looking back on 2022 in books
my favorite reads of the year
Dear friend—
Hello. I’m back. I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season :)
I rang in 2023 with a walk with Hazel and my mother. Bade Alex goodbye and cleaned my room. Wrote a bit and read a bit. If this is any indication of how the rest of my year will go—peacefully, full of things to learn and make and small moments of love—I cannot ask for anything better.
As always, I am looking toward the new year with hopes to read more. 2023 will be my first full year out of school, the first year in which I don’t have journal articles or textbooks eating up my brain space, so I’m trying to take advantage of it. I’m also trying to read to pull more of my time from the more pointless pursuits I sometimes gravitate toward (online window shopping. I’m mostly talking about online window shopping).
At the same time, I’m trying to get rid of my so-far-unshakable instinct to quantify my reading. I tend to race to the end of books, vacuuming up as much knowledge into my brain as fast as possible before adding another notch to my headboard. In 2023, I’m trying to detach myself from this mindset by reading more deeply and more carefully.
And I am continuing the tacit intention I set for myself about halfway through last year year: to read more books by female or LGBTQ+ authors and authors of color. Unfortunately, the nonfiction topics I’m interested in (technology, political economy) are more white- and male-dominated, so if anyone has any recommendations on that front, please send them my way.
Today, I’m shouting out my favorite books I read last year. Some I’ve already written about in this newsletter, but I’ve included them because I want to cement that they are, in fact, my favorites.
The titles are all linked to their Storygraph pages, where you can find crowdsourced content warnings, in case I missed some, and more detailed summaries and reviews. The list is ordered by most-recently to least-recently read.
Anyway, enough with the chatter—here are my faves from 2022!
Long Division, by Kiese Laymon
What an absolute whirlwind of a book. History, romance, coming of age, magical realism (time travel!), family, and religion all feature.
My feelings toward this book may be swayed because I am enamored with the angst and forethought that time travel plots usually involve. As with most time travel plots, Long Division has tragic missteps and disappeared possibilities, dropped clues and surprise twists. That shit really gets to me.
Also, I love a good narrator. The two young teenaged boys who narrate this book have got rhythm in their voices that literally propelled me across the page. They’re funny and endearing and sometimes stopped me in my tracks.
If you read it, make sure to pick up the copy with the cover above, the 2020 version. It’s significantly different from the 2013 version, and is as Laymon originally intended it to be. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
CW: racist violence, graphic violence, slurs, ableism
Rosewater, by Tade Thompson
This was my second try reading this book and boy, am I glad I stuck with it. Despite the slow start, Rosewater is beautifully written and intricately imagined. It’s full of political/spy/government intrigue, body horror, adrenaline, mystery, a mix of magical realism and sci-fi, and just a sprinkling of romance.
Rosewater is told from the perspective of Kaaro, petty thief-turned-government agent and a “sensitive,” someone with the ability to read or sense the emotions and thoughts of those around him.
He lives in the nascent city of Rosewater, Nigeria. The city, in his lifetime, grew from nothing around a pulsing Dome that holds a mysterious alien life force. On Opening nights, a hole appears in the side of the Dome, releasing some mysterious alien energy that heals the sick and raises the dead.
But when Kaaro learns that sensitives like him are dying, it unravels an even bigger mystery behind the Dome and the aliens within it. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
CW: Body horror, graphic violence, sexual content
South to America, by Imani Perry
In 18 essays, each focused in a different state or subregion, Imani Perry threads her own experiences with her expertise as a historian to illuminate the South, and how its social/political/historical dynamics come to bear on the rest of America.
She argues that we (the national discourse) shouldn't write off the South as a backwater, because (1) in doing so we miss the richness of culture and history there (notably, the way the Black South has shaped Black life and American life even beyond its key role in the Civil Rights movement), and (2) by dismissing the South, we often dismiss parts of wider American culture that did not evaporate after the Civil War or Jim Crow, but that still remain in our national identity and inheritance today.
I loved Perry's insights on language, religion, and inheritance. I loved the way she intertwined so many facets of the region so seamlessly. Hidden pockets of slavery and colonial history; the feel and vibrations of predominantly Black cities like Memphis and Atlanta; reverberations of Black art; legacies of and experiences in historically Black colleges and universities; the food and the climate and the smells and the sounds of the South.
Sprawling, beautiful, thought-provoking, full of history and sadness and power, complexity and contradiction, love and life. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
I first wrote about South to America here.
Gods of Jade and Shadow, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Cassiopeia Tun is a young woman living in a small town in Jazz Age Mexico, with an aristocratic extended family that makes her work as a servant for her grandfather. But one day, in a fit of rebellion, she opens a forbidden, locked chest in her grandfather's room—and out springs a god.
She then joins Hun-Kamé, Lord of Xibalba, a god of death, in his quest to win his throne back from his brother.
This book is rich with description and scenery. It's got that third-person omniscient narrator calling back to fairy and folk tales. I ate it all up, happily. And the relationship between Cassiopeia and Hun-Kamé is so bittersweet and beautiful. The ending had me aching, in all the best ways.
Lush, magical, enchanting, endearing. Roaring twenties meets Mayan myths and mystical adventures. The stars on the ocean, late nights in sleeper cars, demons and spirits, grand hotels and mansions, fantastical beasts, city streets bustling with new automobiles, jewels and dresses and gardens and shadows—it's all there. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
I first wrote about Gods of Jade and Shadow here.
The Immortal King Rao, by Vauhini Vara
This sprawling multigenerational story centers on King Rao, the favorite child in a huge family of Dalit coconut farmers, who goes on to become a Steve-Jobsian figure in an at-first familiar, then more dystopian America.
The story unfolds slowly and carefully, and the jumps in point and view and time help unwind it. We jump from the world of Rao’s mother, her sister, her husband, and his brother; the politics and family history of how the Dalit Raos came to own a coconut farm; Rao’s young adult years studying in America; Rao’s rise to fame; and his creation of a shareholder government, running on algorithms and a currency of social capital.
But all that is nested in the story of his daughter Athena, who narrates the entire book, and who’s pushed to tell her father’s story when she is framed for his death.
Twists and turns, history, family drama, social commentary and satire that can be a bit heavy-handed at times, and a direct, evocative writing style. The book wasn’t an unadulterated dub for me, but I loved it, warts and all. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
CW: Sexual assault, sexual content, violence, ableism
Price Wars, by Rupert Russell
This book has been a huge influence in how I see money and our financial systems. (I lean on it heavily in this post: “money is fake.”)
It was extra gripping because of the mix of more explanatory journalism and in-the-field reporting. Russell actually goes to the places he writes about: for example, a chapter on Venezuela in which he not only traces Venezuela’s booms and busts to oil commodity markets, but also speaks with workers and families who bear the brunt of it. Dystopian: one tech worker who goes out to buy groceries immediately after getting paid, because the prices will have radically risen if he waits even a day.
Gripping read, and I learned so much from it. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
CW: War, violent conflict
Arriving Today, by Christopher Mims
This is my shit. If there was anything (nonfiction-wise) that was my shit, it would be this book. Not only is it really fantastically written and reported—it delves into the human costs of our global commercial and logistics system, getting at the question of, “Is all this really worth it?”
From the moment an imaginary little thumbdrive leaves its first warehouse, to the moment it arrives at your door, Mims is there. That means transatlantic shipping, cross-country trucking, logistics, warehouses, last-mile delivery, the people and the technology, the places and the systems—he reports on it all.
An important and eye-opening book. See also: Benjamin Lorr’s The Secret Life of Groceries, which does a similar thing with our commercial food system. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
My Body, by Emily Ratajkowski
This collection of essays by supermodel Emily Ratajkowski swings between juicy, thoughtful, searing, and back again, all in tight, potent prose. As someone who is perhaps more interested in celebrity and gossip than I care to indulge, Ratajkowski’s essays pulled back the curtain on modeling, celebrity culture, and the lives of the rich and famous. But more fascinating were her thoughts on her body and her sexuality, how she thinks about her job and its relation to the patriarchal system that we all live in.
Ratajkowski is in an interesting position where she is both dependent on and successful in an industry that she doesn’t really like. While she’s thankful for what that success has afforded her, she’s constantly wrestling with what else that success entails—personally and systemically.
The essays are nuanced and vulnerable, as Ratajkowski winds through her complicated relationship with her mother, her complicated relationship with her self-image, the traumas her chosen work has inflicted on her, and her investigation of privilege, especially her own. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
CW: Sexual assault, death of loved one, body/self image.
And that’s a wrap! Thanks for reading. I hope you get to pick one of these up and it brings you joy and/or illumination this year.
—mia xx