2022, Part 1 (January - June)
Before I started this newsletter, I wrote about my top ten reads of the first half of 2022.
Hi there! For this inaugural post, I figured I’d play a little catchup.
(I.e. this post is very long.)
What first prompted the idea of starting this newsletter (something I’d kinda sorta thought about for a long time) was a post I made on social media around the midpoint of 2022 about my favorite books I’d read so far that year. Some folks seemed to enjoy it, so here it is, again, with minor additions and amendments (such as the full list of 61 books I read in the first half of 2022, with sparse notes about them—what I’m calling microviews).
For now, as this continues, I think I’ll follow the same general format as the post below, but monthly, rather than biannually. At the top will be a list of all the books I read during that month, with a microview of each (probably a bit better or more consistent now that this is a thing I’m actually doing). Then, there will be short-ish reviews of each of my favorites from that period—the stand outs. The number of favorites/reviews each month will probably be inconsistent because we’re weird little inconsistent creatures, but my guess would be anywhere from 2-5.
So that’s it for introductory material. Enjoy 2022, Part 1!
The Books (more or less in the order I read them):
Sorry if these are hard to read on the phone; in future posts, when there aren’t, like, 60 of them, it should be more manageable. Give it a try on a computer if you’re struggling :/
This is the list of the 61 books I read during the first half of 2022, a Very Bad Year on a planetary, political, human scale, but a good year of reading so far (though I do readily admit that I’m absurd with the reading). They’re all good, most were great, some were phenomenal.
Brief reflection on this list as whole: I regret nothing. Going through and blurbing, I kept being like, “oh yeah, this was so good!” over and over (and also: over). There are so many more that I would write about in more detail if I had the mental capacity, energy, and time (but alas). I’m noticing that most are from the past several years, VERY little poetry (okay, so one regret), mostly novels, no short story collections. Interesting. I also see that some microviews are synopses, some are tiny reviews. Curious.
The Top Ten (in no particular order):
These are the top ten that rocked my socks from the list above. As mentioned, this list could’ve easily been longer, but (~gestures around, sighs~). The scientific method by which I chose these: vibes. Not a particularly happy or escapist bunch, but check them out if you want. Or don’t, because life’s too nasty, brutish, and short to not read whatever you want instead of what some dude on the internet said he liked ;)
Post-Traumatic (2022) by Chantal V. Johnson- Novel
Basically a much more interesting, compelling version of the protagonist I’m trying to write in one of my little projects, so, womp. Witty, dark-humored, flawed, angry, paranoid. Some incredible scenes I still think about (so so good). A lot about toxic family, terrible mental healthcare system, white patriarchy, but also friendship and humor, etc.
Good quote:
“Too scared to confirm or deny her suspicion, she acted upon it instead, quickly crossing the street to avoid the maybe-figure. She looked into the illuminated homes, with their promise of safety and comfort, and felt singularly apart.”
The School for Good Mothers (2022) by Jessamine Chan - Novel
Dystopian, all too real, devastating, so so good. Handmaid’s Tale-ish. What if CPS/courts had slightly more power (or, actually, probably just as much power, or getting closer as we speak) & wielded it slightly more problematically (or, probably, exactly as problematically as now)? And then to get your child back, you have to go to an experimental boarding school run by Aunt-Lydias-by-another-name with no oversight & extremely lifelike AI practice-children? This one may haunt you, but it’s worth it.
Good quote:
“By staying calm, they’re showing their child that a mother can handle anything. A mother is always patient. A mother is always kind. A mother is always giving. A mother never falls apart. A mother is the buffer between her child and the cruel world. Absorb it, the instructors say. Take it. Take it.”
Sandy Hook: An American Tragedy and the Battle for Truth (2022) by Elizabeth Williamson - Nonfiction
Horrifying, enraging, baffling, so so good. Very hard to get through, because of the subject matter. Worth it (in my humble opinion, but would never recommend to everyone). Goes through what happened first, then focuses on the conspiracy theorists who pushed the false flag narrative and made all these families’ lives even more of a hell. One of the fathers in particular worked so hard to reach out to them and convince them. Just incredibly well written and made-me-want-to-throw-things good.
Good quote (CW, deaths of children, seriously teared up just transcribing this):
“We ended our day as the last streaks of light left the sky over the placid building, the memorial stars on its rooftop the only sign that for 26 families, normal life ended there, in a crowded garage where the ladies’ auxiliary brought water and food no one would eat and played cheerful cartoon videos for the children who had survived, to distract them from the keening of parents whose children did not.”
You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine (2015) by Alexandra Kleeman - Novel
Absolutely bizarre and compelling and one of the wildest rides I’ve been on in a while (and so so good). Cultish snack foods with zero natural ingredients and incredibly surreal commercials. A version of The Newlywed Game for couples, where if they fail, they are forced to break up. Purposefully disorienting grocery stores with employees who are contractually obligated to not answer your questions. I dunno, you may hate it, but I freaking loved it.
Good quote:
“That was how I ended up going out with B to the all-night Wally’s Supermarket 15 minutes away on a night when dozens of teenagers hung inexplicably around the parking lot, posed darkly like crows, staring and not saying a thing.”
A Separation (2017) by Katie Kitamura - Novel
Quiet and profound, and so so good. We see the interior landscapes of a woman’s mind, now separated from her husband but sworn to secrecy by him. Then her mother-in-law calls saying the secretly estranged husband has been abroad working on a book and is now missing. The narrator leaves to go look for him. A synopsis like this simply cannot do the book justice, since every sentence builds the narrator’s consciousness so that we, the readers, can immerse ourselves. So beautifully written.
Good quote:
“In the end, what is a relationship but two people, and between two people there will always be room for surprises and misapprehensions, things that cannot be explained. Perhaps another way of putting it is that between two people, there will always be room for failures of imagination.”
P.S. Loved her latest novel, Intimacies (2021), when I read it last year too. Highly recommend it as well.
Disorientation (2022) by Elaine Hsieh Chou - Novel
One of the few novels with a graduate student as protagonist that I (as a former graduate student) think pulls it off and is fresh in its approach. Sort of like the show The Chair but more intense and satisfying for me as reader. The ending might’ve taught me how to end the novel I’m trying to write? It you are interested in cultural studies, history & fallout of yellowface, a dash of literary mystery, the awfulness of academic self-serving structures, the question of what happens when the thing you’ve built your life around falls apart (but maybe was never the thing you wanted to build your life around in the first place), the conflict between safe spaces and vigorous debate, between radicalism and playing it safe, where everyone’s a little bit awful and flawed and compelling and brave and cowardly, then this is the novel for you!
Good quote:
“Truthfully, she was tired of taking the hard way out. Why was ‘sucking it up’ and ‘pushing through to the end’ perched on such a high pedestal, anyway? These were the same so-called values that sent PhD students running headfirst into the open arms of antidepressants. For once in her life, she wanted to be selfishly and deliciously lazy. To embody the most abhorred word of her generation: unproductive.”
How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question (2022) by Michael Schur - Nonfiction
This is the most fun book on this list, from the creator of the show The Good Place (10/10, will rewatch a bunch more times). Basically, Schur had to do a ton of research into moral philosophy for the show, talked to and read a lot of smart people, and then decided to pass along what he’d learned in this book, written in a fun, down-to-earth way. It’s a nice break from some of the heavier stuff I’ve been recommending. It’s got witty turns of phrase and absurd hypotheticals and fun asides, and is about the downright uplifting project of trying to be a better person. If you took a philosophy course and struggled to connect to the material sometimes, this version makes it easier. It’s a good, useful, enjoyable book, and I bet you’ll love it.
Good Quote:
“But there’s a serious point here: the shifting of an Overton window often happens gradually, and we readjust to its new range very quickly, so there is risk in allowing ourselves to do anything we know is bad just because we want to. In fact, even with good intentions and level heads, if we give in to our lesser instincts too often there’s a far more likely outcome than ‘we become black market weapons dealers.’ It’s simply that we become selfish. We start to believe that our own ‘right’ to do whatever we want, whenever we want to do it, is more important than anything else, and thus our sense of morality concerns only our own happiness or pain.”
Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump (2021) by Spencer Ackerman - Nonfiction
Incredibly well researched and well written account of the rise of the War on Terror, supplying all the context necessary to show its many compounding disasters, the way it has been bad for all of us (though much worse for specific segments of society, as one might suspect). The book begins with a prologue called “The Worst Terrorist Attack in American History” about Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing which blew my mind (immediately after the bombing, everyone *knew* it was Muslims, for instance, and then even when they knew it had been a white guy, downplayed his blatant white supremacy, and then passed and enacted laws ostensibly to prevent more Oklahoma Cities, but in practice used exclusively against foreign Islamic groups, while homegrown white supremacist militias continued to grow, which… just… *throws up hands*), and then the book continued to blow my mind from there, bringing to light astounding errors in all the things I thought I knew. Utterly compelling, I basically wanted to transcribe the entire prologue here, but that was too long (Also you can read the entire Intro, Prologue, and Chapter 1 for free on Amazon using the “Look Inside” feature for the Kindle edition–take a gander).
Good quote:
“The response to Oklahoma City was clarifying. When terrorism was white–when its identity and its purpose claimed the same heritage as a substantial portion of the dominant American racial caste–America sympathized with principled objections against unleashing the coercive, punitive, and violent powers of the state. When terrorism was white, politicians and journalists recognized that such a response consigned their neighbors to an unfair burden of collective suspicion, one from which they might never escape. When terrorism was white, the prospect of criminalizing a large swath of Americans was unthinkable. When terrorism was white, the collective American response was to focus the machinery of its wrath anywhere else, sparing white supremacy the expansive violence America pledged against terrorism that was foreign, Muslim, nonwhite.”
All the White Friends I Couldn’t Keep: Hope–And Hard Pills to Swallow–About Fighting for Black Lives (2022) by Andre Henry - Memoir
From the first pages of this book, I was utterly gripped by Henry’s narrative and candor. I’m pretty sure I listened to the entire 7-hour audiobook in a day, because I couldn’t put it down, then I immediately ordered a hard copy. Some of the most compelling and instructive parts of this book, for me (white person 👋🏼), were the sections about his childhood friends, a white family, that had essentially adopted him as one of their own. And yet. As he shed his own illusions of colorblind American utopia, and began talking to them more frankly about his experiences, desires, and outlook as a Black man in this country, they made it abundantly clear that their love and affections were entirely contingent on ignoring his own experiences, shutting up, and just being grateful for the fact that they didn’t hate *him* as a Black man. They became some of the white friends he couldn’t keep. Early in the book, Henry makes clear that he is not writing toward a white audience, but rather “center[ing] Black political awakening.” But one of the valuable things about reading this book as a white reader is that it made me think a LOT about ways I have acted that might make me a white friend not worth keeping, and ways that I can try to be a better person: a white friend worth keeping around, moveable, a part of the movement.
Good quote:
“When I realized that the white people I loved would probably never join the movement for Black lives, I had to leave those relationships, because movements aren’t built with immovable people. But with every friend I lost, I gained something: an apocalyptic lesson, a piece of practical insight for nonviolent revolution, or a newfound freedom to be my best Black self.”
Homie (2020) by Danez Smith - Poetry
After reading this collection, I realized a few things. A) I need to read more poetry, B) the pure artistry of these poems is phenomenal, and C) the emotional heft of a single turn of phrase, wielded by Danez Smith, can be devastation or salvation or, incredibly, both. There is so much here, but one thing that stands out is, beyond the many bleaknesses of this time and place, there is so much love in these poems. Love for friends, for Black people, Black culture, queerness, community, the beauties of this world shining through the haze. Each poem is dense and complex and gorgeous. Rather than a quote quote, I’m going to just present the title of one of the poems, which is a poem all to itself (and then the poem as well, which will just about bulldoze your soul [in a good way] with those final 4 lines):
“saw a video of a gang of bees swarming a hornet who killed their bee-homie so i called to say i love you”
Link to the poem as it appeared in The Collagist (slightly different formatting than in the book)
Phew, okay. First, longest, six-month-iest post done! Stay tuned for more manageable content soon, say, August 1st-ish, now that month seven of 2022 is drawing to a close.