Ask HN: What are some of the best books you have read in 2022?

The Cold Start Problem is informative and a great read. Not only is it great about its subject matter, but it is a rarely non-self-aggrandising business book. It's about solving a particular problem, not the usual "Look what I did!" business book.

I can second the New Sun series. The bizarre thing about this series is that it is a hole in my memory. I can remember reading it, I can remember liking it, and I can remember little snippets, but I can't remember most of the specifics. I've read the series twice, but even the second reading hasn't resolved this failure to recollect.

Ironically -- likely on purpose -- that's the point. The series centres on an unreliable narrator, which is a part of the charm.

You forget moments because the narrator wasn't clear.

The narrator wasn't clear because the he didn't understand what he was seeing.

You have to re-read the series, perhaps several times, to figure out what's truly going on.

These were so enjoyable I read them all straight through twice. I'm now reading through the Japanese translation of them as well. (Which, unfortunately, isn't as funny as the original.)

I've been mostly reading fiction:

Tom Holt "Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City" and its two sequels. Sardonic fantasy similar to Ursula Vernon. Fun.

Max Gladstone "Last Exit". Magic/alternate-worlds/tentacled-horrors-ish America. Will definitely win the Hugo.

Chuck Tingle "Trans Wizard Harriet Porber and the Bad Boy Parasaurolophus" (from which I learned that Chuck Tingle actually writes the stories, not just the title, and they're ... actually not terrible and pretty funny and very meta.

Katherine Addison "The Grief of Stones". Sequel to Goblin Emperor/Witness for the Dead. Murder mystery in an extremely engaging industrial-era fantasy world.

Alix E. Harrow "A Spindle Splintered" and sequels. Fairy tales encounter the multiverse.

C L Polk "Witchmark" and sequels. Fantastic series in a world where magic is outlawed - but the rich are aware of and use it, and imprison and exploit the poor who use it.

Tamsyn Muir "Nona the Ninth". Book 3 in Locked Tomb. More magic skeletons. A bit more of the backstory. Do I have any idea what's going on? Not so much. But I love it.

Naomi Novik "The Golden Enclaves". Scholomance book 3. Magic school, metaphor for boomers ruining the world and climate change, probably. Good conclusion.

qntm "There is no antimemetics division". A SCP novel. Not quite as good as his "Ra" but fun and mindbending.

Becky Chambers "The Galaxy and the Ground Within". A warm hug of a book. Travelers stranded at a space-rest-stop find they have something in common.

Charles Stross "The Bloodline Feud" and sequels. Alternate-universes-travel, Medici-style mercantilism feuds.

Madeline Miller "Circe". Gorgeously written, captivating reimagining of Circe's story. timeless.

The two books that really stayed with me the most this year are Father and Sons by Turgenev and 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez.

Both are classics and fairly well known.

The former is a dive into niihilism and how destructive some of the ideas might be. It has some really impactful imagery.

The latter is a portal to a living world dipped in magical realism that one can get lost in. It is beautifully written and has a neat cyclical nature to it.