Year In Review: 2022 in First Lines!

My yearly Christmas treat

As usual at this time of year, I review and share my reading/blogging year with First Lines.

Simply put, we share the first line of the first post of each month and see what that overview tells us about our year. Often it can be an uncannily accurate summary.

If you haven't tried this before, give it a go this year; it's a fun exercise, and often summarizes the year quite efficiently. If you do, please share a link in the comments so we can all enjoy!

Here is my 2022 Year in First Lines: 

January:

Over Christmas I revisited some stories by an author I really enjoy, Rumer Godden. [from The Fairy Doll]

February:

I'm turning to some older books from my shelves lately. [from The Benefactress]

March:

During this month of International Women's Day, I wanted to get at least one relevant review in. [from Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men]

April:

Now moving back a century to visit the schooldays of Laura Rambotham, in this Australian classic. [from The Getting of Wisdom]

May:

This gorgeous picture book got me excited about sharing my reading again! [from Stars & Poppy Seeds]

June:

This middle grade novel is a companion to Skrypuch's earlier novel, Stolen Child. [from Making Bombs for Hitler]

July:

It's the end of July already & I haven't shared much reading lately. [from Summer Slipping By]

August:

August brings one of my favourite reading celebrations of the year -- Women in Translation Month. [from Women in Translation Month is Here Again!]

September:

I did say that I hadn't quite finished talking about books by women in translation in August; today I have some all in one reviews for a quartet of Italian books that, as it turned out, I didn't fall in love with. [from Italy in September]

October:

Since it's time for some spooky reads, I picked up a couple of books from the young reader section of my library. [from Spooky Youthful Reads]

November:

I picked up this book on the Halloween weekend, as a timely read ;) [from Ukrainian Women's Magic Traditions]

December:

For December I'm going to share some of the lighter reads I've been exploring over the last while - this week it's a few of the fashion/sewing related ones that I've already shared over on my sewing blog, Following The Thread. [from Clothes-Pegs]

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Looking back over the year, I started out reading and sharing some of the older books from my shelves, but then found it hard to read and focus once the invasion of Ukraine began Feb. 24. I started reading and reviewing a lot of Ukrainian work, reviewing a lot of it during August for Women in Translation Month, and beyond. I read spooky books in October and finished up with some fashion oriented fiction from my sewing blog.

I think this reveals the shape of my reading preoccupations over 2022 quite well! Let's hope it's a better 2023 in which war ends and doesn't have to be the overriding concern for anyone in life or reading.