BOOKS

2022 Booklist

In 2022, I read 57 books. That is down from 2021, a year in which I read 70 books, but I’m fine with that since I kicked off 2022 with the goal of reading fewer books more deeply. I did that.

  1. Pu Songling - Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio
  2. Nicole Hannah Jones - The 1619 Project
  3. Red Pine (translator) - Three Zen Sutras
  4. Octavia Butler - Kindred
  5. Miriam J.A. Chancy - That Storm, That Thunder
  6. The Dhammapada
  7. Boethius - The Consolation of Philosophy
  8. Knut Hamsun - The Growth of the Soil
  9. Vladimir Sorokin - The Blizzard
  10. Lawrence Scott Sheets - Eight Pieces of Empire: A 20-Year Journey Through the Soviet Collapse
  11. Timothy Snyder - Bloodlands
  12. Olga Tokarczuk - Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead
  13. Janelle Shane - You Look Like a Thing and I Love You
  14. Svetlana Alexievich - Zinky Boys
  15. Garry Kasparov - Winter is Coming: Why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must Be Stopped
  16. Phillip Charles Lucas - The Odyssey of a New Religion
  17. Jennifer Raff - Origin: A Genetic History of the Americas
  18. Peter Reinhart - Bread Upon the Water
  19. Anna Politkovskaya - Putin’s Russia
  20. Heather McGhee - The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together
  21. Ursula LeGuin - The Left Hand of Darkness
  22. Omar El Akkad - American War
  23. Elizabeth Strout - Olive Kitteridge
  24. Elizabeth Strout - Olive Again
  25. Eric Nguyen - Things We Lost to the Water
  26. William Neuman - Things Are Never So Bad They Can’t Get Worse: Inside the Collapse of Venezuela
  27. Serhiy Zhadan - Voroshilovgrad
  28. Andrej Kurkov - Grey Bees
  29. Timothy Snyder - The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America
  30. Ursula Leguin - The Lathe of Heaven
  31. Zadie Smith - Intimations
  32. William James - The Varieties of Religious Experience
  33. Lydia Perovic - Lost in Canada
  34. Benjamin E. Park - Kingdom of Nauvoo: The Rise and Fall of a Religious Empire on the American Frontier
  35. Omar El Akkad - What Strange Paradise
  36. Graham Greene - The Heart of the Matter
  37. Becky Chambers - A Prayer for the Crown
  38. Maggie Shipstead - Great Circle
  39. W. Somerset Maugham - The Moon and Sixpence
  40. Douglas Stuart - Young Mungo
  41. Graham Greene - Brighton Rock
  42. Lynn Steger Strong - Want
  43. Barbara Enrenreich - Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America
  44. Susan J. Palmer - Aliens Adored: Raël’s UFO Religion
  45. Graham Greene - The Power and the Glory
  46. Harrison Mooney - Invisible Boy
  47. Yiyun Li - The Book of Goose
  48. Ed Burmilla - Chaotic Neutral: How the Democrats Lost Their Soul in the Center
  49. Gretchen Sorin - Driving While Black: African American Travel and the Road to Civil Rights
  50. Patrick Radden Keefe - Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty
  51. Maggie Haberman - Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America
  52. Ryszard Kapuczinski - The Emperor
  53. Katherine Dunn - Toad
  54. Margaret Atwood - The Penelopiad
  55. Katherine Dunn - Geek Love
  56. Ovid - Metamorphosis
  57. Alexander Pushkin - Eugene Onegin

The past couple of years I’d made a point to read an equal number of books by women as men and to deliberately try to increase the diversity of authors I read. This year I decided to relax on that a bit and give myself more freedom to read whatever struck my fancy. As I result I ended up reading 27 books by women (45%) and a lower number of books by Black or Indigenous authors than in previous years. I actually don’t think it made much difference in the diversity of the authors of the contemporary books I read, but I ended up selecting more books from the 19th and 20th centuries or even earlier when the canonical authors are likely to be white men.

Other stats? Slightly more fiction than non-fiction, almost half American, a little over 10% Canadian.

I also joined the Reed alumni online book club, so some of these choices come from there.

Themes?

Religion, and books I meant to read in university was one theme. William James’ “The Varieties of Religious Experience” was actually the first book assigned in Religion 100 when I was at Reed. I transferred into that class a couple of weeks late and, depsite majoring in Religion, never completed the reading until now.

Ovid’s “Metamorphosis” also falls under that umbrella. It wasn’t in the syllabus for Hum 110 my first year, Apuleius’s “The Golden Ass” was. It was added to the Hum 110 reading list the following year. All of my friend who took Hum that year said it was their favourite reading. I finally got to it. It’s really good.

Related to Reed, books by recently deceased Reedies was another theme. Barbara Enrenreich’s “Nickel and Dimed” is a still fantastic read about what it is like to be a part of the working poor in America, and Katherine Dunn’s “Geek Love” is truly bizarre.

Another theme was Putin’s Russia. Timothy Snyder’s “The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America” and Garry Kasparov’s “Winter is Coming: Why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must Be Stopped” both make it clear that Putin has not been shy about his imperial ambitions for at least the past ten years and that the best thing that could happen for stability in Europe and the well-being of Russians themselves is for him to be soundly beaten in Ukraine and elsewhere. Sláva Ukrayíni!

Recommendations?

In fiction, I really enjoyed Octavia Butler’s “Kindred.” Elizabeth Strout’s books about Olive Kitteridge are excellent. Andrej Kurkov’s “Grey Bees” set in Ukraine’s Grey Zone is very good. Graham Greene’s “The Heart of the Matter” is colonial as heck but very good and referenced frequently in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s “Americanah”. “Geek Love” is all that, “Metamorphosis” is fantastic, and “Eugene Onegin” is very good even in English.

Non-fiction, “The Road to Unfreedom” and “Winter is Coming” are essential reading right now. Svetlana Alexievich’s “Zinky Boys” is a fantastic collection of oral history from the Soviet war in Afghanistan. “Nickel and Dimed” I already mentioned. Heather McGhee’s “Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together” does a great job articulating how time and again Americans chose to cut off their noses to spite their faces by doing things like draining and shutting down public pools and community centres rather than integrating them. She articulates that it doesn’t have to be like that.

Oddball recommendations on special topics: Phillip Charles Lucas’s “The Odyssey of a New Religion” is about The Holy Order of MANS, the group that was behind Brother Juniper’s Bakery, where I worked in high school. And Pu Songling’s “Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio” is the source for “A Chinese Ghost Story,” one of my all time favourite films, and bunch of other HK films.