Every Book I Read in 2022 Reviewed in One Sentence
I read 34 books this year, which pales in comparison to the 43 I read in 2021. I switched jobs this year, from clerical work at an accounting office to working from home as a virtual assistant. This change in lifestyle has left significantly less time for reading, unfortunately, but I read quite a bit nonetheless! In fact, I read three especially long novels this year: House of Leaves, Dracula, and Don Quixote. If I can’t read many books, I hope the ones I do read at least continue to be as monumental as these.
May my book choices for 2023 be just as fulfilling.
January
A People’s History of the United States
In an ever-ongoing attempt to supplement the poor education I received in my formative years, I cracked this book open and it cracked me open in turn.
Beloved
No single sentence could surmise the heartache imbued in this book, full of “too-thick” love and too-thick horror to match.
To Say Nothing of the Dog
The Importance of Being Earnest meets The Prisoner of Azkaban in this terribly English and delightfully wacky romp.
How The Word is Passed
Once Clint Smith has demonstrated his manner of evaluating how we tell the American story of slavery, you will never be able to approach an American monument without his words in mind.
The Awakening
What’s the point of waking up if the reality is no better than the nightmare?
February
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
Continuing to inform myself of our unjust justice system has been an upward battle, and this book was instrumental in demonstrating the positive feedback loop of racism that is mass incarceration.
The Fire Next Time
Being pretty far-removed from most things religious and Black, the essays in this book were eye-opening and of course, beautifully written.
A Black Women’s History of the United States
They’ve been putting up with major bullshit for a couple hundred years now.
Parable of the Sower
Yeah, this is the direction that society seems to be heading.
Hell of a Book
The title says it all, a gripping page-turner like this one keeps you guessing as to how it all pieces together right up until the end.
The Bluest Eye
Poor baby Pecola did not deserve this kind of life.
March
Rabbits
After I read this, I spent the following few days paranoid that I wasn’t living in reality and that any moment the fabric of space-time would collapse.
The Golem and the Ginni
The only thing better than one fucked up creature who doesn’t understand the conventions of humanity — that’s right, two fucked up creatures who don’t understand the conventions of humanity!
The Bridges of Madison County
I don’t find forbidden love stories like this particularly compelling, but it had the advantage of being short and sweet.
Hamlet
At last there is finally some genuine knowledge behind it when I cry out “Alas! Poor Yorick, I knew him well.”
In Cold Blood
And now that I read the true crime novel, I never have to read another one ever again.
April
The Gilded Edge
A sordid tale of just how malicious, scandalous, and rude a group of artists can be to each other (very).
May
How Long til Black Future Month?
NK Jemisin brings it with witches, dragons, and the peristent feeling that these weird worlds are very much close to our own.
Noor
Cool story about body modifications turns out to be an even better allegory for how we treat disabled people.
The Diaries of Adam and Eve
Okay, I will do this gender binary thing but if and only if it’s delivered in the clever voice of Mark Twain.
Longbourn
I guess I ship Mr. Collins and Mary Bennet now; this may as well happen.
The Sentence
As a person who once worked in a haunted building, yeah.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Hard to feel bad for him when he was awful at every opportunity.
June
The Brideshead Revisited
Holy fuck, this was simultaneously the most English and most Catholic thing I’ve ever read.
Maus
Tore my heart out; I cried and laughed many times.
Wuthering Heights
I would say that Heathcliff and Catherine deserve each other but they’re so awful that they don’t deserve a novel at all.
July
Kitchen Confidential
Anthony Bourdain’s writing feels like doing a line of coke, eating some caviar, and then taking a swig of bourbon, so these tales from the kitchen don’t dissapoint.
The Cartographers
The spiritual sequel to Paper Towns is here at last and it’s such a cool little academic mystery!
August
House of Leaves
Emerged from reading this crazier than ever, as with every academic text I’ve read.
Going Postal
The postal service once agains proves that it is important to the moral well-being of everyone in civilized society.
October
Gold Fame Citrus
As with Parable of the Sower, yep this is the direction that we seem to be going, so start learning how to ration water now.
November
Dracula
Somehow no single adaptation of this great work has ever conveyed the absolute ferocity with which Mina Harker adores trains, nor did they relay how beating Dracula hinges upon being two legal steps ahead of an overgrown bat.
Don Quixote
This book didn’t need to be this long, but given how much I laughed as I read it, I see why so many tales of errantry were written.
December
The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet
A found family story in space is precisely the sort of healing balm I needed to end my year on!
