I struggle to sum up this year. I read a lot, wrote a lot, walked a lot, stitched a lot.
I didn’t magically step back into the life I was living up until March 2020. I see no point in pretending that it’s possible to go back to the Before Times, or insisting we flipped a switch and now we’re back to where and who we were then. I don’t care if masks are mandated or not. We are in the thick of the COVID, flu, and RSV triple-demic we were warned about.
I go out into public less, especially in shared indoor spaces. But when I am indoors with strangers, I wear a mask. All of this is my choice. I don’t believe individual responsibility is the answer to a public health crisis, and I never will. And so I round out another year frustrated and brokenhearted at the state of things.
Which is to say: We are all of us changed by time and circumstance. I’m not angry that my life or my daily habits don’t look the way I imagined they could in 2019. The whole dang world has changed and I don’t think I’m entitled to a bubble that keeps me in some alternative timeline. So I stumble along, doing the best I can.
I feel, with a certainty I cannot justify or “prove,” that there are some fundamental parts that make up Me. No circumstance will ever shake my belief that books are a comfort, a gift, a radical act, a solitary joy, a gateway to communal understanding, and more.
So here is what I read in 2022. Mostly, I read at home. I listened to audiobooks while walking and cross-stitching. Or on the road. Actually, my #1 favorite way to “read” these days is playing an audiobook while my partner and I piece together a puzzle. I’d never experienced that before I lived through winter lockdowns. And now it’s something I’d never change or wish away.
My Top 10 Books:
Crying in HMart – Michelle Zauner
The Yellow House – Sarah Broom
Body Work – Melissa Febos
Nightbitch – Rachel Yoder
Interior Chinatown – Charles Yu
Bunny – Mona Awad
The School of Good Mothers – Jessamine Chan
The Only Good Indians – Stephen Graham Jones
The Devil Takes You Home – Gabino Iglesias
The Book of Delights – Ross Gay
What I Read in 2022:
1. Dance, Dance, Dance – Haruki Murakami, translated by Alfred Birnbaum (fiction)
2. Tarot for Change: Using the cards for self-care, acceptance, and growth – Jessica Dore (nonfiction/self-help)
3. Kill the Farmboy – Delilah S. Dawson and Kevin Hearne (fantasy/humor)
4. How to Live –OR– A Life of Montaigne – Sarah Bakewell (biography/history)
5. The Lion, The Witch, & the Wardrobe – C.S. Lewis (fantasy)
6. Crying in HMart – Michelle Zauner (memoir)
7. The Nickel Boys – Colson Whitehead (fiction)
8. Goethe: Life as a Work of Art – Rüdiger Safranski, translated by David Dollenmayer (biography/history)
9. The Yellow House – Sarah Broom (creative nonfic/memoir/history)
10. Circe – Madeline Miller (historical fiction)
11. Blood and Gold – Anne Rice (very bad, do not read this)
12. The Good Lord Bird – James McBride (historical fiction)
13. Tea Cup Reading: A quick and easy guide – Sasha Fenton (manual/esoteric)
15. I, Richard Plantangenet – J.P. Reedman (historical fiction)
16. When She Returned – Lucinda Berry (mystery/thriller)
17. Ugly Girls – Lindsay Hunter (fiction)
18. Body Work: The radical power of personal narrative – Melissa Febos (nonfiction/memoir/craft essay)
19. Nightbitch – Rachel Yoder (fiction)
20. Erectric Schlock – Aimée Lê (poetry)
21. Hotel Splendid – Marie Redonnet (fiction)
22. Zipper Mouth – Laurie Weeks (fiction)
23. Interior Chinatown – Charles Yu (fiction)
24. Quiet: The power of introverts in a world that won’t stop talking – Susan Cain (Meh.)
25. Breasts and Eggs – Mieko Kawakami, translated by Sam Bett (fiction)
26. Americana – Luke Healy (graphic novel)
27. The Mold Farmer – Rick Claypool (horror sci-fi)
28. Out Front the Following Sea – Leah Angstman (historical fiction)
29. Acute Melancholia and Other Essays: Mysticism, History, and the Study of Religion – Amy Hollywood (religion/philosophy/history)
30. What Shines From It – Sara Rauch (short story collection)
31. Would We Still Be – James Henry Knippen (poetry)
32. Here’s Waldo – Liza Olson (fiction)
33. The Overstory – Richard Powers (fiction)
34. Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning – Cathy Park Hong (nonfiction/memoir)
35. Rules for Visiting – Jessica Francis Kane (fiction)
36. Bunny – Mona Awad (fiction)
37. The School of Good Mothers – Jessamine Chan (fiction)
38. Hillbilly Madonna – Sara Wagner Moore (poetry)
39. Olga Dies Dreaming – Xochitl Gonzalez (fiction)
40. No One Is Talking About This – Patricia Lockwood (fiction)
41. The Death of Jane Lawrence – Caitlin Starling (horror)
42. Mouthful of Birds – Samantha Schweblin (horror)
43. The Only Good Indians – Stephen Graham Jones (horror)
44. Mother May I – Joshilyn Jackson (thriller/mystery)
45. Leviathan Falls – James S.A. Correy (sci-fi)
46. All the Pretty Horses – Cormac McCarthy (fiction … this is a romance novel)
47. Metamorphoses – Ovid, translated by Frank Justus Miller (poetry/Greek myth)
48. River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge ad the Technical Wild West – Rebecca Solnit (biography/history)
49. The Peacemaker Overcomes the Hatemaker – Roger DeBlanck (poetry/essay)
50. Hide – Kiersten White (horror)
51. The Art of Gathering: How we meet and why it matters – Priya Parker (nonfiction)
52. The Devil Takes You Home – Gabino Iglesias (horror/noir/suspense)
53. Tentacle Head – Rick Claypool (horror)
54. A Swim in a Pond in the Rain – George Saunders (craft essay / critical literature)
55. Dracula – Bram Stoker (horror)
56. The Veil Between Two Worlds – Christina Vo (memoir/New Age)
57. Convenience Store Woman – Sayaka Murata, translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori (fiction)
58. The Book of Delights – Ross Gay (essay … but by a poet)
59. The Self Delusion – Gregory Bern (nonfiction/popular science)
60. The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty – Anne Rice (just so bad. i give up.)
61. Promethia: Book One – Alan Moore (graphic novel)
62. Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto – Tricia Hersey (philosophy/theology)
63. New Material as New Media – Marion Boulton Stroud (art)
64. Crown of Midnight – Sara J. Maas (YA Fantasy)
65. Heir of Fire – Sara J. Maas (YA Fantasy)
66. Queen of Shadows – Sara J. Maas (YA Fantasy)
67. The Stories of Eva Luna – Isabel Allende (fiction)
Laura Eppinger 