2022: Year in Review

The year 2022 is not over yet, but we’ve all aged more than a year in California. Contending with drought, a “tripledemic” and racism in L.A. City Hall has been pretty demoralizing. We also mourned the passing of the most famous mountain lion in L.A. history. Rest in peace, P-22.

But not everything is terrible.

While P-22 may no longer be with us, we can all celebrate another L.A. celebrity of the reptilian variety: Reggie the alligator, who is still going strong at the Los Angeles Zoo. Also, a number of great books from celebrated authors like Celeste Ng and Rachel Aviv were published this year, and the L.A. Times hosted many memorable book club events with some of these talented writers. And while the COVID-19 pandemic isn’t over yet, museums and galleries are getting back on track with exhibitions highlighting gender equity and climate change.

Each of these topics is covered in our lists below, which include the most notable events of the year. We hope you can find some solace in a book recommendation, or an inspirational piece of art, or if you are a lover of small creatures, take heed in the mission of a man fighting to end California’s ban on ferrets.

(Los Angeles Times)

In Column One, The Times’ showcase for storytelling, we share stories tragic and comic, haunting and inspiring. This year we featured tales about a remote worker who died alone at home, about climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro, about the strange sport of artistic swimming.

We also can’t resist a good animal story.

Technically, the protagonists of these tales are not human — and sport two, four or even eight legs — but it’s hard not see some of ourselves in these stories too. Join us as we revisit the most memorable animals stories Column One brought you in 2022.

(Kieran Kesner for Buzzfeed / Nick Agro / Varon Panganiban/ Andrew Zuckerman)

Each month in 2022, we met an incredible author. The lineup included the nation’s youngest presidential inauguration poet, one of the world’s most legendary naturalists, a renowned historian who showed us how to talk about race with our kids and a Hollywood icon who revealed her own experiences as the U.S. Supreme Court toppled Roe vs. Wade.

We trekked the globe to meet unforgettable strangers, peeked inside private homes with a former maid and cooked with an ex-gangster turned chef who now runs one of L.A.’s hottest restaurants — while helping others transition from prison to restaurant careers.

We savored nonfiction, memoirs, poetry and novels, connecting readers near and far with intimate book club nights hosted in person and produced online.

(Photos: Carolyn Cole, Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

The top 22 most read stories of the year include pieces on the Will Smith slap, new wave imperialism in Mexico, a horrific car crash that killed five people, and the racist remarks that led to the downfall of an L.A. politician.

Readers spent a total of about 20,643,505 minutes, the equivalent of more than 14,335 days, reading the 22 stories.

(Illustration by Mel Cerri, for The Times
Credit: ©Helen Pashgian; photo ©Museum Associates/LACMA
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Arts and culture writer Deborah Vankin says that an individual art piece or body of work can get seeded into her brain, hovering into her consciousness and commanding attention at the most unexpected times.

Here are five artworks that wormed their way into her head this year — and stayed there for inordinate lengths of time.

(Robert Carter / For The Times)

Investigative journalism requires a commitment to asking tough questions of powerful people. It requires a willingness to challenge conventional wisdom and question our own assumptions. Most of all, it requires time and a zeal to get at the truth.

This past year, journalists at the Los Angeles Times dug deep to uncover stories no one else was telling. They exposed a myriad of problems with California’s approach to cannabis legalization, including exploitation and deaths of farmworkers, corruption, the state’s failure to erase past weed-related convictions and an explosion in unlicensed grows and illicit dispensaries.

(Illustration by Mel Cerri, for The Times
Credit: Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster; William Morrow; Lauren B Photography; Hogarth; Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Jordan Kines
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Ask four critics to name their favorite books of any year and you’ll get an array of singular narratives. But if any theme emerged among our top 20 books of 2022, it was the individual struggle to shape the future in a range of hostile words: the harsh dystopias crafted by Ng and Sequoia Nagamatsu; the vicious liars who questioned Sandy Hook; the British colonizers Samuel Adams outwitted and the American colonizers bested by the great Native athlete Jim Thorpe.

These are stories told brilliantly — substance meeting its match in style — in which reality might be inescapable, but hope is unkillable.

(Illustration by Mel Cerri / For The Times; photos from Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego; Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens; Currier Museum of Art)

The COVID-19 pandemic isn’t over, but museum and gallery exhibitions are getting back on track.

We highlighted the best art stories this year, which covered the institutional effort toward gender equity in art museum exhibitions, various museum blunders and the use of art by activists to bring awareness to climate change.

(Illustration by Mel Cerri, for The Times
Credit: Kayla James / For The Times; Chris Walker/For The Times; Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times
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On TV, 2022 was the year of “Severance” and “Abbott Elementary” but also the Jan. 6 committee hearings. At the movies, it was the year Cate Blanchett waved her conductor’s baton in “Tár” and Mia Goth waved her pitchfork in “Pearl.”

It’s also the year Beyoncé and Bad Bunny square off on our list for best song of the year, while Taylor Swift and Rosalía battle for best album. It was the year of a reimagined “Oklahoma!” and wholly original “Slave Play,” of Hernan Diaz’s “Trust” and Sarah Manguso’s “Very Cold People.” It was the year protesters threw canned tomato soup on a Van Gogh and criminally watery mashed potatoes on a Monet. Check out our picks for the best movies, music and shows from this year.

(Wesley Lapointe/Los Angeles Times)

California dried up, but didn’t burn down. L.A. got a new mayor, and a City Hall in crisis.

Gavin Newsom was reelected governor, which was expected, and Democrats avoided a midterm drubbing, which was not.

As 2022 takes its place in the book of memories, political columnist Mark Z. Barabak looks back on the year with California columnist Anita Chabria. The two even venture a few predictions about what 2023 might bring.