I did a post at the start of the year with my most Anticipated Books of 2022 so I thought I would revisit and update for the midway point – when we have more details about the releases in the later bit of the year.
As you can see from the photo, I’ve actually read quite a lot of the anticipated stuff that I have copies of from the first half of the year (stuff with a blue line through it means I’ve read it!) and the whole list is quite first half of the year heavy still.
So, what’s on the preorder list at the moment? Well the third (and final?) Vera Kelly book – Vera Kelly: Lost and Found which is out in September. I’ve really enjoyed the first two books in the series which has seen Vera junketing around Argentina and also a children’s home in upstate New York. This one sees Vera heading off to Los Angeles and sees her trying to track down her missing girlfriend. The Kindle is actually already available apparently, but I have the others in this series in paperback and I want them to match…
The next in Olivia Dade’s Spoiler Alert series is out in November – Shipwrecked is about actors who had a one night stand years ago and are now co-stars in an epic to series. And somehow linked in my head, but for reasons I can’t understand is Jen DeLuca’s Ren faire series – I did mention Well Travelled in the first post but it has slipped back further in the year and is now out in December and features the Duelling Kilts band that we’ve met in earlier books.
I’ve also got my eye on Vacationland by Meg Mitchell Matthews, which looks like it could be quality Rich People Problems stuff – with a wife in Maine for the summer with the kids and her husband in Brooklyn looking for funding for his start up. That’s out in August, but it’s a £20 hard back so I’m hanging fire on a preorder at the moment because that’s a lot for a new to me author.
On the non fiction front, I have my eye on Sarah Churchwell’s The Wrath to Come exploring modern America through the myth of Gone with the Wind. I haven’t preordered it yet because the pile is so big and I read hardback none fiction so slowly, but it looks really good.
And finally then there is Joyce Carol Oates’ Blonde, which retells and reimagines the story of Marilyn Monroe and is not new at all – it’s about to be a movie for goodness sake but appears to be out of print in English so I’ve bunged a preorder in for the rerelease in September in case I don’t find a second hand copy sooner!
That’s it for now on the upcoming, but here are links to the posts where I’ve talked about some of my anticipated releases from the first half of the year: The Christie Affair, The Maid, Fatal Crossing, Lady’s Guide to Fortune Hunting, Attack and Decay, Amongst Our Weapons and The Prize Racket. And finally here’s my favourite new books of the first half of 2022.
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 
Gone With The Wind remains my favourite book, even bearing in mind that it contains language which wouldn’t be acceptable today. I’m debating whether to read the Sarah Churchwell book or not. I maintain that it’s more about the resentment of the conquered South against the North than it is about white supremacism, and I really can’t see what any of it’s got to do with Donald Trump. I’ll put it on my wishlist and have a think!
I still haven’t read the actual book! Probably should before I read the Churchwell right?!
Definitely read GWTW first. It’s a wonderfully written book. The racial attitudes in it obviously aren’t acceptable today, but the characters live in the 1860s and the book was written in the 1930s, and I think that people forget that. Some books get attacked more than others – Enid Blyton’s always coming under attack, but no-one seems to mind Shakespeare’s anti-Semitism or Jane Austen’s attitude towards gypsies!