My Favorite Books: 2022 vs 2024

Hello everyone! I thought it would be fun to look back at my old favorite (fiction) books (of 2022) and contrast them with my current favorites almost three years later.

The First

Then: The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas.

Now: The Brothers’ Karamazov by Fydor Dostoevsky

“The world says: “You have needs — satisfy them. You have as much right as the rich and the mighty. Don’t hesitate to satisfy your needs; indeed, expand your needs and demand more.” This is the worldly doctrine of today. And they believe that this is freedom. The result for the rich is isolation and suicide, for the poor, envy and murder.”
~The Brothers’ Karamazov

The Second

Then: Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

Now: Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

“He soon felt that the fulfillment of his desires gave him only one grain of the mountain of happiness he had expected. This fulfillment showed him the eternal error men make in imagining that their happiness depends on the realization of their desires.”
~Anna Karenina

The Third

Then: The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

Now: Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis

“The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing — to reach the Mountain, to find the place where all the beauty came from — my country, the place where I ought to have been born. Do you think it all meant nothing, all the longing? The longing for home? For indeed it now feels not like going, but like going back.”
~Till We Have Faces

The Fourth

Then: Ben Hur by Lew Wallace

Now: Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

“I don’t think man was meant to attain happiness so easily. Happiness is like those palaces in fairy tales whose gates are guarded by dragons: we must fight in order to conquer it.”
~Count of Monte Cristo

The Fifth

Then: Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Now: To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

“I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.”
~To Kill A Mockingbird

The Sixth

Then: The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton

Now: Dracula by Bram Stoker

“Do you not think that there are things which you cannot understand, and yet which are; that some people see things that others cannot? But there are things old and new which must not be contemplate by men´s eyes, because they know -or think they know- some things which other men have told them. Ah, it is the fault of our science that it wants to explain all; and if it explain not, then it says there is nothing to explain.”
~Dracula

The Seventh

Then: To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Now: Lord of the Rings (and the Hobbit)

“Frodo: I wish the Ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.
Gandalf: So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”
~Lord of the Rings

The Eighth

Then: Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

Now: Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis

“Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.”
~The Screwtape Letters

The Ninth

Then: The Odyssey by Homer

Now: Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

“The pupil dilates in darkness and in the end finds light, just as the soul dilates in misfortune and in the end finds God.”
~Les Misérables

The Tenth

Then: The Iliad by Homer

Now: The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

“When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one’s self, and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.”
~The Picture of Dorian Gray

The Eleventh

Then: The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis

Now: Crime and Punishment by Fydor Dostoevsky

“Don’t be overwise; fling yourself straight into life, without deliberation; don’t be afraid – the flood will bear you to the bank and set you safe on your feet again.”
~Crime and Punishment

My favorites haven’t necessarily changed much since 2022, I’ve just read more books and gained more favorites! Have you read any of these books? What are your top books? What classics do you love? Let’s chat!

~Hattush