November/December 2022 Reads + 2022's a wrap/2023's a go
14 books, 4 reviews, 4 nonfiction titles, 3 poetry collections, a fantasy trilogy, a couple novellas, a short story collection, a graphic memoir, & a partridge in a pear tree
Welp. We did it, gang! And, I’m only, like, a couple days late finishing this thing or whatever. (To be fair, today is the first non-holiday day of 2023, so I don’t really feel too bad about not getting this out on the 1st.)
Another year of reading over, and (as John Lennon would have us believe) a new one just begun. Hope y’all are surviving and thriving.
Apologies again for not getting together a November post (which I discussed here). Now that holidays and trips and visits and life things have settled for perchance a minute or two, it seems to have ultimately worked out for the best, since my typical reading load took a bit of a hit as well: it took me two months to read the number of books I have in the past read in one, albeit maybe only once.
Below are the 14 books I’ve read since October 31st with a microview of each (although, it appears my microviews are becoming a little less micro, whoops), and 4 longer reviews of my favorites, mostly focusing on poems, because I kind of failed in my goal to read more poetry in the second half of 2022, until I snuck a few in at the end here.
The Books, in the order I read them:
A Confederacy of Dunces (1980) by John Kennedy Toole - Novel (Literary Fiction)
A classic, semi-absurdist tale of a blustery misanthrope bumbling his way through New Orleans, attempting to become and stay employed, and running afoul of an interrelated and fascinating cast of characters.
Flipped: How Georgia Turned Purple and Broke the Monopoly on Republican Power (2022) by Greg Bluestein - Nonfiction
At first, I held off on reading this, because I figured I’d lived through what it would discuss and assumed it wouldn’t necessarily offer a ton more insight, but this book does a valuable deep-dive into the history of the Republican and Democrat parties in Georgia, as well as the main players and candidates, that made it definitely worth the read–maybe more for Georgians than non-Georgians, but I recommend nonetheless.
The Storm Is Upon Us: How QAnon Became a Movement, Cult, and Conspiracy Theory of Everything (2021) by Mike Rothschild - Nonfiction
I may have mentioned my perhaps unhealthy obsession with trying to understand the far right and their fever dreams: this is an excellent exploration of the origins, influences, and consequences of the Q movement and the ways in which it has become a unified “conspiracy theory of everything.” I loved it, and, though I realize it’s a bit of a niche subject, if you are at all interested, even passingly, definitely read this book.
Numb to This: Memoir of a Mass Shooting (2022) by Kindra Neely - Graphic Memoir
Fascinating graphic memoir from a survivor of the 2015 shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, who was an art student and later went to Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) in Georgia, where she began working through her trauma via comics, exploring especially the aftermath and PTSD as shooting after new shooting kept flooding the news, and trying to figure out how best to move forward.
*Foundryside (2018) by Robert Jackson Bennett (1st novel in the Founders Trilogy) - Novel (Fantasy)
Riveting fantasy, with well-developed and interesting characters (most of whom are working through trauma of one variety or another) in a fascinating world, with some nice plot twists along the way: compelling magic in which objects are imbued with a sort of mind to convince them to behave in altered ways, heists, oppressive class structures, and the consequences of seeking/gaining too much power (and who suffers in the process).
Chokepoint Capitalism: How Big Tech and Big Content Captured Creative Labor Markets and How We’ll Win Them Back (2022) by Rebecca Giblin and Cory Doctorow - Nonfiction
Fascinating look at all the problems with the way capitalism and tech currently function in creative fields–Amazon and the book industry, Spotify and the music industry, etc.--and why creatives are totally hosed under the current system, how any fix requires big systemic change, and how we could maybe get there, if enough people with power band together to try. Dense and at times over my head (as I was reading quickly before I had to return it to the library), but certainly worthwhile if you want to know why everything is bad.
*Shorefall (2020) by Robert Jackson Bennett (2nd novel in the Founders Trilogy) - Novel (Fantasy)
The second book of the trilogy keeps the elements that worked best in the first one going: more heists, further developments of the magic (with new innovations and uses), and exploring the fallout of the previous attempt to overthrow the oppressive class system, the ways in which revolutions can generate new forms of oppression rather than liberation, and a fraught discussion of what makes more sense: burning it all down or attempting change.
The Office BFFs: Tales of The Office from Two Best Friends Who Were There (2022) by Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey - Nonfiction
A book that came out of The Office Ladies podcast, which Ally and I listen to religiously, Angela Kinsey (Angela Martin) and Jenna Fischer (Pam Beesly) from the American version of The Office discuss everything from the chemistry they felt with cast and crew, to how they became best friends, to becoming mothers during the show to their journeys as actors/humans throughout 9 seasons, & then cap it off with a bit of the story of how the podcast was born–super fun for fans, probably the most feel-good, uplifting book on this list.
*Locklands (2022) by Robert Jackson Bennett (3rd novel in the Founders Trilogy) - Novel (Fantasy)
I found the conclusion of the trilogy highly satisfying and innovative. Again, without spoilers, it’s a little hard to describe the developments in the saga, but the magic continues to develop, the disparate threads are woven back together, the epilogue hermetically seals the story so that it will remain a self-contained trilogy: action, romance, sacrifices and insights, and some philosophical musings on what it takes to make a better world.
*Alive at the End of the World (2022) by Saeed Jones - Poetry
Absolutely beautiful, dark, and lively sublimation of various griefs into poems: grief over Jones’s mother’s passing (the subject of his excellent 2019 memoir How We Fight for Our Lives), grief over the agonizingly inevitable approach of climate disaster, grief over the unabated systemic racism and murder of Black people—and even though these griefs are weighty, these poems still manage to sparkle with innovation and incredible moments of levity and joy.
Remainder (2005) by Tom McCarthy - Novel (Literary Fiction)
Maybe more of a niche audience for this one, but I loved this wildly weird novel: a man suffers a major traumatic brain injury in a vague accident and is awarded an out-of-court settlement of millions of pounds, and then is inspired to use it to try to perfectly reenact scenes from his life that he can only catch glimpses of in his fractured memory, paying to remake an entire apartment building and hire people to play the tenants (the man who practiced piano in a precise and exacting way, the woman downstairs who cooked liver, etc.), then going further into staging elaborate reenactments of items from the news, spending hundreds of thousands of pounds to hire people, buy buildings, rehears and relive over and over. And then things really go off the rails–brilliant meditations on what it means to be inside a moment and what constitutes reality, and just some bonkers scenes that will stay with me for quite some time. Certainly not for everyone, but it got me good.
Intimations (2016) by Alexandra Kleeman - Short Stories (Literary Fiction)
These stories by a StoneWright Reads favorite Kleeman (author of 2015’s You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine reviewed here and 2021’s Something New Under the Sun reviewed here) each have some sort of looming menace, weaving between surrealistic and realistic in nature, and while some of these were a bit hard for me to connect with or understand, the majority left a lasting impression, and some rocked my socks.
*When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities (2017) by Chen Chen - Poetry
Incredible debut collection from a writer I know most from following him on Twitter, these poems bound from whimsical ruminations on love to the crushing weight of a mother disapproving of his sexuality, sometimes within a few scant lines. They explore what it means to be an immigrant, what it means to have other people constantly crafting narratives of who you are or should be while you are simultaneously trying to craft your own ideas and self.
*In Stories We Thunder (2022) by V. Ruiz - Poetry
Gorgeous book of complex and powerful poems that attempt to come to grips with past traumas and explain the imperfections of the world to the next generation: family, surviving sexual assault, motherhood, addiction, new myth-making, identity, and the desire for healing and a better world.
(Note: starred entries above are reviewed in more detail below)
My Top Four (in no particular order):
The Founders Trilogy (2018-2022) by Robert Jackson Bennett - Novels (Fantasy)
Our November pick for my Sci-Fi/Fantasy Book Club was Foundryside, the first novel in the trilogy, with the idea that we could continue the trilogy on our own if we wished, but then, with holidays and trips and madness, we decided to just go for the whole trilogy and reconvene in the new year. I enjoyed Foundryside so much that I definitely would’ve been in the continues-trilogy-on-his-own camp in any case. Anyway, it made more sense to review the trilogy as a whole to me, so here we go! The world, characters, magic, and settings Bennett creates are all very cool. Seemingly modeled on Renaissance Italy (maybe? my history is a little fuzzy), the city of Tevanne is controlled by several Merchant houses, behind whose walls, life is much easier than outside of them, where the protagonist, a thief named Sancia, habitates. There’s a lot about capitalism and social stratification and exploitation in these novels that undergirds the main action: heists, plot twists, revelations, skin-of-teeth escapes at the last second, and quick-witted plans-B. The Merchant Houses control the means of scriving, which is the magical foundation the society is built upon, and they are constantly trying to one-up each other. The two main characters we meet and follow for most of the first book (the cast grows and changes as the trilogy progresses) both have suffered some pretty major traumas and are trying to move past them as best they can, and the series as a whole seems like it could be broken down as an allegory for how hard it is to heal, but how it’s possible through love, collective action, empathy, and justice. The villains of the series at first seem motivated mostly by greed but as we get to understand them better, we see the tragedy of people making poor choices, either out of love and desperation, or out of a misplaced hopelessness about being unable to fix mistakes, or a wrong-headed idea of how to fix a broken world. Super compelling and accessible writing, and possibly my favorite part is the way magic works in this world. Items are scrived with symbols that can convince a cart on a flat surface that, no, actually the ground is at a 20 degree incline, so that the way it perceives gravity will send the cart trundling off under its own power, no internal combustion engine or horses required. Or a wall could be scrived with symbols that make it believe it is made of hardened petrified wood instead of standard wooden planks so that it stands stronger and longer. The only catch being, that if you can communicate with these scrivings, you could have a bit of a debate about the semantics (I know you think the ground is at a 20 degree angle, but what if I told you that you were supposed to start at 30 degrees instead of 0? Oh, they didn’t say you couldn’t start at 30? Then why not give it a try?). It’s super fun: the manic voices of the scrivings are entertaining, the innovations as the heroes begin to understand the magic better and the society as a whole develops in new and surprising ways is incredibly interesting, and the back and forth as people try to get around a scrived command is impressively creative. Most of what I’ve discussed so far is based around the first book, but I definitely found the way the story continues and evolves through books 2 and 3 compelling and surprising and enjoyable, and the ending felt earned and right to me. Very much enjoyed these!
Good quote: “I survived. I keep surviving, it seems. It’s taught me many things. After Dantua… it was like a magic spell had been lifted from my eyes. We are making these horrors. We are doing this to ourselves. We have to change. We must change.”
Alive at the End of the World (2022) by Saeed Jones - Poetry
Saeed Jones is a wonder and a delight throughout many mediums and genres. I read his memoir How We Fight for Our Lives (2019) back when it came out and loved it (very sad and powerful), he’s a delight to follow in Twitter (even as the platform burns), and he has an excellent podcast with Sam Sanders and Zach Stafford called Vibe Check that is a must-listen (at least once). So it’s pretty silly (yet potentially understandable, given that he’s so good at so many things, and I’ve been bad at reading poetry) that it’s taken me this long to read some of his actual poetry, the thing that is, like, his main thing. This latest collection is the only one I’ve read so far, but I plan to pick up his debut collection (2014’s Prelude to Bruise) ASAP as well. There are several serieses of poems with the same title that weave throughout the book, building on one another, making you see the previous iteration anew, and providing a tight structure to the collection as a whole. One of these bears the same title as the collection and is incredible in its conceptions/re-conceptions of apocalypse, the ways in which we can worry it to death or ignore it or even occasionally revel in it. Another series takes the form of prose poems that become a surreal portrait of a moment from a public reading and its aftermath, when he’s asked a question, answers it, and then manifests the answer in magical-realist ways. Throughout the collection there are ruminations on and explorations of the inner lives and legacies of Black icons: Little Richard, Paul Mooney, Aretha Franklin, Diahann Carroll. He continues to deal with the fallout of his mother’s death and his continuing grief and the ways in which that grief has shifted since publishing a memoir about it. He explores the current apocalypses—pandemic, climate change, racism and its brutality—with lines that are so beautiful and searing that you’ll have to take a minute and just be with them. If any book could be said to be perfect, I’d say this one would have to be in the running.
Good quote from “A Song for the Status Quo”: “…a white man stole the song from a Black man she gave the song to as an act of what she thought was love but, of course, was devotion which, as many but not nearly enough of us now understand, is often mistaken for love but actually is more akin to unpaid labor…”
When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities (2017) by Chen Chen - Poetry
First of all, just because I realized I was saying it wrong in my head until Chen made a point of addressing it in a Twitter thread once and it has stuck with me and seems important: Chen Chen is the poet’s full name (i.e. first name Chen followed by last name Chen), rather than a single, compound name, as I had been saying it in my brain. So just in case that’s anyone else’s experience, and in case changing the inflection of how you say a name in your own thoughts makes a difference to you, I just wanted to throw that out there.
Anyway, as with many an author I follow, I first came across Chen via Twitter, through long, thoughtful threads I would read about his experience in poetry workshops or grad school or daily life or as an instructor, and I would just be nodding my head going, “Chen is absolutely right” as I read on. And so, just like with Saeed Jones, it’s a little silly that it’s taken me this long to actually read his poems. I posted previously about being excited to read his latest collection Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency (2022), which you can read about here, but since I had both collections, I decided to go in chronological order, starting with this, his debut collection. First of all, the man has a way with titles; I’m a total sucker for a beautiful, wordy title. Then, there’s the foreword by Jericho Brown, incredible Atlanta-based poet y’all should read if you haven’t, which sings Chen’s praises. Then, of course: the poems themselves. Stylistically diverse but tending toward longer poems, there is a moving vulnerability and youthfulness in these pieces, in that they remain essentially hopeful despite describing all sorts of moments of strife: everyday racism toward Asian Americans or Asian immigrants or immigrants in general, being gay in a household that doesn’t accept homosexuality, not to mention the agonies of love and longing, among others. There’s an incredible heart in these poems that make you fall a little bit in love with the speaker whether you’re gay, straight, in a relationship, single, and no matter your gender. It’s everything I wanted from the person whose tweets I’ve liked, and more.
Good quote from “Ode to My Envy”: “I’m envious of the clouds who can from time to time / fall completely apart & everyone just says, It’s raining, / & someone might even bring cats & dogs into it, // no one says, Stop being so dramatic or You should see / a professional. My envy despises your more dramatic / & photogenic envy.”
In Stories We Thunder (2022) by V. Ruiz - Poetry
Ally and I had the opportunity to work with Ruiz (they/them) through our positions at the grad-student-run journal at Georgia State University, New South, where we published a micro prose piece called “Muñeca” (linked here and which I also discussed in a previous post here) and so it was super exciting to see that their debut poetry collection (blurbed by the incredible Ilya Kaminsky and poet laureate Ada Limón, among others) was due out this year, and then, once I got it in the mail, that “Muñeca” is included. In this collection Ruiz builds layers of relationships: past to present to future, traumas to healing and/or hope of healing, stories we’ve been told to new stories we tell. There is a series of poems where the speaker translates/updates Aesop’s fables for their child, which are some of my favorite poems for their tenderness and anxiety and desire to protect and warn and prepare. There is a haunting specter of sexual assault and its aftermath that pervades many of these poems, as well, which Ruiz renders powerfully, making the reader pause to grieve and rage and reflect before pushing us forward again. Ruiz mixes Spanish and English, steeping us in Xicana culture and tradition. It’s a beautiful and powerful collection that I can’t recommend highly enough.
Good quote from “Aesop Remix for my Hija: The Ant and the Dove”: “Hija, maybe the paloma thought about eating the ant. / Maybe it believed it would be so easy / to swallow it whole. // But it chose not to, / as in: there is always a choice.”
A Handful of Reflections on 2022’s 120 Reads, and a reading resolution or three for 2023:
A confession or two: my original Goodreads 2022 goal was 125 books. As it got to be late December, I knocked it down to 120 so I could hopefully make it. And I did, though maybe not quite by 11:59pm December 31st.
Now that that’s out of the way, in looking over this list, just a couple-few more or less accurate statistics (keeping in mind genres are an inexact science, and, even though I was good at math for a time and was an engineering major for a couple years, I was then an English major for like 9 nonconsecutive years after that, so most math skills have long since slipped away—Goodreads helped with some [but not enough] of these):
120 books
79 novels (41-ish literary fiction, 20-ish sci-fi/literary sci-fi/sci-fi adjacent, 15-ish fantasy/literary fantasy/fantasy adjacent, 3-ish mystery/thriller)
32 nonfiction titles (12-ish memoirs, 7-ish about mass shootings/gun violence, and a bunch of miscellaneous that I find harder to group into distinct subgenres)
4 collections of poetry
2 collections of short stories (1 sci-fi, 1 literary)
2 novellas (both sci-fi)
1 graphic memoir (about mass shootings/gun violence)
The vast majority (probably 90% or so) were listened to as audiobooks
Shortest book (the novella Auberon from The Expanse series by James S. A. Corey): 78 pages
Longest book (Seveneves by Neal Stephenson): 872 pages
Average book length: 329 pages
46 of the books came out in 2022
Another 32 came out in 2020 or 2021, so well over half are from the past 3 years
Oldest book: The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1940) by Carson McCullers
Anyway, I thought that stuff was kinda interesting.
Now, a brief glance ahead to 2023 for some nonbinding and inexact reading resolutions:
Read more than 4 poetry collections
Though I’m generally drawn to darker, heavier, more serious and fraught things, maybe try for a lighter book every once in a while, say once a month
Remain cognizant of and seek out diversity in my reading lists
On this last note, StoneWright Reads favorite, Megan Giddings, tweeted a little about this:
(the thread continues with her asking people to reply with any 2023 releases by Black authors, especially debuts and not-well-known names, and then the good people of Twitter have obliged, if you’re looking for any 2023 reads to add to your lists)
Reading outside my own generation, gender, sexuality, race, culture, nationality, ability, etc. has been, at least in my own recent experience, pretty endlessly interesting and great and worthwhile and good for (hopefully) making me a little less confounded by and/or bothered by difference, and I certainly can’t wait for some amazing journeys this coming year.
Happy 2023, y’all! I dunno if anyone’s into some audience participation, but I’d love to hear what things you’re looking forward to reading this year, new or old, regardless of genre, etc. Put some titles/authors in the comments if the spirit moves you!