In this last post of 2022, I’m looking at the list of 55 books I read this year and reflecting on my year in reading – while looking at a the books I plan to read during the holiday break. Here are the ten titles that stand out. Maybe there’s a good recommendation for you – or a gift idea for a friend who likes to read:
Still Life by Sarah Winman (Still Life was my immersion experience last winter. This novel takes place WWII-era Italy and centers on a young English man and an older art historian. I read it with my phone nearby so I could look at the paintings Winman references. The true sign of how much I loved this book is that I have not yet put it back on the shelf. First, the cover is so beautiful, but most of all, I want the characters to be a part of my daily thoughts.)
Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted by Suleika Jaouad (Definitely not a book for your gift list – but it stands out to me for its beauty and candor. As a young woman, Jaouad received a diagnosis of leukemia and all of her post-college plans disappeared overnight. After years of painful treatments and long hospital stays, she took her beloved dog on an extended road trip to meet some of the people she had corresponded with during her long recovery. I’ve read and loved many memoirs about navigating the loss of a loved one, but Jaouad’s book is about survival and how to keep going when everything you planned disappears.)
The Swimmers by Julie Otsuka (For days after reading Otsuka’s new novel, I could not get it out of my mind. It centers on a group of people who swim at the same community pool every day. When a crack appears in the pool, it leads to multiple theories, but it also shakes their reliable routine. It made me appreciate the importance of routine – how much we rely on it. But it also made me think about “cracks” in our world, for example climate change. It’s also about memories and memory loss. A parable? A cautionary tale? A reminder to appreciate the fragility of our relationships. I want to read The Swimmers again in 2023.)
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith (This one was special because my husband and I read it at the same time and then had our own book club discussion. It was also fun to read it because the last time I read Smith’s classic novel I was in my early 20s. It’s a very different experience to read it decades later, mostly because after taking many trips to – and reading novels about – New York City, I could picture the streets where Francie lived and understand more fully how challenging daily life was for people struggling to get food on the table in the early 1900s.)
Mouth to Mouth by Antoine Wilson (This one was a surprise to me. I didn’t know what to expect, but had read several reviews that sparked my curiosity. Months after reading it, the puzzle at the center of the story still pops into my mind every so often. It takes place in the first-class lounge at JFK Airport and centers on a man telling the narrator his life story. But the reader is left with questions about the storyteller’s reliability. The best description of this thought provoking and thrilling story comes from a review in Vulture. Maris Kreizman described it as “a sleek train crash of a novel.” That’s perfect.)
Lucy By the Sea by Elizabeth Strout (I read all of Strout’s Lucy Barton novels this year, but put this one on the list since it was published in 2022. What I appreciate about Strout is that her books read like someone is telling you a secret. I forget that I’m reading sometimes and imagine we are in Starbucks on a rainy day. I have my mocha and Elizabeth Strout is using everyday speech to say something about life and love that I needed to hear.)
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin (This book is on most of the end-of-year lists for good reason. I initially resisted reading it (bad decision) because I read that the main characters are game designers, and I know nothing about the gaming world. But, of course, it’s a book about people – that’s what matters. Its subjects are life and art and beauty and friendship. It also includes the best passages I’ve read about the joy of entering other worlds which some people do through screens and others through the pages of a book.)
Undocumented Americans by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio (A complex and honest book about the lives of undocumented people living in the United States. What most stands out about this award-winning book is the resilience of the people Villavcencio writes about.)
Foster by Claire Keegan (Small Things Like These is a masterpiece – and was one of my favorites of 2021. This one is equally moving. The NPR review sums it up perfectly: “Keegan’s output is scarce and her stories are as spare as they are heartrending, whittled down to the essential. If she has published anything that isn’t perfect, I haven’t seen it… More than most books four times its size, Foster does several of the things we ask of great literature: It expands our world, diverting our attention outward, and it opens up our hearts and minds. This is a small book with a miraculously outsized impact.”)
Stay True by Hua Hsu (Inspired by it being named of this year’s NYT 10 Best Books of 2022, this is the most recent book I’ve read. Hsu’s memoir centers on his college friend, Ken, someone whom Hsu initially thinks is too mainstream for them to be friends. Their growing friendship is chronicled primarily through their tastes in music, and Hsu beautifully captures that time in our lives when we are trying to define ourselves largely by what we are not. When Ken dies in a tragic carjacking incident, Hsu is adrift, trying to understand his friend – and himself – more clearly. There is a passage that made me stop reading and go find a pen and paper so I could write it down. It was not surprising to see this same passage included in the New York Times announcement of the ten best books of the year:
“You make a world out of the things you buy. Everything you pick up is a potential gateway, a tiny cosmetic change that might blossom into an entirely new you. A bold shirt around which you piece together a new personality, an angular coffee table that might reboot your whole environment, that one enormous novel that all of the fashionable English majors carry around. You buy things to communicate affiliation in a small tribe, hopeful you’ll encounter the only other person in line buying the same obscure thing as you.”
This is my last post of the calendar year. But I plan to read three books over the break so I’ll have a report in early January. One of them, Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, is a book I’m embarrassed not to have read yet. Robinson’s novel haunts me – primarily with guilt at not having read it – but also because I see references to it almost every week. I will fix that before the end of the year.
Have a wonderful holiday – and happy reading.
Sommer Reading 