protean depravity

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Only it was never the best of times. 2024 is my personal 2020 and made me miss pandemic times we were sitting in peace at home, watching movies and reading books.

  It's truly crazy how fast this year went past. And although we were spared most of the dreaded catastrophes on the bigger scale, on a personal level this year has taken a toll on me - it was a rough year, to say the least. After watching my father, my best friend, and numerous good friends who returned to their own countries after the pandemic disappear from my life and the jarring legalities and heritage ugliness, I was very thankful to be able to at least travel in the summer to think about things, to soothe the hurt and confusion some.

  The year 2023 is almost upon us with who knows what fresh terrors and here we are on its brink... Before making that jump, though, let's go over a short wrap-up of my past reading year and finally announce the winners of 2022.

High were the hopes for 2021 - after a disastrous pandemic year, tons of confusion, losses, sickness, bush fires, earthquakes and other catastrophes the world was going to enter a new, better era in 2021 with vaccination for all, freedom days everywhere, return to normality... It didn't turn out that way. Having reached the end of this year, having seen that the worst was yet to come, that those vaccines don't really work, 2021 actually feels like an extension of the most unpopular year 2020. The good things about the collective state that we are in can be counted on the fingers of one hand and one of them is certainly that there is much more time for reading compared to the old normal. So much did I read this year that it was seriously difficult to choose the winners for the Protean Depravity Best Books of 2021, but finally here they are!

So having talked to Caro from Otherland this morning who is preparing the store's Christmas recommendations and bumping almost everywhere into the 'best of's and 'worst of's of this worst year of all, inspired me to make my own end of the year list with the books I liked best. At first I came up with a draft of runners-up; but then again, I thought I already know which books will win. Seeing no need to pretend that I have gone through an intense elimination process in an attempt to create suspense, I'll directly post both my 5 runners-up and the winners of this year without further ceremony. Let me just quickly note that some books are just a tiny little bit older than 2020 because I have left some room for books from my old TBR-list I carried into 2020 with me. Reason is that some great books I have recently read still should have a chance up here, even if they aren't necessarily buzzing new. Since this is a purely personal list I took that liberty but ho...