2022 in reading
The best books I read this year, delivered at the very last minute
Hello friends!! I’ll be honest. My brain is fried and my spirit has been… low! This year was something of a reality check: I sold my book and then was hit with a wave of nonstop rejections, from residencies, grants, editors, hirers, etc. It is so hard to not take it personally, and because I am by nature anxious and dramatic it’s also been hard for me to avoid extrapolating this to mean the inevitable failure of Better. Silly, I know! I am hopeful for 2023.
Anyway, I read so many wonderful books this year and I can’t let it end without highlighting them at the last possible moment. Frustratingly, I had a handful of reviews commissioned (some written!) that fell through this year, some of which are featured below.
These are the books that affected me, captivated me, stayed with me.
(* = I listened to the audio.)
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin*
The hype is warranted. I haven’t been serious about gaming since Nintendo 64 but this enveloped me in the magic of world-building while throwing in deep insights about human connection, grief, reality, personhood, sacrifice. I adored it. Audiobook here.
N.P. by Banana Yoshimoto, trans. Ann Sheriff (1990)
Banana Yoshimoto is prolific in Japan, and she had a short story collection out this year, Dead-End Memories, which I kept meaning to get to but haven’t yet. Ironically, I found N.P. at Topos right after reading a rave review of it, and I was like, hmm, this seems more up my alley right now. IT WAS VERY GOOD. A dry, sort of surreal novella about a young woman who becomes enmeshed in a web of literary myth and family secrets when she inherits the manuscript of the final short story collection from a legendary Japanese writer who killed himself before publishing it, and decides to translate it into his native Japanese even though every attempt preceding hers (including that of her late boyfriend) led to the translator’s own suicide. Shrewd, powerful, but unaffected. I want to read a lot more of Yoshimoto this year.
A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers (2021)
I’ve had this on my list since my friend (and wonderful critic) Margaret Kingsbury recommended it at BuzzFeed. Another novella — a theme of the past couple years for me — that let me escape into a world I honestly ached for—inherently spiritual, community-driven. A “tea monk” (i.e. a monk who travels in their wagon from town to town, setting up camp for people to come by, get a custom tea blend, and share their troubles… like… please 😩) heads into the wild in search of greater meaning and meets a robot who desperately wants to understand humanity. (This is generations after robots gained sentience, declared their independence, and retreated into the wildlands.) For what it’s worth, this is the first book I’ve read with a nonbinary protagonist and the third person narration was a good exercise in really internalizing they/them as a singular. Audiobook here.
The Violin Conspiracy by Brendan Slocumb*
At a minimum, half of the books I read this year were thrillers and mysteries. I enjoyed all of them (especially those I listened to) but most of them, of the troubled-woman-solving-the-murders-of-other-troubled-women variety, blended together. This one—about a Black violinist from the rural South whose violin (the family fiddle, which turned out to be a Stradivarius) is stolen just before a potentially career-making competition—floored me. Rich with descriptions of classical music elitism, racism and inequality, ambition, family dynamics, and of course your standard ransom suspense. Audiobook here.
The Hero of This Book by Elizabeth McCracken
Is it a memoir; is it fiction? Where do we draw the line between the two; why does the distinction matter? Why do we need to know — why do we feel entitled to know? Elizabeth McCracken is brilliant in this novel about a writer going to London to grieve her mother’s death and grapple with the question of whether or not to memorialize her in a book. This is meta fiction at its best, but also a thrumming exploration of memory, grief, motherhood, and writing. My copy is riddled with marginalia; I was desperate to review it!!! Audiobook here.
Mouth to Mouth by Antoine Wilson*
I could never have anticipated how suspenseful this book would turn out to be based on the description—a story within a story about a man who meets a successful art dealer at the airport, who proceeds to share the story of how his meteoric rise in the industry began by resuscitating a drowning man. The audiobook was so good I fell into a deep dive about the narrator, Edoardo Ballerini—he got an interactive NYT profile! I’m obsessed with him. Audiobook here.
2 A.M. in Little America by Ken Kalfus
This, along with Easy Beauty, was my choice for Vulture’s best books of 2022! This book had a blurb from David Foster Wallace and I was like, wait a minute… and then I discovered Ken Kalfus has been writing for decades mostly under the mainstream radar. 2 A.M. is a disquieting political dystopia about a U.S. citizen looking for refuge in a world post-America’s collapse, who finds himself at the center of an underground conspiracy. Check out my full blurb here. Audiobook here.
The Old Place by Bobby Finger
This small-town Texas domestic drama was just such a delight. It’s the kind of book that makes me wish “full of heart” hasn’t been done to death, because it’s such an apt description—Bobby pours so much empathy into these characters and it’s impossible not to fall in love. (It’s especially refreshing to read a book where the protagonists are two complex women in their 60s.) Gets into grief, forgiveness of ourselves and others, family secrets, queer love and shame, depression, and resilience. I cried! Audiobook here.
The Inugami Curse by Seishi Yokomizo, trans. Yumiko Yamazaki (1972)
Super fun, straightforward, good old-fashioned murder mystery, and apparently the most famous of Yokomizo’s prolific series about detective Kosuke Kindaichi. It has it all: the death of a mysterious, disgustingly rich patriarch; a convoluted will; estranged children; corruption and scandal; gruesome murders; quirky rogue detective. It was adapted into a movie in 1976 but I haven’t found a streaming version with English subtitles!!
Acting Class by Nick Drnaso
So eerie, so captivating. A group of strangers turn to a mysterious acting class in the hopes of solving various existential crises and shit gets weird. I love Nick Drnaso. I read this in one afternoon. If you don’t like ambiguity, this might not be the one for you.
Some of My Best Friends: Essays on Lip Service by Tajja Isen
I’m lucky enough to have been edited by Tajja, so I suspected this would be great before I even cracked it open. I was right! These essays about diversity and representation in media and politics perfectly skewer performative progress and those self-congratulatory efforts that are somehow both loud and hollow. So sharp, personal, and funny. Audiobook here.
All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toewes (2014)*
This was technically research for Better which feels separate but it affected me so much that I needed to include it here. I don’t think I’ve ever read a novel deal with suicide—and specifically the devastating, maddening experience of loving someone dead set on dying—with such honesty and grace. I listened and read (multiple times) and I’m not lying when I say I think about it probably once a week. Audiobook here.
Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel*
What can I say that hasn’t been said! The woman can write a sweeping saga! I stand by the opinion that they’re best in audio!! Audiobook here.
Saint Sebastian’s Abyss by Mark Haber
This just tickled me. I’m realizing at this very moment that I already wrote about it in a previous letter, so forgive me for repeating myself, but this satire of art criticism is so spot-on. The narrator—a niche art critic on his way to visit his lifelong professional frenemy on his death bed—describes the art world and his career in a sort of arch, overwrought to the point of tediousness, first person POV. Laugh out loud funny. Audiobook here.
Meet Us by the Roaring Sea by Akil Kumarasamy
I’ll be frank: This is the review I most wish had run! Kumarasamy gives us so much to think about in this lyrical, experimental novel about the limits of empathy, language, and human connection, and the threshold where selflessness turns into masochism, and I loved writing about it. I will probably just send it! Audiobook here.
Hello, Molly! by Molly Shannon and Sean Wilsey*
This was so, so close to making the cut for the best memoirs of the year but there was tough competition. (I wrote about those for Vulture; I have them in a short list below but you can read about them here.) I don’t often go in for celeb memoirs, but I’ve always loved Molly Shannon and her story is remarkable. Hello, Molly! is so touching, insightful, and genuinely inspirational—touching on grief, forgiveness, addiction, resilience, ambition—you almost don’t care about the fame of it all. You’re playing yourself if you don’t listen to her read it. Audiobook here.
Everything I Need I Get From You: How Fangirls Created the Internet as We Know It by Kaitlyn Tiffany
God, I loved this book—a smart, accessible, personal, and unapologetic cultural deep dive into One Direction, fandom, and the internet. I was lucky enough to interview Kaitlyn for the erstwhile P&T Knitwear podcast. Most importantly, I learned we are both Niall girlies. Will it ever see the light of day? We shall see. Audiobook here.
COMING IN 2023:
Juggling by Stewart Lawrence Sinclair (March 14)
I started reviewing for Foreword this year, which gave me access to books I probably wouldn’t have otherwise found. This one was very endearing and I thought about it a lot! A book that will both teach you how to juggle and ruminate on the ways juggling can teach us about philosophy, humanity, and the universe. (You can read my full review here.)
Y/N by Esther Yi (March 21)
That’s Y/N as in “Your Name,” which anyone familiar with fan fiction will recognize as a format that allows the reader to place themselves in the story. Yi’s absurd, hypnotic, and very funny novel is about obsession, sublimation, and weird as hell fan fiction about Moon, a boy from the book’s BTS stand-in. Very much Being John Malkovich energy.
Biography of X by Catherine Lacey (March 21)
Woof!! Do you know what I mean when I say this is a real, meaty NOVEL? Like you finish it and you’re like, yup, that’s what I’m talking about! That’s a novel! (We’re nearing the end of this letter, I promise.) What I mean is it’s somehow classic and new; the prose is pristine (forgive the alliteration), the plotting is intricate, the intrigue is perfectly teased out, the fictional world is dense and layered. We’re talking footnotes for fake books and interviews! I guess I should say this book-in-a-book is the biography of the elusive artist X, written by her wife after X’s sudden death.
The Possibility of Life: Science, Imagination, and Our Quest for Kinship in the Cosmos by Jaime Green (April 18)
As a veritable Believer, I adored Jaime’s diverse and extensively researched investigation into our understanding of—and relationship with—aliens and space. It’s accessible and illuminating but most resonant is Jaime’s obvious passion for the subject, which really brings the inquiry to life.
Favorite Memoirs (for Vulture, read more here)
Solito by Javier Zamora
The Man Who Could Move Clouds by Ingrid Rojas Contreras
Admissions: A Memoir of Surviving Boarding School by Kendra James
This Boy We Made: A Memoir of Motherhood, Genetics, and Facing the Unknown by Taylor Harris
Feral City: On Finding Liberation in Lockdown New York by Jeremiah Moss
Essential Labor: Mothering As Social Change by Angela Garbes
I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy
Lost & Found by Kathryn Schulz
Stay True by Hua Hsu
Easy Beauty by Chloé Cooper Jones
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