There were actually a good number of stories in the HPL Variorum I hadn't read before, but I still stuck it in the reread books list. The best new book (new to me) I read in 2022 was probably Record of a Night too Brief, though I continue to really enjoy late Victorian weird fiction with virtually no plot (that is to say, Julius LeVallon).

Detail on that Variorum edition btw: it's very good, but it is sort of an odd animal. If you buy the variorum editions you will finally have all the fiction HPL wrote. But there are no notes that are about the texts or criticism. The books are devoted entirely to the publication history, so the notes are basically only that words or phrases appeared in one edition but not another, so on, so forth. That's normal -- that's what variorum means -- but it's probably worth my pointing it out.

Vintage Tarot Texts was quite good. I reviewed it on my patreon, but in short, the texts are readable and interesting, and the translator knows what he's doing but is very angry at a couple of writers and would have benefited from asking someone to tone down the parts where he stops making sense because he's frothing at the mouth.

It also started me on my path of reading historical tarot essays. I've now also read a collection edited by Tyson and I bought an obscure translation of a translation of Etteilla, which I plan to read soon.

I had intended to read 70 books in 2022. I failed, and read 51, according to my spreadsheet. What happened, I guess, is that I read the entire corpus of Plato, which kind of fucking sucked as an experience. Many of the early works were good, interesting, and even sometimes entertaining! But Republic and Laws are fucking miserable, not only because I fundamentally disagree with the Forms, but also because I fundamentally disagree on what the point of art is.

I have this list of blog post ideas in an app and one is simply titled "on reading books I hate" and if I ever write it I will most certainly be talking about Plato lol.

I also read the second history book of drafts of Fellowship of the Ring and Two Towers. It's titled Treason of Isengard and it's quite good. I posted about some of the names last month, and generally the writing is interesting and entertaining, even if it's often not quite as powerful as the final draft (which makes sense of course).

I will say it was interesting to see several occasions where overtly magical things were quieted down. You can see a process where Tolkien would draft a passage where something, from the elven cloaks and Elessar's brooch to the seat of Amon Hen, are magical in a way that looks just like most fantasy novels nowadays -- and then as the drafts accumulate that aspect falls by the wayside, or is muted, or shuffled behind other things. Would that other fantasy authors would try that out -- I don't care how fictional magic works, no one actually really cares unless they're trying to make a tabletop game of it, I promise.

I'm trying a bit of an experiment and cross-posting this to my wordpress. No need for a link, as it's exactly the same post, but if you see this text somewhere else online, that's (probably) why.