona and co! The way Clare wrote about inter generational friendships, the feelings of Iona when she was made redundant (I related to so much because that was me too) and the fact that we all deserve…a Triumphant Second Act. Love, love, love this book!!!!
Thanks heaps @cpooleywriter, I’m now a massive fan

📚 Most fun: The Banksia House Breakout by James Roxburgh and Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club books, The Bullet that Missed – interestingly these books both cover older people doing amazing things.

📚 Most surprising: After Story by Larissa Behrendt – this one stayed with me long after I’d read it so that’s why I’ve listed it.

When Indigenous lawyer Jasmine decides to take her mother Della on a tour of England’s most revered literary sites, Jasmine hopes it will bring them closer together and help them reconcile the past.

Twenty-five years earlier the disappearance of Jasmine’s older sister devastated their tight-knit community. This tragedy returns to haunt Jasmine and Della when another child mysteriously goes missing on Hampstead Heath. As Jasmine immerses herself in the world of her literary idols – including Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters and Virginia Woolf – Della is inspired to rediscover the wisdom of her own culture and storytelling. But sometimes the stories that are not told can become too great to bear.

Ambitious and engrossing, After Story celebrates the extraordinary power of words and the quiet spaces between. We can be ready to listen, but are we ready to hear?

📚 Most Historical : I discovered an Australian author Tea Cooper via NetGalley this year and despite giving her latest The Butterfly Collector only 3 stars I have since gone on to read just about everything else she’s written and have really enjoyed them for the Australian history and the subjects she writes about. The Cartographer’s Secret and The Naturalist’s Daughter are two I really enjoyed reading.

📚 Most intriguing: Her Majesty The Queen Investigates The Windsor Knot by SJ Bennett – this is a series Her Majesty The Queen Investigates and they’re light and fun to read, and I mention them mainly because I read the second one A Three Dog Problem just as the Queen passed away and it was quite bittersweet. There is a third book in the series which I’m still to read, Murder Most Royal. It won’t be the same now that the Queen has passed away!

Most Classic: Having worked our way through the Bronte sisters and now we’ve almost finished all of Jane Austen’s novels I’m proud to say I have a much better understanding of these classics than ever before. Our online bookclub read them slowly and discuss them along the way, so I feel like I get ‘inside’ them rather than just read them. Does that make sense?? It’s been a great experience and we’re continuing on into 2023 with a set of other classics ahead of us.

What have I read lately?

As I’ve been home with Covid during the month I’ve read a lot of books and managed to finish many that I’d been working my way through slowly. A great feeling of accomplishment.

What I’m reading at the moment

Will you join us?

If you’re into reading, please join us, even if it’s just to leave a comment with what you’ve been reading lately, I always enjoy seeing what books are being read. We’ve added a linkup (at the end of my post) so you can add your posts directly there and see what others have posted about for the month as well.

Sue, Donna, Jo and I hope that you will join us in this fun series. I love making notes of new books to read as I go through everyone’s posts each month.

You can read more from my stunning co-hosts here:

Sue from Women Living Well After 50

Donna from Retirement Reflections

Jo from And Anyways

We’re all in this together, sharing our love of reading 🙂

I’ll leave you with this fun image for those of you who love reading and yoga!

All my WOYBS posts can be found here – we started this series in August 2021 and the good news is that we plan to continue it into 2023!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter
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Happy reading!

Deb xx

You can see all my reading challenges and books here on my Book Page

Guidelines for WOYBS:

What: What’s On Your Bookshelf #whatsonyourbookshelfchallenge
When: Third Thursday PM (Northern Hemisphere)/ Third Friday AM (Southern Hemisphere). Next linkup: Friday 20 January 2023
Why: Share a love of reading.
Where: Linkup below, Blog, Blog Comments, Instagram or other Social Media.
Who: This linkup is open to everyone.
How: You can share in the comments, with a blog post, or on other social media of your choice. You can use the hashtag #Whatsonyourbookshelfchallenge

You can also find Deb’s World in lots of other places – stay in touch by clicking any of the buttons below.

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35 Replies to “The books with the ‘most’ this year #WOYBS”

  3. I love your categories and am ridiculously grateful that I’ve made one of them! After Story was a stand-out read for me this year, as was SJ Bennet’s Queen mysteries and The Bullet that Missed. Thanks for being a cohost with the mostest.

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  4. Hi, Debbie – Thank you for sharing your favourite books from several different categories. That is very hard to do — I can seldom firmly decide on a fav book overall. Seeing one of Jenny Colgan’s books on your list made me smile. I had requested her ‘The Christmas Bookshop’ from our local library. I then received a notice that the book had been ‘stolen.’ What ever happened to euphemisms like ‘misplaced’? 😀

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    1. It was very hard to pit things into the categories Donna and I also find it hard to choose a book of the year. How can a book be stolen from the library???? Thanks for being an enthusiastic co-host, love doing this challenge with you.

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  6. Pingback: Confessions From an Outlier: Books on my DNF Shelf in 2022 #WhatsOnYourBookshelfChallenge #WOYBC #DNF - Reading Ladies

  7. Wow! You read a lot of book this year. I love looking back and picking my favorites; though I’m struggling to narrow it down this year as I felt like I read a lot of good ones.

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  9. Congratulations on your great reading in 2022. I have nothing like a list as yours but I am in listening mode for quite a few right now. Agree with your summary of Trent’s book. I did have to stop after every chapter. Right now, I am about 6 hours into the VERY long book, the latest from Holly Ringland, The Seven Skins of Esther Wilding. Hope you join you and the book gang more in 2023. Denyse.

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  10. Love Stories was a highlight read for me this year Deb. I read all Jimmy Barnes books last year. I’m a huge fan so I loved them and at the same time was distressed by them. I also listened to Working Class Boy as well as reading it. I agree that hearing his words in his distinctive voice did add another layer to the book.

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  11. Hoping to have more time to read now that I’ve given up work. So many good books out there. Will look out for Tea Cooper. The People on Platform 5 also appeals. Thanks for the linky!

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  12. Hi Debbie,
    Hope you recover in time for Christmas.
    So many books for me to look at! I read Platform 5 and really enjoyed it. I’ve read a few this month so hope to get down to writing about them. It’s come around so quickly again
    Merry Christmas 🤶

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  17. Pingback: Do you keep a reading log? (December 2022 reads) – Eat, Play, Live

    1. After Story is nit what I expected and had many layers to it. It’s stayed with me so I consider that a good book! Hope you enjoy it too. We’re almost together and can’t wait!

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  20. Wow Deb, that is an impressive lot of books! My reading is nowhere near that, but I think you have inspired me to set a modest goal, especially since I am fully retired (occassional part time opportunities don’t count, right?) Best and blessings, Michele

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  21. Love how you rounded these into types and gave us a lot of options! You are a very prolific reader that’s for certain. I’m not feeling very “motivated” to blog but I have been reading. Just caught up on 3 in the Elm Creek series by Jennifer Chiaverini. She’s got a few historical ones I might delve into next.

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    1. I had a lot of time on my hands while I was at home with Covid Bernie, so used the time well! Thanks for the recommendation I’ve not heard of Jennifer Chiaverini’s books.

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      1. She’s probably best known for the Elm Creek series but she has one out called Mrs Lincoln’s Dressmaker that is good. Now she had a couple of Second World War ones about women that I would like to read.
        How long did you have to isolate when you had Covid? I wasn’t sick so just kept busy in the basement on projects for the 5 days. Do hope you weren’t really sick.

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  22. Pingback: This week’s small pleasures #314 – Thistles and Kiwis

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