Best life stories of 2022: Award-winning books to read on holidays

Best life stories of 2022: Award-winning books to read over the holidays. A happy woman wearing a straw hat reads a book outside. Photo by Mental Health America (MHA) from Pexels

How to pick the best books for your 2023 reading list

Welcome to my last and favourite article of the year!

I’m excited to bring you the Forever Young Autobiographies shortlist of li f e stories to win awards during the past 12 months.

This best life stories of 2022 list features male and female writers from Australia, the United Kingdom and the USA.

Also stay tuned because I will review each book on the website during 2023 …

My Adventurous Life by Dick Smith, Allen & Unwin

Australian Book Industry Awards 2022 Biography Book of the Year

Best life stories of 2022: My Advenurous Life by Dick Smith, Allen & Unwin

“I have been charmed by good fortune to be born in Australia in the 1940s. I have lived through a time of great prosperity and every day I am reminded of my good luck.”

Dick Smith is a remarkable and proud Australian.

He has been part of our national consciousness for over 50 years as an innovative and astute businessman, a ground-breaking adventurer, a generous philanthropist and a provocateur for the causes he feels deeply about.

Yet, despite his great successes and achievements, Dick has remained down to earth and close to his roots.

Your Family Stories System. Father and girl on his shoulders with arms spread wide at the beach.

The Mother Wound by Amani Haydar, Pan Macmillan Australia

Australian Book Industry Awards 2022 Matt Richell Award for New Writer of the Year

“I am from a family of strong women.”

Amani Haydar suffered the unimaginable when she lost her mother in a brutal act of domestic violence perpetrated by her father.

Five months pregnant at the time, her own perception of how she wanted to mother (and how she had been mothered) was shaped by this devastating murder.

After her mother’s death, Amani began reassessing everything she knew of her parents’ relationship.

They had been unhappy for so long – should she have known that it would end like this?

Currowan: The Story of a Fire and a Community During Australia’s Worst Summer by Bronwyn Adcock, Black Inc.

2022 Walkley Awards Book Award

The Currowan fire – ignited by a lightning strike in a remote forest and growing to engulf the New South Wales South Coast – was one of the most terrifying episodes of Australia’s Black Summer.

It burnt for 74 days, consuming nearly 5000 sq km of land, destroying well over 500 homes and leaving many people shattered.

Bronwyn Adcock fled the inferno with her children.

Her husband, fighting at the front, rang with a plea for help before his phone went dead, leaving her to fear – will he make it out alive?

In Currowan, Bronwyn tells her story and those of many others – what they saw, thought and felt as they battled a blaze of never-before-seen intensity.

Windswept and Interesting: My Autobiography by Billy Connolly, John Murray Press

British Book Awards 2022 Book of the Year Audiobook Non-Fiction

“It’s the first time I’ve done this. Other people have written about me – or for me – but this time it’s just my own life in my own words.”

In his first full-length autobiography, comedy legend and national treasure Billy Connolly reveals the truth behind his windswept and interesting life.

Born in a tenement flat in Glasgow in 1942, orphaned by the age of four, and a survivor of appalling abuse at the hands of his own family, Billy’s life is a remarkable story of success against all the odds.

Billy found his escape first as an apprentice welder in the shipyards of the River Clyde.

Later he became a folk musician – a ‘rambling man’ – with a genuine talent for playing the banjo.

But it was his ability to spin stories, tell jokes and hold an audience in the palm of his hand that truly set him apart.

Chasing Me to My Grave: An Artist’s Memoir of the Jim Crow South by the late Winfred Rembert as told to Erin I. Kelly, Bloomsbury Publishing

2022 Pulitzer Prize Winner in Biography

Winfred Rembert grew up in a family of Georgia field laborers and joined the Civil Rights Movement as a teenager.

He was arrested after fleeing a demonstration, survived a near-lynching at the hands of law enforcement, and spent 7 years on chain gangs.

During that time he met the undaunted Patsy, who would become his wife.

Years later, at the age of 51 and with Patsy’s encouragement, he started drawing and painting scenes from his youth using leather tooling skills he learned in prison.

Chasing Me to My Grave presents Rembert’s breathtaking body of work alongside his story, as told to Tufts Philosopher Erin I. Kelly.

Final say: Best life stories of 2022

Find a perfect holiday read with The Forever Young Autobiographies best life stories of 2022 book list.

Discover stories by adventurers, comedians, artists and much more.

Certainly you will find a page-turner to suit you!

Also look out for my reviews of these books when I return from a summer break in the new year.

Happy holidays, writing and reading!

Free gift!

Map your life-story project outline with my free Structure Success training. Sign up here!

Your say: Best life stories of 2022

Got a book suggestion to share in addition to these best life stories of 2022? I always love hearing from different people. Drop me an email or leave a reply in the comments section at the end of this article.

Get in touch

Got a question about the 4 steps to create a life story or an idea for a future article? Let me know!

Don’t miss an article

Know when new material is published. Sign up here!