Books I Read in 2022

I read more than I expected to this year, though less than I usually do. My son was born at the end of March, and I thought I would have no time to read once that happened, but an irregular sleep schedule will allow for a lot. Audiobooks and my e-reader kept me relatively sane during night feedings, and while I was usually unable to sleep when he slept, I was too tired to do much else but watch him and read. So I got a lot of reading done.

I'm not sure all of it was good reading. I was blearily exhausted so much of the time, which meant that I usually had to read pages several times to get the meaning, and sometimes I didn't bother. I'm not proud of this; I left a few books off this list that I technically finished when I realized that I couldn't remember anything about them.

All of this to say: one of my resolutions for this year is actually to read less. I want to read more slowly and more deliberately, to only read one book at a time, and to stop and move on if something isn't grabbing me.

But there was still a lot this year that I loved reading. I also did quite a few re-reads, which were all rewarding even if I only realized that the book wasn't as good as I remembered.

Here are some highlights from last year.

Favorite non-fiction: Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism - Naomi Klein; Left Behind: The Democrats’ Failed Attempt to Solve Inequality - Lily Geismer; Bad Gays: A Homosexual History - Huw Lemmey and Ben Miller; Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (and Everything Else) - Olufemi O. Taiwo; Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us - Rachel Aviv

Favorite fiction: The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories - Ken Liu; He, She and It - Marge Piercy; Harlem Shuffle - Colson Whitehead; The School For Good Mothers - Jessamine Chan; Tar Baby - Toni Morrison; The Little Stranger - Sarah Waters; Exhalation: Stories - Ted Chiang; The Sea of Tranquility - Emily St. John Mandel; The Good House - Tananarive Due; The Trees - Percival Everett; Tender is the Flesh - Agustina Bazterrica; Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit - Jeanette Winterson; Come Along with Me: Classic Short Stories and An Unfinished Novel - Shirley Jackson; The Keep - Jennifer Egan; Foster - Claire Keegan

Favorite re-reads: Mansfield Park - Jane Austen; Emma - Jane Austen; The French Lieutenant's Woman - John Fowles; The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins; The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson

And here is the complete list, in chronological order, along with my immediate thoughts as I finished each read.

The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity - David Graeber and David Wengrow: I started this one back in December, but it took me a long time to finish. I wanted to give it ample breathing room, and I’m glad I did. It’s an interesting idea for a book, though I wonder if it would look different if Graeber had lived to see more edits. Perhaps not. As an argument that we aren’t fated to live as we’re living now, it really works. Some of the historical conclusions seem a bit shaky to me, based on other reading I’ve done - but the insight and analysis is sound. Worth reading.
The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories - Ken Liu: It was really nice to open the year with this book (though I suppose I technically began it in December). I think the title story is the best, and it’s a heartbreaker, but there were quite a few gems in here. Liu is such an evocative and emotional writer, and he’s very good at exploring the way history lingers into the present - within families and within cultures. “The Man Who Ended History” was an appropriate close to the collection, for that reason - it was also one of my favorites, along with “The Regular” and “Mono No Aware.”
Cat’s Eye - Margaret Atwood*: This was a reread, for my book club, and I was happy to read it again. I’m glad I took my time with it. This was the first novel of Atwood’s that I ever read, as a very young person, and reading it again as someone soon to be a parent, it was interesting to me how my opinions changed. I focused more on the parents, this time, the mothers - how they failed and were failed, how they tried their best or didn’t. I felt sorrier for Cordelia, I think, than I ever had, but sorry for Elaine too, who could barely understand why she resisted intimacy with other women the way she did. I can finally see this as a novel about trauma, the way early traumas can stay with you for the rest of your life, the way they can supersede later hurts that might seem more significant to outsiders. It’s my favorite Atwood, I think.
Persuasion - Jane Austen*: I decided to reread some classics this year, and I’m glad I started with this one. I can see, of course, all of the flaws - Austen never got a chance to revise it before she died, and it shows. Some of the plot at the end of the novel just doesn’t hang together as tightly as it should, and as it tends to do in her later novels. But I don’t care about that really - what matters are the characters and their relationships, and those work. I think it might be Austen’s most forgiving novel - none of the bad people are that bad, all of the flawed people are basically okay. And I like Anne and Wentworth so much, and the Crofts of course. It’s a great one.
Piranesi - Susanna Clarke: I liked this. It wasn’t as great as Jonathan Strange, but few things could be. This felt more like an extended short story than a true novel, but it was still dense and exciting. I liked the narrator a lot. Really, it just made me wish Clarke would write more, but I’m happy with what I’ve got.
Nora: A Love Story of Nora and James Joyce - Nuala O’Connor: I liked this, but I’m not sure I understand all of the praise. I got as much out of Brenda Maddox’s biography of Nora Joyce, in terms of understanding their relationship - and I think this novel version of her life sanitized some things. This fictional Nora is a much more involved and loving mother to her daughter in particular than I think she was in life - there ought to be room for forgiving her for those deficits without pretending she was something other than what she was. The fictional letters from her to Joyce are also more erudite than the real ones we have; it strikes me as overcompensation, like O’Connor thought that giving Nora her due meant ignoring her flaws (real or judged). The relationship between Nora and Joyce itself was convincing, but again, nothing you can’t get from a bio and their letters. Overall a bit disappointing.
Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen*: It really is the novel, isn’t it. I think Emma and Mansfield Park are Austen’s most technically accomplished novels; I admire them both more, and Mansfield is my personal favorite. But P&P is just how novels are supposed to be - it seems all the more miraculous for being so simple. That’s what people were trying for before she came along, and she’s the one who managed it. I won’t say I got something new out of this reread, but I enjoy it every time.
Looking For the Good War: American Amnesia and the Violent Pursuit of Happiness - Elizabeth D. Samet: This was interesting, but felt incomplete. I like the idea - that we needed WWII to be a good war more than it actually was one, that our emphasis on the “greatest generation” allows us to neglect the government action and mobilization that made that victory even possible. I would have liked more historical and economic analysis, however - it is to the benefit of neoliberalism as a project that we all pretend that we could win a war that vast just through individual effort and bravery, rather than through collective action and vast bureaucratic effort at all levels of government. Pretending that it was just the quality of the citizenry means that we never need to try to accomplish anything like that again, and if we can’t do it without all-government effort that’s the fault of the people failing as individuals. I’ve been thinking about that a lot the last few years. I’d have liked more analysis of that aspect, and a little less about WWII movies.
Why Marx Was Right - Terry Eagleton: This was pretty good. Flawed. I think Eagleton focused too much on Marx the man, and less on Marxism, and that was not to the book’s benefit - it doesn’t really matter to me whether Karl Marx himself was a good feminist or whatever, but whether Marxism provides a framework for analyzing systemic sexism, which it does. Eagleton is also very much a Trot, which is not a crime, but it does mean he is very defensive about communism being not just Stalinism or Maoism. Again, too much focus on the flaws or virtues of individual men, which of course matter, but ultimately less than their place within an overarching system - which Marx would agree with I think! Overall I liked it, with reservations.
In The Time of the Butterflies - Julia Alvarez: I liked this very much. I’ve been thinking, lately, after spending so much time last year reading political histories, about the fact that no collective action has really happened without women. And it isn’t because women are better or kinder or more insightful or more brave. It’s that women are willing to do the shitty, unglamorous work of actual organizing. They set the meeting, and make sure somebody takes minutes at the meeting, and make sure there’s food at the meeting and that whoever owns the meeting place is kept happy so people can keep using it. They make sure people have rides to the protests. They make sure everyone who needs a babysitter gets one. Mothers, for good or ill, are organizers. This novel is really about that, and about the ways that women can be radicalized in ways mundane or exciting. Minerva was my favorite, but I liked all of the sisters. I’d like to be Minerva, but I know I’d be Dede.
The Edward Said Reader - Edward Said: I liked this, but I’m not sure I needed to read it, if that makes sense. I really like Said, but I find I like his literary and cultural criticism more than his writing on politics or history. So while I enjoyed the pieces on Palestine that I hadn’t read before, my favorite parts were the excerpts from Orientalism and Culture and Imperialism, which of course I had already read. He’s still always great to read though, on any subject.
Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen*: I don’t think this will ever be my favorite Austen, but I appreciated it so much more. Maybe because of where I am now, I kept noticing children - liking children and being interested in them is always treated as a red flag for at best idiocy, and at worst malice. It’s really funny; neither Eleanor nor Marianne care about children at all, and motherhood doesn’t appear to feature as an aspect of their happy married futures. I’d like to think and write more about that. It’s a much funnier book than I remember, and probably more skillful than I gave it credit for.
Just An Ordinary Day: Stories - Shirley Jackson: There’s nobody like Shirley Jackson. This was a collection of previously uncollected or unpublished stories, so I hadn’t read many of them before - and it was cool to experience them. She had this incredible ability to imbue ordinary or mundane situations with terror and menace, and I think it’s somehow more effective the more minor the plot. A particular kind of middle aged woman knows what it’s like to be both ignored and fixated upon, and how paranoia-inducing it can be. “Mrs. Melville Makes a Purchase” and “Whistler’s Grandmother” were especially good examples of that kind of story; they were terrifying all the more because nothing really happens. The two versions of “The Honeymoon of Mrs. Smith” were like this too. I didn’t love every story in this collection - there were so many - but those three have become favorites.
Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism - Naomi Klein: This was very good; enraging of course. I’ve read a lot of Naomi Klein’s journalism but none of her books; I want to read more of them. This is a very clear and concise account of a complicated topic; it’s like Klein manages an entire history of neoliberalism and its effects in a relatively brief book without leaving out anything crucial. I do almost wish there was an update - what is happening now because of the pandemic is such a clear example of the kind of thing she talks about, but on the other hand, her writing is so good that you can use her arguments to understand things she doesn’t directly talk about. Really a great book; this would be my recommendation to anyone who feels like they don’t really understand what neoliberalism is and why people complain about it.
Summerwater - Sarah Moss: Sarah Moss is a very good writer. This is similar to Ghost Wall, in that it’s a slim novel where little happens for much of it in pure plot terms, but there’s a sense of building dread throughout. This book was very scary, and it’s hard to pinpoint why. I liked spending time with all of the characters; their voices were distinct and sympathetic, though with the dread there’s a layer of irony underneath everything. A very good, quick read.
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall - Anne Bronte*: This was good to re-read. I do think she’s the least of the Brontes, but that’s still better than a lot of people. As an unsentimental portrayal of an abusive marriage to an alcoholic it seems (sadly) timelessly accurate to me. I can see why it shocked and angered people so much at the time. But the characterization other than that is pretty thin, as is the rest of the plot. I do like it, but it’s no Wuthering Heights or Jane Eyre (or even Villette).
How to Read Literature - Terry Eagleton: This was good. I like Terry Eagelton. I’m not sure what it really amounted to, but it was nice to read his reflections on various works of literature and thoughts about literature in general for their own sake. I’m not sure I agree with all of his judgements, but I liked reading them. I’d like to read something more extended by him on a single work.
He, She and It - Marge Piercy: I’m glad I read this. I think I liked Woman on the Edge of Time better, the worlds in that felt more real and the issues more vital, but I liked this too. I liked that the ideas were so firmly rooted in Judaism and Jewish traditions. I wanted more from Shira - I sympathized with her but I would have with anyone in her situation; very little about her seemed particular to me. Yod was similar - I was willing to buy him as a person because of my own principles, but not because of anything he showed himself to be. Still, a very good read.
The Turn of the Screw - Henry James*: This was fun. I do love Henry James, and this is such an unusual novel for him, and an unusual novel in general, and even after reading it several times and thinking about it a lot I still don’t know what to think. How reliable the narrator is, how reliable anyone is, how gender and class influence both the main narrative and the framing narrative - I don’t know! It’s such an odd one. There really were few better than James.
Washington Square - Henry James*: This might be my favorite James though. Portrait of a Lady is the best one, obviously, and I admire Wings of the Dove a lot, but this one is my favorite. It’s so sad and funny and weird and difficult. I still don’t know who really wins - I think Catherine does until that last line sticks the knife in and I’m not sure again. It’s so good.
Harlem Shuffle - Colson Whitehead: This was great, as Whitehead’s books tend to be. I like how each novel is different; you really never know what you’ll get, only that it will be great. I liked the characters in this, especially Ray and Freddie, as per usual, and the lived-in solidity of the world, again as per usual. He’s such a good writer who has so much empathy for all kinds of people and the kind of rage knowing your own powerlessness can provoke in you. He’s just one of those writers where you’re glad to live at the same time as him.
The Wings of the Dove - Henry James*: It’s been nice to reread some James. This isn’t my favorite (Washington Square, I really think), but I admire it almost as much as Portrait of a Lady. It’s so sad and uncomfortable - and James never lets you up, he never offers any comfort that this situation can be happily resolved. Neither does he give the comfort of letting you despise Kate; she did what a lot of people would have done.
The School For Good Mothers - Jessamine Chan: This was really, really good and I’m glad I read it. It was, perhaps, not the smartest choice to read while I’m soon expecting a child, but it made me more angry than scared - because I know how the world judges mothers, how everyone does, and this novel captured that so well, with disturbing plausibility. I hope Chan writes more novels; she’s very good.
Nights at the Circus - Angela Carter: I like Carter a lot. The Bloody Chamber will always be my favorite, but this was very good, albeit possibly overlong. I liked Fevvers and Lizzy quite a bit, and I liked the magic realist tone. It was funnier than I expected. I’m glad I read it.
Children of Lovecraft - edited by Ellen Datlow: A mixed bag. I liked the stories by authors that I already liked, especially the pieces by Stephen Graham Jones, David Nickle (who I think is especially suited to the theme) and John Langan, but didn’t care for most of the others. I think it’s hard to do a good Lovecraft pastiche, because so many writers who try just don’t have the combination of talents and deficits that made Lovecraft uniquely compelling as a horror writer. There was really only one him.
Tar Baby - Toni Morrison: This was great. Of course it was, it’s Morrison. It was different than her other novels, to the extent that I’d like to know more about the writing history - so many parts felt so theatrical that I have a suspicion it started life as a play rather than as a novel. It was a beautiful gem, either way - and I’ll be thinking about the ending for a while. I’m not sure what I want to happen!
The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins* - I reread this and remembered why it’s one of my favorite books. It really is just as scary and unsettling each time, and most frightening for the mundane aspects. The scene where Sir Perceval tries to bully Laura into signing a document without letting her read it first is still one of the most terrifying scenes I’ve ever read in a novel, and everything that follows - when Laura and Marion learn how powerless they really are to protect themselves - is so effectively done. Wilkie Collins was the only male feminist that mattered. He understood what the real dangers were.
The Little Stranger - Sarah Waters: Waters is a writer I’d had on my list for a while and never got around to - she’s really good. This was a really effective gothic exercise, that never went too far and never ended up where I thought it might. It’s the kind of novel I want to read a second time to see what I think of the narrator, who I trusted less and less as the story went on. It was so unsettling, the more so for the horror being pretty subtle and mostly off-stage.
At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance - A New History of the Civil Rights Movement - Danielle L. McGuire: This was really good. Much of the history I knew already, but a lot of it was new to me. I think it was a little too..hard to find a way to say this, but it was trying too hard to be inspiring? There’s little to be happy about and much to be angry about. But like a lot of books I’ve read recently, what it shows is that there is no successful social movement in this country without women. There never has been.
Women in Love - D.H. Lawrence*: Certainly my favorite Lawrence, by far, though it’s still Lawrence so a lot of it makes me roll my eyes. I like Gudrun and Ursula a lot. The men less so, though I found more to sympathize with this time around.
Bright Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America - Barbara Ehrenreich: This was good. It’s always good to read Ehrenreich, though I’m not sure how revelatory it was. The book is over a decade old now, and I feel like I already knew what it had to say - it would be valuable to see a post-recession, post-Trump update. This book made me realize I’d like to read a good biography of Norman Vincent Peale.
The Women of Troy - Pat Barker: This was probably the weakest Barker I’ve read, which means it was still better than most people’s books and I would still read a third and fourth sequel set in this world. Barker makes Briseis such a compelling voice, I think all the more because she’s not a queen or a priestess or prophet or special in any way: she’s just a woman. Barker is at her best writing about the struggles of ordinary women.
I’ll Show Myself Out: Essays on Midlife and Motherhood - Jessi Klein: This was really good, and I read it at the right time. Slightly more normie than I usually read, but that’s ok - it was a relief to see some of my feelings about new motherhood being expressed. It was very funny and sad, and made me feel oddly much more confident.
The Appeal - Janice Hallett: This was a page-turner for sure. It was very clever - I did mostly guess the twists, but there were a few things I didn’t see coming. I’d like to read more by the author.
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle*: These are always fun to reread. I don’t think the Holmes stories are great literature or anything, but they pass the time enjoyably, and Holmes is always entertaining. Reading more mysteries in the past year or so has brought my standards up - I’m not sure Doyle’s puzzles are especially clever if you compare his work to, for example, Christie’s. But Holmes is a more singular and memorable character than any of hers, which makes up for it a bit.
Left Behind: The Democrats’ Failed Attempt to Solve Inequality - Lily Geismer: I’m really glad I read this. The general thrust of the politics wasn’t new to me, but I was glad to know more about the actual mechanics, and it was helpful to see how good intentions actually worked here - there were plenty of cynical liars, but plenty of true believers too. Bill Clinton, though, might be one of the most damaging presidents we’ve ever had. You can’t read this without gaining contempt for him.
Behold the Dreamers - Imbolo Mbundu: I read this for my book club; I’m not sure I would have picked it up otherwise. I wasn’t wild about the dialogue or characterization, but what pleasantly surprised me was this sense of building dread as you realized that yes, this is 2008 and yes, the main character is a driver for an exec at Lehman Brothers. The book conveyed well how…careless the wealthy can be, even when they don’t mean to be, even when they don’t have any malicious intentions. The white Americans weren’t bad, exactly, but they felt entitled to everything, and they let other people clean up their messes, all of them. Maybe that’s what it means to be a wealthy American.
The Collector - John Fowles*: This is, I think, a minor Fowles, but that’s still Fowles. His respect for women, and especially for the women who inspire and are objectified and preyed upon by men, always takes me by surprise. I suppose because it was ahead of its time. It’s always there, that respect, and it breathes life into all of his novels. You come away with the impression (or I do, anyway) of real anger on behalf of these women, and it’s bracing and refreshing.
A Manual for Cleaning Women: Stories - Lucia Berlin: I’d never read her stories before. I’m glad I have now. They remind me, a bit, of Alice Munro, but that comparison doesn’t quite fit. Each story tells, subtly, of a life gone quietly wrong - they’re each devastating little gems. I suppose you could say she returns to the same well many times - alienation, alcoholism, miserable teachers and children recur over and over - but it’s different each time, and it isn’t as if those are shallow wells. Berlin is excellent.
The Palace Papers: Inside the House of Windsor - the Truth and the Turmoil - Tina Brown: This was dishy. Not quite as much as Kitty Kelly’s books, but it could be because less is made up. It wasn’t as fun as those either, maybe because I get the sense Brown is something of a monarchist - she does see the worth in this institution, however dysfunctional it is in practice. She admires the queen, and to a lesser extent Camilla and Charles and even William. It’s a very English perspective; the worst crime is making a mess or being too emotional.
Skeleton Crew: Stories - Stephen King: The thing about Stephen King is, he’s a horror writer. Obviously, everybody knows this, but I think King sometimes forgot it, or maybe he became dissatisfied with that fact. Because he’s best when he’s really dark and nasty, and worst when he tries anything close to sentiment. I hate his families, I hate his kids unless and until something horrible happens to them, I hate his attempts at romance or relationships. But he knew how to write twisted shit. I suppose I liked “The Jaunt” and “Survivor Type” best, since they were the most fucked up stories that didn’t stop being fucked up and they’re the most devoid of queasiness around the horror of their subjects. “Gramma” was ok, but it was one of those where his weird discomfort with fat women kind of bugged me and took me out of the story - I honestly lose respect for writers who see 200 lbs as the upper limit of disgusting obesity; many people that you see everyday weigh that much. He’s good at what he’s good at, for sure. But I don’t think I’ll ever really get him.
Dracula - Bram Stoker*: It’s always fun to reread Dracula. I don’t know if I got anything new out of it this time; there might be something about how Mina’s POV strategically vanishes when she’s under the thrall of the count, like Stoker was afraid to show her experiencing that. And of course I always wonder about Van Helsing, and the way he won’t share what he knows until it’s too late. This is one of those books where the writing flaws make it more compelling; there’s the suggestion of more complexity than was intended, probably.
Exhalation: Stories - Ted Chiang: Ted Chiang is such a great writer. I liked every story in this collection, they were all fascinating and moving. I think “Lifecycle of Software Objects” and “Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom” were my favorites, but they were all good. Chiang is very good at charting the ways that technology (even arcane, fantastical technology like the time traveling doors in “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate”) can change the way we live in mundane ways - there’s a lot of ways that tech makes our lives subtly worse or better without necessarily ending the world, and he’s the best at showing those ways. I do wish he wrote more, but he devotes so much care to each story that I’m still grateful for what we’ve got.
The Dark Queens: The Bloody Rivalry That Forged the Medieval World - Shelly Puhak: This was for my book club, and not something I would have read otherwise. I’m glad I did; it’s not an area I really know anything about, and reminders that women like this have always existed is useful. It was a fun read.
The Collected Short Stories - Bertolt Brecht: This was nice to read. I wasn’t too familiar with Brecht’s short fiction - I mostly know his drama, of course, and poetry. I don’t really think that’s much of a loss. I liked several of the stories, but not even the ones I liked were as great as “Mother Courage” or “When the Fascists Kept Getting Stronger.”
Dubliners - James Joyce*: It frustrates me that this book isn’t taken as seriously as his others, but I love it. I love rereading it, and I’ll continue to do it often. I think “A Painful Case” is still my favorite, but I loved “Clay” and “Grace” so much this time - I forgot how funny the latter one is. Joyce deserves his reputation - there’s nobody quite like him.
The Sea of Tranquility - Emily St. John Mandel: This was a lovely little novel. I liked each part, and I liked how each of them needed the others to resolve. I liked that, apparently, it was a simulation all along, but that mattered very little in the end. It was exactly as long as it needed to be. I think I liked it even more than Station Eleven.
Bad Gays: A Homosexual History - Huw Lemmey and Ben Miller: This was really fun; not surprising, as the podcast is one of my favorites. I was a little afraid, because of that, that this would be a retread. It wasn’t - Lemmey and Miller definitely tied each piece together into a comprehensive history and argument. It’s one of those books that leaves you wanting more, but in a good way.
The Complete Short Stories - Edgar Allen Poe*: Poe is always fun. I do love his short stories. “The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether” is still my favorite, but I really appreciated “The Imp of the Perverse,” “Murders in the Rue Morgue” and “Hop Frog” this time around. His sense of humor comes through in those - it’s so dark. I like his short stories much more than any of his poetry.
The Girls of Slender Means - Murial Spark: This was pretty good but I’m not sure it amounted to much. It felt like the skeleton of a novel rather than a complete novel, like there was a missing second half or something. A lot of suggestion, but little of it fleshed out. It was still good. I’d like to look for more Murial Spark to read.
Women Talking - Miriam Toews: This was just alright. I wanted more from it. I liked the women, but they were all oddly flat, which might be an intentional function of having a male narrator, but I didn’t care much for his story either. It’s a really good idea for a novel, but it didn’t seem to amount to much. The ending was anticlimactic. I wanted more. There’s an adaptation coming up; maybe that will make me appreciate it more.
Florida - Lauren Groff: Wow this was good. Every story felt so warm and alive and lived in and vital. All of the women seemed like women I might know, or like myself. I was really glad to read this, and I want to read more of Groff’s work. I also want to think more about the many and varied allusions - they seem very purposeful.
Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (and Everything Else) - Olufemi O. Taiwo: This was really good but I wish it had been longer. It could have used more examples of what Taiwo was talking about, or maybe of the different approach which he says (and I agree) is necessary. Still, a very valuable critique of standpoint epistemology.
Emma - Jane Austen*: I like this novel more each time I reread it. I think it’s now tied for first place with Mansfield; and it might be more technically brilliant. I’m always struck by new complexities and new things to notice. I forget who said the novel is structured like a mystery more than it is like a romance, and I really agree - that might be why it rewards rereadings, as you keep picking up clues that you didn’t notice before. Emma herself might be my favorite Austen heroine: she’s complex and spikey and funny and mean and good hearted. I love her, and the novel, a lot.
Just Like Home - Sarah Gailey: All I can say is “Yikes.” This was a ride. It took quite a while to get going - the first half of the novel was all build up. I think that was necessary, though. You needed to be inside this character’s head in order for the ending to land. She felt odd and flat to me throughout, but by the end I realized that was the point. It was scary, throughout, too, very scary, but somehow not as terrifying as I’d been led to believe. I’m not going to have nightmares from this one.
The Trouble With White Women: A Counterhistory of Feminism - Kyla Schuller: This was an interesting and frustrating book. I think the problem with the mainstream feminist movement that Schuller highlights is a real one, but I think crediting it to simply “white” women is a bit of a stretch. It would be better called “liberal feminism” rather than “white feminism,” while acknowledging that class in the United States (and elsewhere) hinges on race and colonialism. The view of feminism as a vehicle for individual empowerment, or as collective empowerment for upper class women who will magnanimously share their increased power with those beneath them, is a real one and a real problem. There is, sadly, very little talk about class in this book. I’m still glad I read it; I learned quite a bit. What we need is a feminism built not around empowerment but around solidarity; I don’t think Schuller would disagree.
The Exorcist - William Peter Blatty*: I’ve read this book several times and I think I’ve now gotten everything there is to get out of it. I had remembered, of course, that it’s a conservative story, but I hadn’t really realized until now just how reactionary and misogynistic it is. There’s a palpable fear of change, of any social instability, and a longing for a return to safe, reliable, loving patriarchy. Chris is constructed as such a bad mother and such a failed woman that she doesn’t even know how to use a coffee maker. It’s still a page turner, but I think that’s all.
The French Lieutenant’s Woman - John Fowles*: I love this novel so much. I love Fowles in general, but I think this will always be my favorite, with The Ebony Tower following close behind. It’s so dense and clever, there’s so much there and the gimmick isn’t rightly called a gimmick, because the emotions and the themes are real and have real stakes. This was the first read in which I felt the last ending was the most appropriate; it was bittersweet but oddly triumphant, for both characters. I wish I could take a class on this book. Or teach it.
Skin and Other Stories - Roald Dahl: This was fine. I most like Dahl when he’s being sick and nasty; a few of these stories fit the bill in a satisfying way (like the title story) but some of them never seemed to amount to anything; probably because I kept waiting for darkness that never came. I think I’ve now read all the Dahl I need to.
The Good House - Tananarive Due: I ::really:: liked this. I was familiar with Due as a scholar, but I’ve never read her fiction before, and I came away impressed. It was really scary, which is not something I can really count on horror fiction for, sadly. And the characterization is so good; it ends up being a really sad novel in a lot of ways, and then a really hopeful one. I’m seeing poignant mother-son relationship stories everywhere these days, I suppose, but this one was really well done and it got to me. I’ll read more of Due’s stuff, she really knows her horror.
The Feminist War on Crime: The Unexpected Role of Women’s Liberation in Mass Incarceration - Aya Gruber: This book started off interesting and it ended up just being very annoying. I think there are arguments worth making here, and Gruber makes them, and then she decided to offer a robust defense of Brock Turner. Talking about it with Bryan clarified things for me: she just has lawyer brain, specifically defense lawyer brain. Instead of building a case for the position that feminists had wrongly colluded with the carceral system (fair), she took that collusion as a starting point and saw her job as defending those harmed by it (meaning, men accused of rape and assault). So, much of her arguments ended up being contradictory, because she was just trying to poke holes in what she saw as the feminist position rather than articulating a position of her own. And she never offers a convincing vision of what the feminist movement should be doing, other than liberal pablum about resisting narratives. There’s a good book on this topic, but this one wasn’t it.
The Trees - Percival Everett: This book. It was written, clearly, with so much anger, but can I say that anger wasn’t earned? There’s so much to be angry about. Every time I started thinking the visceral contempt for the white characters was a bit too broadly expressed, Everett reminded me of just how much they all deserved it. And the ending was unexpected and really, I think, brave - leaving the question with the reader. What could justice look like? Does it look like this? Why not? Why isn’t this what’s deserved? It’s not an easy question, especially when you look at a character like Jetty - raised by the man who lynched his father, raised to think of that lynching as a righteous act to protect his mother - what punishment should he bear? It’s not that the answers aren’t easy - in some ways they are. But what the answer looks like can be too terrible for some to contemplate. I liked this book a lot.
Gormenghast Part One: Titus Groan - Mervyn Peake*: I do love these books, and it was nice to reread this one, but I don’t feel like continuing. I can put them aside for a while longer yet. I realized again how much Peake influenced my novel in progress, and I’m not sure how I feel about that. But the world is so rich and full, yet so claustrophobic at the same time, and it’s such an incredible reading experience. I wish fantasy had taken after this instead of Tolkein, I’d probably like it more.
The Great Divorce - C.S. Lewis*: Interesting, still, but I can see why it drove Pullman nuts and there’s something so unsettlingly smug about it. I’m sure Lewis would just say, that’s my own sin preventing me from seeing how good heaven is, and isn’t that convenient? I find the vision of hell very convincing, as a sort of low level misery that’s worse for being self-inflicted and perfectly escapable. But that too has a kind of self-congratulatory aspect to it, because of course you never have to deal with disagreement about the punishments being too harsh for certain sins - the people are there because they want to be. It’s the way morality works in an Austen novel, where people are only ever punished by having to live as themselves forever, any moral development impossible only because of their own immature selfishness. It’s very tidy, and you don’t have the problem of unbaptized babies floating around in the void, or people who never heard of Christianity, or people who cause great harm without meaning to. Heaven is less tidy, which, again, I know is the point: I can’t perceive it. But it all adds up to a book that feels strangely empty.
The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson*: God, this book. This book! I read a lot of horror but then I come back to this one, and you know nobody did it like her. I love Jackson and this novel so much, I love that it’s so weird and mean and sad, I love Eleanor and Theo, and their weird dynamic that’s half sisterly and half sexual tension. I love how lonely and spiteful Eleanor is, how you’re never sure if everyone really is being cruel to her or not. I love how she and the house fall in love. Everything about this book is great. The greatest modern horror story there is.
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte*: It was nice to reread this. I do love this novel; it remains compelling despite rereads. I’d like to read a long, dense postcolonial analysis of it, though. There’s Bertha, obviously, and the problems with Bertha’s portrayal and Rochester’s treatment of her are more apparent with each read, and the novel never quite resolves the discomfort around that in a satisfying way. But there are other things too - references to Jane’s superior physiognomy, references to her dissolute cousin John being dark with thick lips, references to life in India or the East or even continental Europe as being inherently unhealthy, or as morally and physically degrading compared to life in England. It’s a pattern, and I’m not sure what to make of it, except to note that Jane’s very Englishness is tied to her health and virtue. It’s interesting.
Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community - Robert D. Putnam: This disappointed me, I think because it was written long enough ago that its ideas have progressed to being more or less common sense, so there was nothing really revelatory here. And there are parts, particularly in the last section that talks about the possibilities created by the internet, that are a bit dated - as Putnam acknowledges in the Afterward, written recently. He couldn’t have foreseen social media and how it would change things (and how it wouldn’t). It was a depressing book, mostly because things haven’t gotten better, and though social media can create communities it doesn’t really create thriving or useful ones. I don’t know what can be done!
Cunning Folk - Adam L.G. Nevill: This book was exhausting. Completely exhausting. It was very good at what it did - it terrified me - and I could hardly stand to finish it because I was made so anxious and worried and uncomfortable. So it was absolutely successful as horror in that respect. I admire what Nevill pulled off here, and would like to read more of his stuff.
Kill Creek - Scott Thomas: This was fine. Scary enough. It seemed like it was written for horror writers and novels like that, regardless of the genre, are starting to bore me as much as meta horror films do. The ending was good. It was fine.
Sandy Hook: An American Tragedy and the Battle for Truth - Elizabeth Williamson: I’m glad I read this, and of course sad that the book and the topic exists at all. I wish it didn’t, which I suppose is the whole point: some people were so unable to accept that something like Sandy Hook could happen that they tortured the people it happened to. I think in some ways this book tried to do too much - it argues that the sort of Trumpian post-truth conspiracist world we’re living in was created by Sandy Hook truthers, and I’m not sure it’s as simple as that. I think there’s something really wrong with America, and Americans, that both let the tragedy happen in the first place and created conditions for the continued predation of the children’s families. That’s all I can really say, and this the book makes clear: there’s something truly, deeply wrong with America. I don’t know how we can start to fix it.
The Breaking Point: Stories - Daphne Du Maurier: These were really good, though not her best short fiction which I think is in other collections. “The Alibi” was good, so was “The Archduchess,” but I think “The Blue Lenses” was my favorite in this set. Du Maurier is always good.
Mansfield Park - Jane Austen*: Always great and still my favorite. This time around I noticed how much is put down to chance in interesting ways; the narrator keeps emphasizing what might have been different and how easily things might have been different, yet each plot and character development seems so crushingly inevitable. Fanny is such an interesting character, and the narrator’s treatment of her is so fascinating. This book is so dark and difficult. I love it so much!
Tender is the Flesh - Agustina Bazterrica: This was quite something. It legitimately shocked me, while remaining horrifyingly inevitable in its progression. The ending is, uh, killer, and it doesn’t exactly make you rethink what came before but it grimly confirms the worst version of what came before. It’s horrifying, and horrible, but it couldn’t be anything else. It reminded me, I’m sure I’m not the first person to say this, of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It uses a similar metaphor to display the way capital grinds people up and uses them and discards them. I won’t forget this one soon.
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit - Jeanette Winterson: This was really good and I’m glad I read it. It was funnier than I expected, and very sad. The ending seemed right to me - the narrator had reached a self-understanding but not a final happiness. I liked her a lot; I liked her voice.
Come Along with Me: Classic Short Stories and An Unfinished Novel - Shirley Jackson: I love her. So much. Some of these stories are my favorites in the world, and this collection does have some of her best. I think “The Summer People” and “The Visit” were my favorites here, but they’re all good. “Louisa, Please Come Home” is such a good one, and so is “The Rock.” Jackson is always funnier than I remember. She was just better than anyone.
The Dancing Plague: The Strange, True Story of an Extraordinary Illness - John Waller: This was unsatisfying. It was very short for such a strange and rich subject; I feel like there was enough on what happened but just as much could be written on why it happened and how (at least, possible explanations for why and how). It was there where I thought there wasn’t enough. I’d like to read more about this, but this book just wasn’t enough.
The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam - Barbara W. Tuchman: This was fun to reread. Tuchman was a really engaging writer. I don’t know how much I give credit to the thesis, such as it is: the book is really an opportunity to say “sometimes nations and institutions do what seem like obviously self-destructive things, let’s look at that” but I do see reasons for each example that she doesn’t really go into. The desire to preserve one’s hegemonic power is a real desire, and hegemonic power gives real benefit. I would have liked to see what she thought of the war in Iraq.
The Keep - Jennifer Egan: I really liked this. Each time I thought I knew what the book was about something changed, and the ending was so surprising and satisfying at once - a hard thing to pull off. The characters were so rich and sad; there was so much sadness in the novel, so many people stuck in traps they couldn’t escape, but some did manage it. It was very hopeful, in the end.
Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us - Rachel Aviv: This was an interesting and unexpected book. I liked each of the examinations of, for lack of a better word, madness, and I liked that they were all different but that patterns emerged. It’s hard to lay any of this at the feet of one cause; these people lived very different lives in different places, but they each felt dissatisfied and alienated from the reality of their lives, in one way or another. It was terribly sad, but there was a lot of hope, too. It was written with a lot of compassion.
The Martian Chronicles - Ray Bradbury*: I was perfectly happy to reread this, but I remembered why I always had mixed feelings about it. Writers like Le Guin have spoiled me for world building; Bradbury just didn’t have much imagination. If you want the Americans who settle Mars to recreate the patriarchal American midwest circa 1950 you have to actually justify that! There’s no reason for them to build hundreds of spread out small towns instead of a single big city! Things like that bother me, as does the inability to imagine any difference in gender or gender relations.
Foster - Claire Keegan: This was a little gem. I’d like to read more of Keegan’s work. It felt more like a short story; I think it started as one. I was impressed with the economy of the storytelling and characterization; there was just enough of everything, it was so spare, but the world felt so real and lived in, as if it could keep going for years if it wanted to. One of my favorites of the year.
Liberation Day: Stories - George Saunders: This was great, as Saunders’ books tend to be. There were a few stories I didn’t quite love - “Love Letter” in particular was a bit heavy handed. But well-written, always. “Mom of Bold Action” was probably my favorite, but the title story and “Ghoul” were both truly weird premises that he pulled off and made heartbreaking.