favorite books of 2022
past annual favorite book lists:
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I read 41 books in 2022. Thinking back on all my reads from the year and selecting my favorites has become a favorite annual tradition that I look forward to every January. This year included the formal introduction of an e-reader to my library—my stack of favorite books was feeling a little paltry until I considered that of these favorites, I had read several of them on my kindle via Libby (so I picked them up from the library to add for the full visual effect).
As always—without further ado and in no particular order, although with *asterisks denoting my very favorites:
*The Song Poet: A Memoir of My Father // Kao Kalia Yang
I only discovered this book because I happened upon it at the Deseret Industries and that is why sifting through books at thrift stores will always remain a favorite pastime. It is a gorgeous memoir of Yang's father, Bee Yang. When I began reading this book, I watched several YouTube videos of Hmong musicians singing kwv txhiaj (pronounced kuetsia), or song poems, to get a better feel for the musical and narrative tradition this book evokes.
Here's a brief explanation of Hmong song poems, which I really feel also captures the ethos of this memoir:
"Kwv Txhiaj, or Hmong Song Poetry, is the art form that perhaps best captures the zeitgeist of Hmong culture. ...[T]hese compositions have been used to pass down history and culture. Often melancholy, they speak of longing: for loved ones who’ve passed away, for a lost homeland, or for a family that life has forced you to leave behind. Linguistically, these songs are incredibly rich, using the most advanced expressions, metaphors, and descriptions that the language offers. As such, kwv txhiaj can be difficult to understand, especially for the uninitiated. However, the payoff is extraordinary; kwv txhiaj capture emotion in a unique way, acting as a catharsis not just for an author or singer, but for a people. They are songs of mourning, yes, but they are also monuments to the resilience of Hmong around the globe."
Kao Kalia Yang’s writing is beautiful and her accounting of her father’s and family’s stories is moving, the book itself a beautiful tribute. My favorite chapters were "Track 3 Brothers & Sisters" and "Track 4 Love Song." The book takes you through Yang's father’s childhood, adolescence, and coming of age in a mountain village in Laos, followed by the brutalities and horrors of war, Laos’ consequent expunging of the Hmong people (many of whom faced either genocide or made an escape to live as refugees), family life in the refugee camps of Thailand, and then decades of poverty and racism experienced as immigrants in the midwestern United States. The quiet grace exhibited by Bee Yang, Kalia’s father, is remarkable and this book is a beautiful account of a family and their experiences. Kao Kalia Yang has authored several other books that I'm looking forward to reading.
related reading: If you've never read it, might I also recommend Anne Fadiman's classic "The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down"? It's approaches ethnography in its subject matter—an accounting of the cultural clash between eastern and western medicine and traditions over the care of a young Hmong girl in California with epilepsy. If you're not very familiar with the Hmong people, this book was for me a great introduction to some of the traditions and worldviews of the Hmong, the Hmong who have sought refuge in California following political turmoil in their homelands, and most importantly Fadiman approaches her account with the utmost compassion for everyone involved in the story.
*Little Weirds // Jenny Slate
This was the last book I read in 2022 and possibly my very favorite, if I had to pick only one (but don't you dare make me choose). My copy is pencil-marked and dog-eared and it's like Jenny Slate peered into my soul many times over. Creative non-fiction forever.
Favorite essays (asterisks by very faves, obvi)
Treat
*Introduction/Explanation/Guidelines for Consumption
My Mother
Restaurant
Daydreams/Tides
*Color-Spirit
*Beach Animals
A Prayer
I Was Born: About to Bust
Nice Things to Do for Tipping Yourself Toward Gentleness and Simple Joy
Hillside
Important Questions
*Kathleen/Dog-Flower-Face
Letter: Super-Ego
*Creed
Kinship
Geranium
Blue Hour
From me to you, from me to everybody
(but also everything)
*The Force of Such Beauty // Barbara Bourland
My sisters and I all read and loved this book so it comes with a recommendation in triplicate! What a stunning novel (brief plot summary here). I have so many favorite passages; it was difficult to narrow it to a couple short ones. Bourland's writing is so visceral—that is the adjective I keep returning to, to describe this novel as her writing is dazzling and dizzying. The way the glittering world of a faux-European dynasty materializes and then swallows Caroline whole as she descends into its murky depths is masterfully rendered and discomfiting. (It was also kind of fascinating to read this just as the Sussexes' Netflix miniseries dropped. IYKYK)
"He touched you like he was invited, finding places to graze with ease, the inside of an elbow or the top of a hand, lingering on you until you lingered back."
"All fairy tales serve the same purpose. One woman's story, told to warn the others. Here is how I lost my feet; here is how I lost my voice; here is how I lost my children. Here is the moment I was given from my father to my husband. Here is where the danger lies: the man with the blue beard, the ogre in the forest, the tricky gentleman, the lying merchant, the prince in the tower. Fairy tales are not about sparkling shoes or white cats. They are about the ribbons that adorn, then sever, your neck."
All About Love: New Visions // bell hooks
This was my first bell hooks read and surely not my last. hooks has some striking observations about religious fundamentalism, romantic love, and children and discipline within this text. Many of hooks' writings and ideas about love, particularly her emphasis on the importance of community and friendship in our personal and societal conceptions of love, deeply resonated with me. I also found a lot of resonance between her ideas and some of the views expressed by Kate Bolick in "Spinster," another book I love.
"When we see love as the will to nurture one's own or another's spiritual growth, revealed through acts of care, respect, knowing, and assuming responsibility, the foundation of all love in our life is the same. There is no special love exclusively reserved for romantic partners. Genuine love is the foundation of our engagement with ourselves, with family, with friends, with partners, with everyone we choose to love."
The Bell and the Blackbird // David Whyte
There is a clarity to Whyte's writing that I really love and admire. Many of his poems feature the landscapes of human thought, emotion, and relationships, as well as actual landscapes. I loved these juxtapositions with their similarities and contrasts. I'm also looking forward to reading his book "Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words," which I've had on my shelves for a while. Another highlight of this collection of poetry was the many British Isle land-words.
favorites:
Lough Inagh
*The Bell and the Blackbird
Twice Blessed
Cleave
*Much Has Been Said
A Mind Shaped by Moorland
Blessing for the Light
*Winter Grief
Close Companion
Seeing You
Dream
Newly Married
Sleep
"but love may find / its fullest, most imagined / and most courageous form / when it leaves the abstractions / and safety of the timeless / and the untrammeled / to make its promises / amidst the fears, vulnerabilities, / and disappearances of our difficult, / touchable and time bound world." -Much Has Been Said
Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup // John Carreyrou
I read this after watching the hulu series "The Dropout" starring Amanda Seyfried and it was definitely my favorite non-fiction, non-memoir read of the year. John Carreyrou originally broke the story for the WSJ about the too-good-to-be-true underbelly of Elizabeth Holmes' biotech startup Theranos. He later authored this book and I am grateful for his courageous reporting, as well as for his sources, former employees who raised the alarm, the individuals who filed whistleblower complaints, and more. Having witnessed some complicated medical diagnosis processes, the fraud perpetuated by Holmes made my blood boil—her actions caused tangible harm to so many people whose medical and physical well-being was under threat from falsified data and misinformation. The evidence against Holmes is damning and I hope her story effects change both within the biotech industry and in how companies in that industry are regulated and audited.
Citizen 13660 // Miné Okubo
"Citizen 13660" is an early graphic novel (published in 1946, it actually pre-dates the term!) and memoir of artist Miné Okubo documenting her years in the U.S.'s Japanese internment camps, including the Topaz camp in Delta, UT. Okubo's artistic training took place in the United States, but she spent several years in Europe, even studying under Fernand Léger for a period of time. Back in the States, she was commissioned by the WPA to do a number of artworks in the 1930s (including this piece in the MoMA's holdings). American-born and a resident of the San Francisco Bay Area, Okubo was part of the contingent of Japanese Americans who were sent to the Tanforan assembly center in California and eventually the Topaz interment camp in Utah. Okubo's monochromatic ink illustrations accompany a sparse text documenting her life during those years—the degrading conditions of the camps, the racialized treatment of the residents, and camp life (including that she taught art classes to the kids).
(A while ago I went down a rabbit hole of trying to find images of some of her murals and mosaics for the WPA and other governmental agencies, but I wasn't able to find much, as it seems many of the original structures or buildings where she constructed these have sadly been demolished; Wikipedia did have this mural image though!)
The School for Good Mothers // Jessamine Chan
This novel was gripping and a great book club read. It's a little bit of a psychological thriller and fascinating treatment of race within the context of modern motherhood set in a dystopian alternate universe. It is such an inventive premise and Chan's afterword about CPS prompted a lot of discussion and further reading among our book club group.
Poison for Breakfast // Lemony Snicket
(not pictured; borrowed & read from my sister's shelves during a summer visit)
I will always and forever love everything Lemony Snicket (née Daniel Handler) writes. And books about writing, especially so. This is a really excellent one—Snicket-y musings on thoughts and thinking, living and dying, swimming and being living, breathing bodies of water.
"I read something once that describes the sea as "all a case of knives" and I have never forgotten it. It is a description I admire very much, because it is so startling that you know no one else has thought of it before the author did, and yet so perfectly clear that you wonder why you never thought of it yourself. All good writing is like this. It is why a favorite book feels like an old friend and a new acquaintance at the same time, and the reason a favorite author can be a familiar figure and a mysterious stranger all at once."
"I have always suspected that if and when my actual finest hour arrives, those perfect sixty minutes, I might be in a body of water, but of course I am always, in a way, in a body of water. The human body is about sixty percent water, more than half of each and every one of us. Being a body of water is something you can say about absolutely anyone, so if you are ever asked what a certain person is like, and you cannot think of anything nice to say, you can just reply, "They're mostly water.""
Managing Expectations: A Memoir in Essays // Minnie Driver
I listened to this on audiobook and highly recommend it in that format (it includes the loveliest bonus chapter of Minnie in conversation with her friend, the writer Emma Forrest). Minnie Driver is a wonderful writer and these essays carried so much warmth and emotional depth. Her writing is delightful and her turn of phrase is so distinctive. I loved the essays and stories about her childhood, recollections about her English teachers, acting school, and a Malibu wildfire/maritime incursion (that phrase!). The chapter about her mother's experience with cancer was so deeply moving and poignant. And lastly, I loved her musings on creativity, including the role/effect of restrictions upon our creativity and the potential inherent in the notion of creativity—that there is always something new to create and how this motivates us as humans.
Sorry for Your Troubles // Pádraig Ó Tuama
I was first introduced to Pádraig Ó Tuama's work through the popdcast OnBeing. He hosts OnBeing's podcast "Poetry Unbound," which I still haven't actually listened to, but he was a guest on a regular OnBeing episode and it was incredibly lovely so I tracked down one of his books. I love this preface from Ó Tuama: "Many of the poems in this book were written as responses to hearing the stories of people hwo lived through troubles. The poem titles have spaces between each letter as a way of indicating the importance of silence, listening, grief and the things beyond words." I found many of his poems to be quiet meditations on the melancholy and world-worn parts of life.
favorites:
[ t h e ] n o r t h [ e r n ] [ o f ] i r e l a n d
T h e F a c t s o f L i f e
P o s t c a r d s t o t h e c e n t r e
B u r y t h e H a t c h e t
A n d i s n ' t i t t r u e f o r a l l o f u s
I n t h e b e g i n n i n g , p a r t I I
T h e Q u e e n ' s I r i s h
"That you will learn most from the situations / you did not choose." -T h e F a c t s o f L i f e
*The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion, Vol. 1 // Beth Brower
This is exactly the type of bookish-heroine cozy fiction that I always need. I was first introduced to Emma by my friend Adrienne, and at her recommendation purchased the first several volumes together so I wouldn't have to wait long before reading the next one. I read Vol. 1 in December, so I'm looking forward to having some more cozy fiction to delve into this winter.
And Yet: Poems // Kate Baer
This is Kate Baer's third volume of poems and I loved it as much as her first (her second, of found poems, is lovely too but Kate's own words always speak to me the most). With a long list of favorites, I feel like at that point you should just take my word for it and read it, but as is my wont and tradition, the list-within-a-list:
Beach Body
*There Are Days
*Ideal Heaven
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up
Can the Universe Be Poetic Without a God?
Bliss
Hot & Bothered
2022
The Garden of Eden: Updated Jacket Copy for the Modern World
*Astronomy Lessons
*Sad Olympics
*Halfway There
Fatal Flaw
"Remember the story of the lion / lost without his courage. / Too scared, full of fury, / the great wizard / standing in the emerald tower, / knowing the lion was already brave." -Halfway There
The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse // Charlie Mackesy
A lovely volume of the ilk of "Le Pétit Prince"—illustrated in gorgeous brushstrokes with accompanying pithy but earnest dialogue between the characters that served up many beautiful reminders of what it means to live and be human.
Good Bones // Maggie Smith
Before reading this collection, I had only read "Good Bones" by Maggie Smith, which I loved as soon as I first discovered it. Maggie Smith's work considers the heights and depths of humanity, shadows and light alike. I love how her poems walk this line between the two and acknowledge the reality and impact of both—the beauty and good we aspire to, but also the stark reality of world we have inherited—a hopeful realist, you could say.
*First Fall
This Town
Twentieth Century
London Plane
*At your age I wore a darkness
Past
Size Equals Distance
Harrowing
*Rough Air
The Mother
*Good Bones
Poem with a Line from Bluets
*Rain, New Year's Eve
Beautiful World, Where Are You? // Sally Rooney
Going to link my Goodreads review for this one as I don't have a lot to add to what I said there. I appreciated this novel as the headspace of Rooney's characters resonated a lot with the general millennial-societal-grappling that I and many of my friends are facing.
/ / / /
honorable mentions:
The Human Condition // Hannah Arendt
Including this on the list not because it's a favorite but because I toted this absolute TOME around for 9 months out of the year and am still in disbelief that I was actually able to finally finish. "The Human Condition" provided an interesting theoretical background to some of my thinking around life in this modern age of influencers and fast fashion and ethical consumption, which was an unexpected takeaway. Arendt's views on the role of pluralism in human societies are fascinating and gave me a lot to consider as I read this book. It was definitely one of the more intellectually challenging texts I have read—very dense, very cerebral, and very grounded in centuries of political theory that I've not specifically studied or read. Due to my Italian civilization classes in college, I could keep up with the references to the organization of society and classes in Ancient Rome. The Ancient Greek political history was a little more muddled for me—I was mainly going off of my childhood PBS consumption and my 8th grade "Greek-opoly" board game project (lol). Arendt is also a bit of a purist, so her polyglot footnotes are a fun (?) challenge as well—I could hold my own with the Latin (due to my study of Italian) and French (thanks to a semester in college), but I was always at a bit of a loss when she moved into German or Greek.
The main theory Arendt posits in this book regards the interrelatedness but also mutual exclusion of labor, work, and action and how these things are implicated or involved in the private, public, and political realms. I can't even begin to explain this briefly so I will defer my further thoughts to another post another time. But of everything I read last year, this is what feels most like an accomplishment.
House Made of Dawn // N. Scott Momaday
My Goodreads review, which is much more detailed as to my thinking around this book, can be found here. Although I didn't particularly care for this novel, I loved Momaday's writing and hope to seek out more of his work—I have a book of his poetry that I'm really looking forward to reading. My favorite passages in this book were the preface and also a scene of a desert thunderstorm that was so stunning and striking in its accuracy. From the preface:
"My parents and I were a camp within a camp, and we supported each other in many ways. My mother was a writer, and she was securely grounded in the English language and literature. She gave to me a love of words and books. My father was a visual artist and a Native American whose first language was Kiowa. From him I learned a good deal about painting and would become a painter myself. Moreover he told me stories from Kiowa oral tradition when I could first find my way among words. Later my interest in and knowledge of the oral tradition would shape my work as a writer and a professor of literature. From both my parents I received the gift of inspiration."
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