A Turn of the Page

One year ago, I finished an M.A in English. I'm proud of having earned the degree, but I think it would be fair to say that I struggled with how little I was reading outside of what was assigned. I read plenty for my classes, but I did not do enough reading for myself. The pandemic made this particularly difficult. I have often relied on the reading I do as a core part of care for my mental health, something to give me a boost when the world around me is not what I want it to be. Reading for class and not for myself was fine, but in the past year I have tried to make up for some of the reading I missed out on as a student.

Since January of 2022, I have read 131 books. Some were great. Some were frustrating. Each one was worth it. As I look back on the year, I want to share some of the books I loved. Sure, I was frustrated with some of my reading — I am not a perfect reader, the books were not all perfect books — but the end of the year is a time I try to be positive, to think back on what I have learned and consider how it can bring me forward into what I hope will be an even better year to come. Without further ado, here are 9 books or series I really enjoyed in 2022.

The Sentence by Louise Erdrich

The Sentence was the best book I read this year, but it was not necessarily the best Louise Erdrich book I read this year. I read The Night Watchman, too, and though I think it may have been better than The Sentence on a technical level, it was The Sentence that helped me to process so much of what has happened in Minnesota since 2020. Louise Erdrich approaches all the pain and heartbreak of the past few years with heart, with humor, with empathy, with books, with ghosts. I don't know exactly how to describe how perfectly and economically each of the characters comes alive. I do know that their vitality and life was exactly what I needed this year.

The Expanse (Series) by James S.A. Corey

The Expanse is well written and well plotted science fiction, with a world built beautifully from top to bottom. The characters are memorable and the conflicts (and predjudices) of the different factions in the far future solar system make sense — the authors have not created a utopian future. The best thing about The Expanse is that the series evolves. There are real mistakes in the early books in terms of the diversity of the cast of characters and the depth of the women as opposed to the men. To the credit of the authors, though, they demonstrate clear growth as the series goes on. What starts as a fun space mystery becomes an incredible galaxy-spanning space opera. The most fun I've had with hard science fiction in a long, long time.

Elizabeth Strout

This year I read most of Elizabeth Strout's writing, including the Amgash and Olive Kitteredge series and The Burgess Boys (which was a standalone novel until the characters got looped into the continuity of the two series). Reading Elizabeth Strout's work can be hard. The characters struggle with abuse, with prejudice, with their own inability to rise above the conditions in which they were brought up. At the same time, there are real instances of awe, profound little moments in which the hard worlds of the novels give something akin to revelation. In the middle of each book, there were times when I considered stopping. I wanted to turn away. I couldn't, though, and not just because I am always reluctant to quit a novel. Elizabeth Strout is capable of turning the horrible into the wonderful, the mundane into the extraordinary. If you aren't sure where to start with her work, go with 2013's My Name is Lucy Barton, which just might be her best.

Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell

Heartbreaking and wonderful, start to finish. Remember me, indeed. Maggie O'Farrell's story of the lives of Shakespeare's wife and children is astounding. The final lines took my breath away.

Nancy Mitford

Nancy Mitford wrote four semi-autobiographical novels: The Pursuit of Love (1945), Love in a Cold Climate (1949), The Blessing (1951), and Don't Tell Alfred (1960). Of these four, The Pursuit of Love is undoubtedly the best known, but they all have their own pleasures. I picked up The Pursuit of Love on vacation and on a complete whim, not knowing what was in store for me. On the surface, the novels are comedies, with characters not entirely dissimilar to the petty buffoons populating P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster stories. Dig a little deeper, though, and you'll find that real despair lurks. The decline of empire and the decay of the United Kingdom in the aftermath of the Second World War is the underpinning of the world of the novels, with each moment of humor offset by a yawning pit of despair. Despite (because of?) this, each book remains tremendous fun, the first two in particular.

Nona the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

Nona is the third novel in the Locked Tomb series, following Gideon the Ninth and Harrow the Ninth. Gideon is easy to describe: lesbian necromancers in space! It is a lot of fun, too. Harrow is less fun, less easy to describe, and much of it is written in the second person. It is wonderful. Nona is even less fun and makes perhaps no sense at all. I do not know that I can tell you what happened in the novel. I loved it anyway and I can't wait for the conclusion to the series.

The Cemeteries of Amalo (Series) by Katherine Addison

Katherine Addison published The Goblin Emperor to widespread acclaim in 2014. I waited for a sequel and... crickets. Finally, in 2021 she followed it up with The Witness for the Dead, which does not serve as a direct sequel to the first book. It is instead a sort of fantasy detective novel set in the same world. The Grief of Stones, a direct sequel to The Witness for the Dead, arrived in 2022. Both The Witness for the Dead and The Grief of Stones offer complicated, grim, funny, and enchanting glimpses into life in Addison's fantasy world. The mysteries are interesting, too, and each novel features smaller cases that enrich both the characters and the world. Thara Celehar, the titular Witness for the Dead, is an unassuming detective with a knack for making both friends and enemies. Think of a fantasy version of Masterpiece Mystery and you won't be far off. I haven't heard anything about a third book, but fingers crossed!

Index, A History of the by Dennis Duncan

Some of the most fun I had with a book this year — and it was about indexes. I'm not sure that there's much more to say about this one without just reciting everything I learned from it. Just trust that Dennis Duncan is a wonderful writer, that the history of indexes is fascinating, and that you'll come away from the book mad that indexes don't get more attention from publishers these days.

The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers

Huge, unwieldy, and an amazing portrait of a Black family in America. I adored every page, even when things got heavy. I know that Honorée Fannone Jeffers has written a lot. This is her first novel, though! And that is amazing! And kind of infuriating! I will read anything else she writes.