My top reads of 2022
So as I considered the books that stayed with me from 2022, I started noticing some interesting similarities — emergent relationships, maybe — among all the books I read.
Here are the ones that still haunt me like intense, lyrical little ghosts; maybe they’ll haunt you, too. In a good way.
So, over on Instagram, I posted my hits n highlights from 2022: all the books I called out each month, wrote micro-reviews of, hollered about to my friends.
There were 81 of them, lol.
So rather than list all 81 — you can find them all on my personal IG, @arthograph, if you simply must know — I started thinking about the overlaps, the builds, the enrichments among my most beloved (see what I did there? This month we’re reading Immortal Beloveds; it’s a tie-in).
I came up with a dozen reads, separated into three trios triangulated around a loose theme. You can listen to my patented deep thoughts around each of these books on the pod, but I’ll list them here, too, plus my Honorable Mentions in goofball categories.
The Delightful Dozen: A Relational Reading Journey
Interstices | Your Silence Will Not Protect You by Audre Lorde, Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto by Legacy Russell, and Soft Science by Franny Choi. Three books that interrogate, reframe, and re-form intersectional feminism.
Autonomy | Frankenstein, or, the Modern Prometheus, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, The Vegetarian by Han Kang, and Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan. Bodily autonomy versus social control in three short works of fiction.
Liminalities | The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson, Black Boy Out of Time by Hari Ziyad, and Whereas by Layli Long Soldier. Explorations of the in-betweens, the spaces of change, the transitional and undefined operating within – and often in service to – larger constructs: e.g., imperialism, colonialism, gender essentialism, the carceral state.
Lodestars | A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf, A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing by Eimear McBride, and A Ghost in the Throat by Doireann Ní Ghríofa. Self-determination, intentional embodiment, the sacrificial feminine in some of the most arresting, poetic prose out there. RIP, me.
Honorable Mentions, or, Goofs n gags!
from the pod
Old Dogs, New Tricks | The Odyssey, translated by Emily Wilson, and Beowulf, translated by Maria Dahvana Headley
The New True Grit | The Which Way Tree by Elizabeth Crook and Inland by Téa Obreht
Going to Hell in a Handbasket | Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel and Hades, Argentina by Daniel Loedel
My Skin is Crawling but I Like It | Mouthful of Birds by Samanta Schweblin and literally anything by Mariana Enriquez
Mind, Blown | The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein and Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson
Icons, Queens, Legends | The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson and Death in Her Hands by Ottessa Moshfegh
bonus for the blog
Paint Me Like One of Your French Girls | Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency by Olivia Laing, for wonderful essays on visual art, most of it modern; and The Hard Crowd by Rachel Kushner, wherein RK rides a motorcycle and writes razor-sharp critique about art, lit, and culture; TITANS OF THE PERSONAL ESSAY
The Poetics of Prosody | In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado, an Eileen Myles-like memoir about queer abuse — fractal and tessellated, mystic and incantatory; and Guestbook: Ghost Stories by Leanne Shapton, a monster mash-up of fragmented stories, art, and photography — oracular and unsettling
Sad n Sassy | Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black by Cookie Mueller, a diary-like essay collection careening around the East Coast underground in the 70s — undisciplined and super fun; and Sad Janet by Lucie Britsch, a messy-girl novel in the classic sense — a quirky Christmas miracle
Gods, Monsters, Messy-Mess | The Wonder by Emma Donoghue, Pure Colour by Sheila Heti, and Mona by Pola Oloixarac: we've got supernaturalism and fabulist sensibilities, we've got slow-burn plots, and we've got good lexical bones — beauties, all
You made it this far; very cool! Come on over to @littleoracles on Instagram for more synchronous chit-chats and my signature big book energy in real time, and don’t forget to subscribe to the Little Oracles podcast so you don’t miss an episode; we’re on all the platforms!
And, as always, take care, keep creating, and stay divine.
xx, aa
