2022 was something of a strange reading year for me. By the numbers, I read more books than I have in a year (at least since I started keeping track). But it doesn’t feel that way because many of the books were re-reads – this was the year of the re-read audiobook (re-reading my 2021 book review, I declared 2021 the year of the re-read).
At the beginning of the year, but noticeable by March,
I hit quite a reading slump. Unable to focus on reading with my eyes, I turned
to audiobooks, and unable to focus on audiobooks I haven’t read before, I turned
to audiobooks of books I’ve already read before. (This wasn’t just a reading
slump thing; I generally find audiobooks of new books hard to focus on, but I
can listen to a re-read with more focus and attention. I suspect it's because
when my mind inevitably does wander, I still know what’s happening.) I reread a
lot of familiar favorites – all of the Lord of the Rings plus The Hobbit, a few
Miles Vorkosigan books, a few in the Chronicles of Narnia series, The Hunger
Games series, and more. I also re-read a few favorites with my eyes (in my book
club we call this “eye-reading” and listening to audiobooks “ear-reading) but
not as many as I listened to.
Minus the audiobooks re-reads, it was still a
decent reading year. I kind of made up for the 3-4 month reading slump, and when
I couldn’t focus on reading as I was leaving Hangzhou, it was reading I turned
to for comfort and familiarity during my first few months in Accra.
Let’s get started!
Disliked
It Ends With Us, Colleen Hoover
We read this in book club, and it just did not work for me. I could write a whole blog post about how terrible Colleen Hoover’s writing is…but there’s already plenty of those out there. I will say this – she’s getting people to read, and I can only hope it acts as a kind of “gateway drug” to better books. It was the first Colleen Hoover book I’ve ever read and the last.
Resounding “Meh” & The Over-hyped
Crying in H Mart, Michelle Zauner
Everyone was talking about this book
for a few months. Every book blog, every podcast, every book magazine article.
She was even on the NPR game show Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me (obviously the
pinnacle of nerdy cool – she probably even got a free tote bag!). In some
aspects, I think this was just not the right book at the right time for me. But
I also think the book was just okay in terms of the writing and structure. I
think, if I had read it without the hype, I would have said: “Okay, that was
fine,” and moved on. But since everyone told me it was amazing, I was a little
too critical. It’s hard to judge memoir, sometimes, because, well, it’s a
person’s life and experiences. But, we can judge their writing and structural
choices! I think I also had a hard time relating to Zauner and her relationship
with her mother – it was just very different from my own, and while I like to
put myself in other people’s shoes and walk around in them, these shoes were
uncomfortable for most of the book.
Food-For-Thought Despite Not Really Liking It
More Than I Love My Life, David Grossman
This was such a challenging read, in
part because of content, in part because of the writing style. I would not
recommend this book to most people, but I’m still thinking about it, months
after reading. It tells the story of a woman who survived tremendous torture in
a gulag in Croatia. It’s a challenging book that raises challenging questions
about motherhood, sacrifice, honor and reputation, and love. I would recommend
this book to anyone with an interest in the Balkans, the themes listed above,
and anyone who enjoyed Sophie’s Choice. (No, I’m not kidding about the last part.)
(You might be wondering why I read it? Book Club! - funnily enough, it was one of the few book club books I finished in 2022. I've gone back and finished a few more, but I really, really struggled to finish book club books this year - the lack of focus just made it really hard to read something not of my own choosing.)
Best Re-Read
Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China, Jung Chang This was probably the third time I’ve read this book. I read it years and years ago in high school, and it was one of the books that sparked my interest in China. It’s an incredible story of China during the Cultural Revolution. The story does focus on years before the Cultural Revolution and after, but the main part of the book focuses most on this time. If you have any interest in China, or simply man’s inhumanity to man, read this book. I think anyone who lives or has lived in China should read it because it. But I also think people who have no interest in China should read it, because it is a very human story, not just a Chinese cultural story.
Favorites of 2022 (in reading order)
As I thought about my favorite books of the year, the books that appear here are
the books that stuck with me, and will probably continue to stick with me. They
weren’t necessarily my favorites in that I loved the content. But they did get
under my skin, challenge me, make me think, make me wonder, make me question.
Ultimately, they were books that showed me a little more about what it means to
be human.
In This House of Brede, Rumer Godden
This is a very human story about a
woman who becomes a choir nun in a Benedictine monastery. It is not dull and
boring, as one might expect from both the content and the cover. It’s a
realistic and loving portrait of the nuns and sisters in convent, their
struggles with each other, their faith. It’s a little hard to get into the
writing style but keep trying – after the first chapter it gets easier. The deep
and authentic faith of the nuns left an impact on me, and I found myself
thinking about this book throughout the year, even as I reflected upon my own
imperfect faith. They were imperfect and so human – but loved God and sought to
know him more. They didn’t take orders because they were particularly holy, but
rather sought God despite their imperfections.
Women Talking, Miriam Toews
Based on a true story, a community of
Mennonite women from a colony in South America get together to discuss whether
or not they are going to leave their community or stay because of terrible acts
against them by several men in their community. Over several months, even years,
in the night, women were being raped by men in their community – they were
drugged with cow tranquilizers, and then were told by the spiritual leaders they
were under spiritual demonic attack.
This is not an easy book to read but it was
a really incredible story. The story is “told” by the only man in the community
they can trust, mostly because he is something of an outsider and not part of
the conspiracy. The women are asking him to write down their conversation,
because they cannot read and write.
I know I’m not doing justice to this story –
it’s hard to describe! I think it’s a really compelling and challenging look at
religion and faith, a challenge to closed spiritual communities that rule by the
letter of the law, rather than the spirit; when there’s no room for grace and
mistakes, mistakes and sins get covered up, and fester and cause even more
horrific sins. These events really took place, which is all the more disturbing.
Here’s a link to a National Geographic article about the Mennonite colonies in
South America:
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/photography/article/mennonites-bolivia-busque
And an article about the true events of this novel:
https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-48265703
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, Gabrielle Zavin
Winner of the 2022
Worth-the-Hype Award! (Awarded by me)
The friendship story of two video game designers, friends
from childhood, their rise to fame and all the accompanying struggles. This book was truly a beautiful book. The initial description of the book
did not grab me but ultimately, this book is about friendship and storytelling,
and everything in between. It’s literary fiction, but accessible (often literary
fiction isn’t accessible but this doesn’t try too hard). This might be my
favorite book of 2022.
The Marvellers, Dhonielle Clayton
My sister recommended this book to me,
comparing it to Harry Potter and Ruby Bridges – an unusual pairing. The main
character is an elevent year old Conjuror who has been invited to study at the Marvellers' training institute. She is the first Conjuror to study there, and therefore faces tremendous
prejudice and discrimination – they do not want Conjurors at their school (hence
the Ruby Bridges connection). This is middle grade fiction, and handles the
heavier themes well; you don’t feel like it’s homework, but you learn through
the story and experience of the main character. It contains the delight and
marvel of Harry Potter. Remember that first time reading The Sorcerer’s Stone
and all the wonder and delight of discovery of that book? The Marvellers has
that spark of wonder and amazement, that creative world-building delightfulness
but with more serious themes than Harry Potter.
A Few Runners-Up
The 57 Bus: A True Story of Two Teenagers and the Crime that Changed Their
Lives, Dashka Slater
The story of an alleged hate crime, The 57 Bus follows the
story of two teenagers, one a non-binary teenager, the other a young Black man
from the “wrong” side of town. This book explores both sides of the story,
explores both young person’s experience, motivations. It is not an easy read but
I think it’s an important one. It challenges…many assumptions (on both sides)
and offers a raw but balanced account of what happened that day. It’s also, at
its core, a story of forgiveness and redemption.
Once again, it stuck with me;
I’m still thinking about it. It wasn’t my favorite in terms of content (because
hate crime isn’t exactly something I want to read about every day), but I was
significantly impacted by it. I think we are living in a world where this kind
of incident may happen more and more as the divide between values and beliefs
gets wider and wider in society. I don’t think this book offers definitive
answers, but it shows two humans (in fact many humans – their parents and
friends and communities) wrestling with what it means to be belong, what it
means to interact with people who may or may not agree or believe in your
lifestyle and worldview.
Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives of North Koreans, Barbara Demick
A
nonfiction work that follows the lives of four or five North Koreans. I knew
little to nothing about North Korea, and found this book fascinating and
heartbreaking. All of the subjects of the book had defected to South Korea, and
the book explores their lives in North Korea, as well as a little about what the
transition from North Korea to South Korea was like.
Human Acts, Han Kang
One of my students recommended this book to me. It’s
about the Gwangju Massacre in South Korea in the 1980s. It’s not an easy read (I
seem to be saying that a lot in this review) in part because of content, and in
part because of style. It plays around with narrative point of view that some
might find a bit challenging and annoying (but I thought it was kind of
brilliant). The book follows the stories of different people effected by the
massacre, all connected by a boy they all knew, who was killed in the massacre.
The Unquiet Dead, Ausma Zehenat Khan
The first in a detective series, The
Unquiet Dead follows the investigation of what seems to be a straightforward
death or murder, but of course, is not. Esa Khattack is the head of Community
Policing in Toronto, focusing primarily on the Muslim community. It becomes
evident, throughout the investigation, that the dead man was connected to the
Srebrenica massacre in Bosnia in 1995. Once again…this is not an easy read, but
it taught me about an horrific event that I was aware of but not really.
I guess
Man’s Inhumanity to Man was a common thread across my reading this year; I'm not
sure why (I actually read even more books this year that dealt with this theme). The story took me by
surprise, because I wasn’t expecting the Bosnia connection, and I found it hard
to put down. It’s not quite in my favorites list, in part because I think there
were some flaws in the plotting and character development (being the first in a
series, it was trying to establish some things about the main characters that
didn’t quite gel with the main plot).
Just For Fun (Not necessarily great
literature or a favorite, but a fun read nevertheless)
So many of my books
this year have been heavy, heavy, heavy. So here are a few lighter reads that I
enjoyed.
Tokyo Ever After, Emiko Jean
The main character discovers she is the
daughter of the crown prince of Japan. This book has both Princess Diary and
Crazy Rich Asians vibes. It was a lot of fun – silly, but fun.
Thank You For Listening, Julia Whelan
A romance novel about audiobook
narrators who fall in love written by an audiobook narrator, so you definitely
get the inside-scoop on what it’s like to be an audiobook narrator. I liked this
book for the banter – I love good banter in any novel, but especially romance
novels. (After all, Much Ado About Nothing is my favorite Shakespearean comedy!)
A few open-door moments – easily skipped. The funny thing is that I “eye-read”
this book, although it’s read on audio by the author, Julia Whelan who is a
well-known audiobook narrator. True confessions: I do not like Julia Whelan as
an audiobook narrator! I know, I know – that puts me in a 1% minority. But, I
enjoyed her writing.
Book Lovers, Emily Henry
Another romance novel – Emily Henry seems to be
publishing a good romance novel a year. The main characters both work in the book
world – one a book agent, one a publisher. Again – lots and lots of banter. Also
a few open-door moments easily skipped. I enjoyed Beach Read, but Book Lovers
might be my favorite of her three most recent novels.
The Perveen Mistry series
The first book in this mystery
series set in 1920s Bombay is called The Widows of Malabar Hill. Perveen Mistry
is Bombay’s first female lawyer, and is asked to handle the case of three widows
whose husband has been murdered. Because Perveen is a woman, and the widows
observe purdah, she is the only lawyer who can truly speak with them face to
face. I really enjoyed these books. Perveen is a Parsi, a people group I don’t
know much about, and it was interesting reading about the Parsi culture, and how
they navigate through the dominant cultures of Hindus and Muslims in India.
Perveen, as a woman lawyer, faces a lot of scorn and derision, and must overcome
the challenges of being a working professional in a time when women were not
expected to work. My favorite of the series was book two, The Satapur Moonstone,
in which Perveen is asked to go handle the affairs of a dead Maharajah and his
widows. Palace intrigue ensues – it was so good! I can’t wait for book four to
be published.
What were your favorite reads this year? Any recommendations? What are you looking forward to reading 2023?
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Want even more book recommendations? Here are my past book recommendations.
Apart from friends and book clubs, I get most of my recommendations from Anne Bogel's podcast, What Should I Read Next? She's got a great format for her show, and I always come away with 2-3 books for my To-Read list. I also enjoy following Annie B. Jones on Instagram and her book recommendations (although she's moving to a paid format). She also has a podcast called From the Front Porch in which she recommends books. I recently started listening to a podcast on occasion called Literally Reading which I enjoy - two friends talking about what they are currently reading. It's a simple format, but it works.
