for the past few weeks, all the apps and services we use send us year-end summaries: charts, little digests, sharable graphics of our lives in data viz and stats. speaking for myself, when i put them together i see a surreal reflection of truth that is hyper-accurate and alien. all of this makes me think of claude glass and how we reflect on and render our realities, and yet i love all the year-end lists! so since i’ve been working on this for a month and now there’s no more days left to update data with, i feel like the right thing to do is hit send and surrender to the end of ol’ 22, the wash of twenty-twenty-three. (last year’s newsletter)

here we go…

my MVPs of 2022 

the roller rink, patrick wolf’s monthly waking watches, food prep, cookbooks, attending the tin house 2022 workshop, bollywood movies and shah rukh khan, google maps walking through louisiana for book research, the right psych meds, a heated mattress pad, smoked vegetables

2022 in numbers​

• # of dogs fostered: 1

• # pieces of writing published: 14

• current # submissions/queries out: 31

• # rejections (2020-2022 total): 405

• # freelance clients: 4

• # of books read: 53

• # of movies watched: 293

• # hours spent watching them: 508.1

• # of minutes spent streaming music: 93,921

• # nights spent in Portland: 265

• # nights spent in Palm Springs: 42

• # nights spent elsewhere: 57

• # countries visited: 3

• miles walked: 156

SOUND + VISION

1. Film & Television

 i watched so much good shit this year. notably:

• standout flicks/bests: c’mon c’mon (2021) (also the only film i watched twice this year, wow i’m never not thinking about this one), blow out (1981), cameraperson (2016), RRR (2021), cha cha real smooth (2022), ordinary people (1980), the company of strangers (1990), the wolf house (2018), spencer (2021), gully boy (2019), fire of love (2022)

• television / limited series that i loved: the good lord bird, underground railroad, reservation dogs, on becoming a god in central florida

2. Music

• favorites of 2022: beverly glenn-copeland, marlon williams, beyonce’s RENAISSANCE, the latest yeah yeah yeahs record, florence + the machine

• other audio things i’ve been listening to this year: brown noise, binaural beats, and so much cajun and zydeco my ancestors are probably embarrassed

• 4 U: since newsletter-ing kinda feels analogous to being a penpal, in the spirit of 1998, i’ve decided to include a virtual mixtape with these mailers as an offering—a custom spotify playlist i’ve made + liner notes. we’ll start with the expected: 2022Best (i’m actually still working on this but hit the heart to keep tabs on it!)

• previous years' BestOf playlists here: 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021

3. Words

what i was reading in 2022 

novels, nonfiction, short story collections (simply not going to ital all the titles, sorry not sorry!) * are faves of the year

• people in trouble - sarah schulman

• southern spirits: four hundred years of drinking in the american south - robert f. moss 

• a lesson before dying - ernest j. gaines

• modern tarot - michelle tea 

• The lipshitz 6 - t cooper

• salvage the bones -  jesmyn ward

• the thirty names of night - zeyn joukhadar

• wine all the time - marissa ross 

• notes on a nervous planet - matt haig

• tori amos bootleg webring (remember the internet vol. 2) - megan milks 

• tiger paw, tiger paw, knife knife - kelly gray

• the heart is a lonely hunter - carson mccullers

• rock me on the water: 1974 the year LA transformed movies, music, television & politics - ronald brownstein

• you don’t love me yet - jonathan lethem

• the goldfinch - donna tartt

• amateur - thomas page mcbee

• dryland - sarah jaffe

• safety of objects - a.m. homes

• large animals: stories - jess arndt 

• faraway places - tom spanbauer 

• galaga - michael kimball

• cosmopolis - don delillo 

• grand union - zadie smith

• hitting a straight lick with a crooked stick: stories - zora neale hurston

• the heart's invisible furies - john boyne

• the warmth of other suns - isabel wilkerson

• tumble home + collected stories - amy hempel  

• song of solomon - toni morrison

poetry

• winter recipes from the collective - louise gluck 

• write about an empty birdcage - elaina m. ellis

• nature poem - tommy pico

• the möbius strip club of grief - bianca stone

• crush - richard siken 

• MUD: fieldnotes from a juvenile psychiatric institution - kelly gray

• the book on fractures - katherine fallon

• leaves of grass - walt whitman

• time is a mother - ocean vuong 

• how to carry fire - christina thatcher

• baby, i don't care - chelsey minnis 

• a new language for falling out of love - meghan privitello

• 200+ micro chapbook manuscripts for MAYDAY 2022 Micro Chapbook Contest (winner: this body i have tried to write - ja’net danielo)

anthologies + journals/lit mags

• kink: stories - anthology, ed. r.o kwon & garth greenwell 

• emerge anthology: lamda literary fellows 2018

• mcsweeney’s: 63, 65 plundered, 

• AGNI issue 93

• little engines issue 7

• bellevue literary review issues 41-43

graphic novels/comics

• things to do instead of killing myself - tara booth

• amphigorey also  - edward gorey

• killing and dying - adrian tomine

online

• so, so many newsletters! digging the new substack app!

• the pocket app tells me i also read: 198k words, 13 hours, lots of articles?

got a year-end list i missed because i’m not on social media? send me a screencap, or any of your favorite thing from 2022. also accepting cute pet pictures pretty much anytime.

here’s to the sun setting tonight and rising again tomorrow in an arbitrary, symbolic “new” era for those who believe <3.

xo,
rhienna