2022 comes to a close - what a great resurgence after a rough 2021. The ending of 2021 had me in one of the lowest spots of my life. I stopped reading2022 comes to a close - what a great resurgence after a rough 2021. The ending of 2021 had me in one of the lowest spots of my life. I stopped reading, didn't even make a 2021 year in review. 2022 hasn't been easy but I've been reading and so thankful as my life moves forward. I read a ton this year, it was hard to narrow down my favorites. So I've chosen to highlight some that created brief additional thoughts and put the others in a larger hits-of-the-year list.
Civil Rights Queen: Constance Baker Motley and the Struggle for Equality by Tomiko Brown-Nagin What a queen she is. Walking into Southern courtrooms not only as a black lawyer, but as a black woman lawyer. Ketanji Jackson Brown mentioned they share birthdays and this makes my heart warm.
How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water by Angie Cruz I think about this book the most. I'm a white, non-hispanic woman and sometimes I feel inundated with books about other races/cultures that are structured for my consumption. Like, a book from a Dominican heritage author with a Dominican character NOT being geared for a Dominican person to enjoy, but to have the plot be palatable to me as a white person and teach me about Dominican heritage and culture. THIS BOOK IS NOT THAT. I love this book for it. Fresh structure, engaging character, absolutely, all of it.
The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O'Farrell I read this book at exactly the right time. I needed to be reminded that people, especially women, have fought for independence outside of marriage and it gave me greater opportunity to appreciate mine.
Stories from the Tenants Downstairs by Sidik Fofana This book has the kind of voice that I want to hear more from.
Collected Poems of Sylvia Plath This is the first whole book of poems I've truly finished. Reading this many, I got a sense for her rhythm and helped me develop more of a poetry reading habit.
Other Notable Mentions How to be Perfect by Michael Schur Things are Never so Bad that They Can't get Worse: Inside the Collapse of Venezuela by William Neuman Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets by Svetlana Alexievich LBJ Biography series by Robert A Caro Wastelands: The True Story of Farm Country on Trial by Corban Addison Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel Cult Classic by Sloane Crosley Trust by Hernan Diaz The Testaments by Margaret Atwood Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter Mercury Pictures Presents by Anthony Marra Paper Girls comics Bitch Planet comics...more
This past year, I’ve come to be at peace with all the books I’ve read but don’t remember. Fairly frequently I’d pick up a book wanting to read somethiThis past year, I’ve come to be at peace with all the books I’ve read but don’t remember. Fairly frequently I’d pick up a book wanting to read something new, only to come to Goodreads and realize that I’ve read it before. And marked it as “meh”. It really bothered me. The number of books I’ve read each year has grown and I feared that I was sacrificing quality for quantity. And feared I wasn’t taking my time enough to savor and contemplate each book. Sure, I can argue that some books changed me, even if I can’t recall the plot or title. But truthfully, many didn’t. I just read them and moved on.
Thinking more about it, I realized that the act of reading is an end in and of itself. Reading requires concentration and entering a separate mental space. It’s a kind of meditative act. The goal isn’t information retention or personal growth. There is no goal. Reading each book is an affirmation of life and that’s enough.
Ok, that’s enough navel-gazing. To hold myself accountable for the books I choose to read, I want to list some stats for the year.
Stats for the books I’ve read in 2020 Number of Print/E- Books Read: 40 Number of Audio Books Read: 53
(For the following sections, these are my best estimates after researching author backgrounds)
# Books by Female Authors: 46 # Books Authored by People of Color: 20 # Books by Someone of a Different Background than me (religion, culture, sexuality, etc.): 35
Breakdown by genre: Fiction: 43 Nonfiction: 35 Other: 15
Summary
My top 5 reads this year (with slight cheating by including authors and series, narrowing it down to 5 was so hard):
• Eartheater by Dolores Reyes - While reading this book, it was hard to believe the author hadn't known everything I love about stories and created this just for me. This one checked all my boxes. Magical realism (check), feminism and violence against women (check), people at the fringe (check), introversion (check), murder investigations (check), showing women being resilient while still being realistically affected by trauma (check), Latin America - Buenos Aires specifically (check), the feeling of being adrift (check), a sense of disconnection from material possessions (check), fiction in translation (check).
• The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones - Native author writing a native horror story. The pacing, the natural world horror, all of it works so well. In my wildest dreams Jordan Peele would pick this up for production.
• Emily St. John Mandel - Station 11 is a modern classic that will only get more popular as time passes. People will be reading it decades from now. And no one can change my mind about that.
• Smoke Gets in Your Eyes by Caitlin Doughty - The life of a crematorium operator. I love little peeks into niche perspectives
• Ben H. Winters - His Last Policeman trilogy, it means too much to me. It's a sci-fi series about an asteroid approaching earth with complete certainty that it will wipe out all life. Everyone is fucking off bucket listing while one guy, a detective, is still trying to solve murders. The trilogy asks, "what's the point in solving murders if we're going to die soon anyway?" and provides an answer that reassures me that there are people out there doing the right thing not because they're promised an afterlife for it, not because everyone else is doing it, and not because they think it's actually going to mean something. They do the right thing because it's the right thing to do - end of story. Because that's who they are. I rarely re-read books and I will read this series again next year.
Best Nonfiction Book You Read In 2020?
A Promised Land by Barack Obama - I was very interested in hearing his perspective on the beginning of his eventful presidency. For reference, my political leanings are very far left. I have many quibbles with decisions Barack Obama made, but I found the best way to read the book isn’t to have those critiques in mind. Because it’s full of context surrounding each decision and does a masterful job of portraying the constraints that the office of the president puts on an individual’s moral decisions, I found it incredibly insightful on how decisions were made despite being contrary to personal beliefs.
Books You Were Excited About & Thought You Were Going to Love More but Didn’t?
• Moonflower Murders by Anthony Horowitz • The Trauma Cleaner by Sarah Krasnostein • Home Before Dark by Riley Sager • We Keep the Dead Close by Becky Cooper
A few bonus ones from my DNF pile: • The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab • Emma by Jane Austen • H.P. Lovecraft Collection
Most surprising (in a good way or bad way) book you read?
Eartheater by Dolores Reyes. Very rarely do I pick up a book and intensely feel like the book was written for me. That I’m the ideal reader. But this one, I was overcome by it.
Best Audio Book/Performance (narrators)?
The Likeness by Tana French, performed by Heather O’Neill Faithful Place by Tana French, performed by Tim Gerard Reynolds
Honorable Mention: The Handmaid’s Tale performed by Claire Danes
Series you completed in 2020? The Last Policeman Trilogy by Ben H. Winters.
Favorite/interesting new author you discovered in 2020?
I rarely reread books or take on trilogies, most of what I read is from authors new to me, so this list is long. I’ve made some painful cuts to provide a top 10:
• Stephen Graham Jones • Lindy West • Oyikan Braithwaite • Ben H. Winters • Leila Slimani • Shane Bauer • Hannelore Cayre • Silvia Moreno-Garcia • Emily St. John Mandel • Dolores Reyes
Best book from a genre you don’t typically read/was out of your comfort zone?
I’ve branched out to try some historical biographies. History, as a topic, is out of my comfort zone. But the biography of Eleanor Roosevelt is something that has stuck with me.
Book you can’t believe you waited UNTIL 2020 to finally read?
Station 11 by Emily St. John Mandel. I should have read this in 2014, the day it came out.
What Classics did you read in 2020?
I used quarantine to re-read Shakespeare and dive into some Agatha Christie. I also re-read Handmaid’s Tale.
Favorite Book You Read in 2020 From an Author You’ve Read Previously:
It’s a tie between Troubling Love and The Lying Life of Adults, both by Elena Ferrante
Best World building/Most Vivid Setting You Read This Year?
Not what I would immediately think of when I hear world building, but for me, Tana French. It’s not an otherworldly world, but she nails setting. I can hear the accent and imagine the Irish landscape as I type this.
Book That Put A Smile on Your Face/Was the Most FUN to Read?
Lindy West - very rarely does an author make me laugh out loud, but she does.
Hidden Gems Read this Year?
Eartheater by Dolores Reyes, absolutely. I think it will remain a hidden gem as it’s not to everyone’s taste. But it most certainly was to mine.
Most Thought Provoking Read (doesn't necessarily mean you agreed with it):
A Mother's Reckoning by Sue Klebold. The author is the mother of Dylan Klebold, who killed himself and many others inside Columbine High School. I don't envy her position at all, but sharing her perspective did challenge my ideas about suicidal behavior.
Book That Made You the Most Mad (doesn’t necessarily mean you didn’t like it)?
American Prison: A Reporter’s Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment by Shane Bauer. Everything he detailed - the lack of dignity for prisoners, the narrow-minded focus on profit over people, the rampant abuse. It’s all disgusting. The author had previously been imprisoned in Iran when he strayed too far while hiking in Iraq. He references the history of prisons along with his own history of imprisonment and it’s all maddening.
Plans for 2021
Read more authors of color. My statistical breakdown for that is embarrassing and unacceptable. I need to do better.
I want to continue to branch out into historical non-fiction and historical biographies. It’s a good feeling, to be reading something outside my comfort zone. Content knowing that I am, in some way, challenging my own preferences and current scope of knowledge.
My stretch goal is to dive into some difficult Spanish texts, but with everything I have going on next year (changing jobs, moving, etc.), I’m not sure that’s an achievable goal for 2021. It is a more realistic 2022 goal....more
It being the end of the year and being that I just turned 30, I’ve been reflecting on my life as a reader. I mean, life as a reader is a life of its oIt being the end of the year and being that I just turned 30, I’ve been reflecting on my life as a reader. I mean, life as a reader is a life of its own, growing and changing like any life should, right? I can say things like “I read popular science books” but that reflects me as a reader now and not me as a reader always.
For me, as a kid I had the ability to read in public. I smile at every kid I see clutching a book in one hand and their parents hand in the other. My immediate thought is, that was me! In a restaurant, I could block out noise and focus solely on the book in front of me. Now I struggle to read in public, the world seems so loud and I have trouble tuning it out to focus on the words in front of me. I do think this made me more flexible and open to audiobooks. Now, I can enjoy books as I ride the train by listening instead of reading and that ends up working out nicely. I do think that in the past I struggled with retaining audio information. But once I started learning Spanish something in my brain clicked and made it possible.
I read poetry now. I used to hold myself to genres I knew I liked but after enough reading within my narrow confines, I exhausted my good options. I was still hungry for the mental stimulation and transportation a book can give you, so I reached to previously unexplored genres. For me, that reach led to poetry.
I used to have a rule that I had to finish every book I started. I thought it was unfair to judge a book and give up on it before it had its full chance. I also used to force myself to read books I considered an essential part of the canon until I realized that’s a really stilted relationship to books. I trust my taste now and have relaxed more.
In the past, I exclusively read physical books. The experience of holding a book and collecting them on a book shelf was important to me. Then the reality of carrying books from apartment to apartment every time I moved made my bookshelf less glamorous. I was keeping every book I read, which had gotten out of control. So I switched to writing down notable passages from each book into a separate notebook, which then allowed me to get rid of the book without losing any important information. Occasionally, I’d copy pages from a book and paste them into that notebook. All of this led me to realize that you can have both a quality physical book collection AND a quality e-book collection. That e-books offer benefits physical books don’t (the ability to click a word and have it immediately show you the definition, the option to highlight important passages rather than take the time to write them out in a separate notebook, etc.). I now read e-books a majority of the time, I wish I hadn’t been so resistant to them in the beginning.
Thinking back before Goodreads or my discovery of book information on the internet, I used to browse with an open mind. I’d look at bargain bin titles and pick the ones that struck me. Each book had the opportunity to get picked and all it had to do was strike me. I think the process was a bit fairer and ultimately I was the one deciding on my tastes alone. Now I think I’m more influenced by others in my choice of what to read. Currently, the majority of the time I take my book recommendations from friends on Goodreads. But even if I hear of a book outside of the internet, I research it on the internet before deciding to read it. I don’t go in nearly as blind as I used to. There’s just such a large volume of books placed in front of me by my Goodreads friends alone, I don’t need to go digging to find my own options to sort through. Those options are just presented to me, though I’m sure this leaves quality books out of my life simply because my internet friends haven’t read them.
I look forward to my next decade being filled with changes in how/what I read and now that I’ve gotten that general navel-gazing out of the way, here are my standouts from 2019:
N.K. Jemisin and Elena Ferrante: I plan on reading everything these two authors write and plan on being really sad when I run out their stuff to read (on to re-reading at that point?)
Tana French: She came to my attention this year and how have I been sleeping on this one? What quality, quality prose.
Becoming by Michelle Obama: <3 <3 <3
The Recovering by Leslie Jamison: I saw her in person while she promoted Make It Scream Make It Burn and thought I'd catch up on her back catalog. Glad I did, I was a bit hesitant because I'm burnt out on addiction memoirs but I think this had something unique to contribute.
Thick: And Other Essays by Tressie McMillan Cottom: Her essays have this magical quality of being equal parts academically dense, easily readable, and thought-provoking. I don't re-read much, but I will re-read this.
The Door by Magda Szabo: This has been sitting on my to-be-read shelf for a while and I was endlessly putting it off. One of those books where you look at it and go, "how did I end up getting this one again? Who recommended it? What was I thinking?". In an effort to clear the ones on my shelf that I've had the longest, I picked this up expecting to "did-not-finish" it. I did in fact finish it and it left me fantastically unsettled. I still am not fully sure what to make of it and may re-read it as well.
The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton: I am a sucker for a whodunnit and this was a proper whodunnit. It was absolutely delightful! I'm not a fan of thrillers so I selfishly hope the trend is moving away from mystery stories being told as thrillers to mysteries being presented as whodunnits (away from the question of why a murder is committed which can be an emotionally exhausting and dark ride, to what/how a murder is committed which can be a fun puzzle to solve).
Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion by Jia Tolentino: She spoke at a bookstore near me and I'm kicking myself for missing it. This book is incredibly insightful and is on my favorite books of all time list, for sure.
Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe: Picked this up based on a recommendation, not really based on Irish interest if I'm honest. History isn't in my preferred genres either, but this book did a fantastic job of reeling me in.
Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators by Ronan Farrow: I didn't realize he was a contributor towards breaking the Weinstein story and in this ignorance, was not interested in continuing to saturate the topic of sexual misconduct towards women with what men have to say about it. But I was wrong and think he's actually the perfect person for this particular topic given his relationship with his sister Dylan and Woody Allen's misconduct.
There There by Tommy Orange: I can see why Barack Obama picked this as one of his favorites last year, it deserves every bit of the high praise it is receiving...more
It’s finally happened—I’ve gotten close before, but 2018 is the first year I’ve read over 100 books. I keep thinking I’m going to read less and focus It’s finally happened—I’ve gotten close before, but 2018 is the first year I’ve read over 100 books. I keep thinking I’m going to read less and focus on other pursuits (Spanish in particular) but for whatever reason that ends up not happening. Here are a few highlights from my year in reading:
1. N.K. Jemisin: I don’t know what rock I’ve been living under, but she didn’t come to my attention until this year. How was that even possible? I greedily finished her Broken Earth trilogy and then started on her catalogue.
2. I’ve learned that not every book needs to be “challenging”. There is a time and a place for challenging writing, but sometimes I just need something to read on the train. I’ve learned to be more flexible in terms of my choices of what to read (which probably accounts for my high number of books finished during the year). There’s a joy that comes from the act of reading in itself, in relishing words and simple stories. That can be enough. I want reading to follow me even when my mind is distracted or I’m ill, in spaces where I don’t have the capacity to process something challenging. Letting the joy of reading into those spaces provides comfort when it’s needed most.
3. I selected a few other notable books from 2018 as particular standouts: Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi, The Changeling by Victor LaValle, Circe by Madeline Miller, and Feel Free by Zadie Smith...more
I aimed to read 25 books this year (I wanted to cut down on my reading time in order to devote some more time towards my Spanish studies), but I endedI aimed to read 25 books this year (I wanted to cut down on my reading time in order to devote some more time towards my Spanish studies), but I ended up reading 68 books and will probably reach 75 before the year ends. That's what happens when you have 3ish months of no driving, no sitting, and minimal walking-- you lay down and read until you run out of bookshelf space and then you pile up the books on the floor.
Reading highlights of the year: Elena Ferrante. I was in the middle of reading the Neopolitan series when I evacuated in a rush for Hurricane Harvey. When I was re-entering my apartment my first thought was "please let my Ferrante book be okay, I don't want to have to wait to buy another copy in order to finish it". That's how much I love that series. And the book was water free :)
Audiobooks are another highlight. Before 2017 I thought I would be too distracted to focus on an audiobook. I tried putting one on when I was having trouble sleeping and listening did the trick. I fall asleep listening and, during the next day, I find the spot in the book where I dozed off and start again from there. I'm also discovering that some books are made to be listened to and it's broadened my reading horizons.
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