I’m now well into the habit of updating my reading progress on Goodreads because as I read virtually everything on my Kindle, it does it automatically. In December 2022 Goodreads told me that I had read only 21 books which is quite a lot fewer than in 2021. I thought a couple of books took a long time to get through as they seemed much longer but on a Kindle you don’t get as much of a feel for volume or mass as you do on paper books.

Of these, only one was a paper book: David Gibson’s The Street Photographer’s Manual, a book I saw and browsed before buying at the Leica Store in Sydney when considering a new lens for my SL2 that should be less obtrusive on the street. The remainder all look to be e-books that I read on my Kindle. Once again it looks like I stuck with authors that I enjoyed reading, so I read five books by Alex Gerlis, four by Andrew Turpin, three by Ben Macintyre and two each from Arnaldur Indriõason and Mick Herron. The other noticeable trend in my reading is that nearly all of it seems to be about espionage, the Second World War and murder mysteries.

The exceptions were obviously that photography book mentioned above and Tomasz Jedrowski’s beautiful gay romance Swimming In The Dark about youth in a repressive regime. Like all the other books I read in 2022, I rated this 4/5 on Goodreads, but I’d like to have added a half star as I really enjoyed this book and found so much that I could relate to, emotionally.

I started the year off with another book by Peter May: The Critic. I enjoyed this read and was intending to read more of his books, but I was distracted by a new-ish Steve Parker book in the ‘Detective Ray Paterson’ series His Mother’s Bones and I could not resist it. I think the Kindle store may have recommended Andrew Turpin’s The Last Nazi. This was his first novel in the ‘Joe Johnson’ series and I ended up reading three more from it: The Old Bridge, Bandit Country and Stalin’s Final Sting.

I was side-tracked briefly by my book-club’s monthly pick: Arnaldur Indriõason’s Jar City, a rather brutally graphic murder mystery set in Reykjavik. It is also the third in the author’s ‘Inspector Erlendur’ series. I liked it so went on to the fourth book in that series Silence of the Grave. I will probably read more of his books.

Before I finished the ‘Joe Johnson’ series, I must have been recommended Alex Gerlis as an author on the Kindle store as I soon departed well and truly down the ‘Richard Prince’ series of books at full speed. First there was Prince of Spies and I soon followed with Sea of Spies, Ring of Spies and End of Spies, all of which were set in the Second World War. After that I also made a start on his ‘The Wolf Pack Spies’ series with Agent in Berlin. Some of these fictional novels overlapped with two of the the three Ben Macintyre non-fiction books that I read: Agent Zigzag: A true Story of Nazi Espionage, Love and Betrayal and Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies. Both are amazing but true stories and they’re very well told as is his The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War, which was recommended by a close friend. All of these books by both of these authors had me on the edge of my seat throughout.

Karin Slaughter is another author I like (a lot), so I just had to read Pieces of Her before watching the series on Netflix. I did enjoy both, but the series has some major differences from the book. Only one book by KS this year.

Finally, once again on the recommendation of a friend I started the ‘Slough House’ series of books by Mick Herron. I had watched the first series on Apple TV+ (courtesy of a new iPhone purchase), but thoroughly enjoyed the first book Slow Horses, then devoured Dead Lions and I’ve just started Real Tigers. Le Carré’s George Smiley has long been a hero of mine along with Len Deighton’s Bernard Samson and Ronnie Craven and Darius Jedburgh from Edge of Darkness (the TV series, not the film), but I now think I’ll have to add at least Mick Herron’s Jackson Lamb and possibly River Cartwright from the fantastic ‘Slough House’ series. There is no doubt that I’ll finish this series of books.

That’s all from me for 2022. Happy reading in 2023!