12 Books for 2022
Dear Everyone on Earth,
Lovely to see you again. Welcome to my yearly confession time. 2022 was a pretty good reading year. I didn’t end up reading all the things I wanted to or bought specifically, but it was still somehow good. In 2021 (gosh, the years keep coming and they don’t stop coming) it seemed like the problem was finding things that I wanted to read, but this year that was not so hard, possibly because I now keep a massive list of things that sound good in Notion (we are talking about 1500 titles). It’s very good to have a big pool to think about and sort through, and actually, it helps you identify the best of the best.
A Material Analysis of My 2022 Reading Year:
Audiobooks
February – A World Lit Only By Fire
March – Chemistry by W. Wang
April – The Plot
July – Run Towards the Danger
October – Affluenza
November – The Anthropocene Reviewed
Kindle
January – The Gift of Wings, L.M. Montgomery biography
Physical Books
May – Status Anxiety
June – Henry VIII: A Life
August – White Ivy
September- The Department of Speculation
*DNF – Fury by S. Rushdie
December – Chalkdust in My Blood
Now I will say a few things about these books by category:
Audiobooks:
Two of the audiobooks I heard this year have actually already been reviewed in some of the (very few) blog posts that I wrote this year. And yet I am a blog. So there. “A World Lit Only By Fire” was a 14 hour long history of the Middle Ages written by someone who despises the Middle Ages and everything that went on there. It was fine, I learned a lot about Popes, when I have never really intended to learn about Popes. I was lonely in February and it passed the time, although this is pretty much the “dark and dirty” dismissal of the Middle Ages that scholars have mostly come away from.
“Run Towards the Danger” is a BEAUTIFULLY written memoir by Canadian actress Sarah Polley, and I probably will re-read it someday, although one chapter in particular, about an ex-Canadian broadcaster’s sex offenses is particularly hard reading. But, there are other beautiful bits, and basically, I appreciate when people get a chance to tell their stories. This was a WONDERFUL listen, and one of my favourites of the year.
At some point in the fall I heard “Affluenza” on audio, a book I have been meaning to read since I picked in up in a bookshop in 2012 but didn’t buy it. It was better on audio, as sociological studies and Non-fiction usually is. Its a book about capitalism that seems not to be allowed to use the word capitalism, and it is really amazing, that it said everything it did in 2004 or so, or at least before the advent of social media—the book talks a lot about how comparing our relative levels of wealth and things really hurts our psyches—and yes, this is BEFORE most people spent everyday using search engines to do just that. I think he was quite right, and that this is an important book, although the chapter on women’s beauty kind of annoyed me—I don’t know if it was because it was so obvious, or because it was one-sided (I don’t think much at all was said about men’s beauty) or because I felt a male sociologist studying this (oh so outside of the problem) seemed very patronizing.
I have not actually finished “The Anthropocene Reviewed” by John Greene, but I am perfectly fine with that. I plan on finishing it sometime I am trapped somewhere or on a long flight or train ride. It kind of sounds like a science book, but it is the most personal, emotional response to like, everything one encounters in life, and I’m not sure why I expected anything different. Right now I am kind of trapped in the reflections on a bunch of things that are a bit boring (sidewalks, Indianapolis, lawn care)—I know he is trying to make me care about them, and I am usually happy with off-beat takes on mundane things in small proportions, but this has been like, a lot.
*I’m not reviewing the L.M.M biography again, it received it’s own blog post in January 2022, when I was young and full of life.
Okay, let’s get to the Physical Books, of which there are many:
“Status Anxiety” has been reviewed on the blog. In June 2022 I went on a holiday to England with my parents, truly one of the best holidays of my life where SOMEHOW we did so many things in about 6 days (celebrate the Queen’s Jubilee in London, went to the Tower of London, had a unforgettable private walking tour of Oxford as well as a Sheldonian graduation ceremony, went to Stonhenge AND Highclere Castle (Downton Abbey) it was insane). Somewhere along the way (I think the Tower Gift Shop?) I picked up small Penguin volume called “Henry VIII: A Life”—part of an amazing series that apparently already exists, covering what is known about every English monarch’s life. I would read them all.
I also read “White Ivy” which turned out to be kind of a thriller novel, while I was bumping around travelling in June. It was good, fast paced, although I found the twist played out, because it is too similar to The Secret History in some ways. But actually, the dynamic between the protagonist and the people/family she is trying to BE is very interesting, and that would be worth a re-read, if I haven’t given the book away yet. I liked it best before it got to the thriller part.
In August I was once again very fortunately trundling around England again, this time for a cousin’s wedding. That was an amazing day. I also was able to drop in on a great friend, and see Brighton for the first time ever. (Gosh, just getting so personal in this blog lol). It was a very fun time all around, and I stole “The Department of Speculation” by Jenny O’Dell or something and OF COURSE I will give it back (but I haven’t yet) and I WANTED to write about it on the blog but I couldn’t contain my SEETHING ANGER long enough to do any such thing. Oh Friend, you are in for such a long rant when I see you next. Basically, the relationship dynamics that are described in it SHOULD NEVER happen (!!!)
In the fall I also DNF’d “Fury” by S. Rushdie. It had been very interesting up to a certain point, and it is about that moment in like 1999/2001 when life seemed very vivid (because I was a teenager) and those times seem just so different from now, and I love that—-but….when a daughter ruins her father’s life by knowingly and unregretfully seducing him—something that has never actually happened but certain types of men (apparently) and Bible writers seem to think that it does happen…well, you just can’t really go on enjoying yourself, can you?
In December I read a little book called “Chalkdust in My Blood” from the 1970s, published by a little press in Cornwall Ontario. It is about a teacher’s career in Eastern Ontario between 1920-1970 and it was very enjoyable, if very dated (definitely in the “we don’t use that word anymore” way. It tells stories, mostly about 1-room schoolhouses in the place in the world that I am the most fond of. If there is any land my bones are attached to, it is Eastern Ontario. (More to come on Eastern Ontario in future, I am sure).
So all in all, it was a worthwhile reading year. I feel like I’ve engaged with a lot of topics somehow. But some books were incomplete. Like, Status Anxiety never mentions the effect of capitalism on wealth/one’s self esteem, which Affluenza definitely did, but completely missed out on how a society rooted in patriarchy results in different expectations of women and men. Neither book engages with race at all—but racial stigma wasn’t discovered to underpin our societies until like 2015 or something. (That is the darkest of sarcasms). It seems…I have been reading some dated books.
Another example of the…insufficient depth… of some of the books I read this year is protagonist of the novel “The Department of Speculation.” She is so profoundly affected by the patriarchy—it is that system that has created her tiny, shrinking sense of self and shaped her belief that it is worth it to try and keep a man at all costs. Recently, my friend sent me a twitter account called “Man Who Has it All” or something, where someone has basically written out all the expectations placed on women, but reversed the gender to men, and although the subject matter is kept quite light: “DADS—have you bought Christmas presents for her parents? Planned your holiday hair routine? Moisturized your penis?” it points out how the patriarchal expectations are ingrained into every part of our lives.
I also got stuck into a VERY stupid (but STUPIDLY engrossing!) novel at the very end of the year, called “The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet” by Colleen McCullough. I just could not stop reading it before bed, and this proves that you cannot plan for everything, and that your reading life cannot, and should not, be “perfect.”