Books I Read in 2022

A 2022 list in mid-March, why not?

Another year (and a couple months), another Goodreads goal attained. I read 101 books in 2022, and in 2023, I've given up reading goals. Not entirely -- there are books I want to read, but I'm not aiming for a number.

A book-related goal achieved: visiting the George Peabody Library in Baltimore.

Getting to 100 last year was all fun and games until about November, when I started worrying about reaching the goal.

"You could always quit," I told myself. "You're the only one who cares."

"Yes, but I care a lot and if I accomplish nothing else this year, at least I'll accomplish this goal."

Around that time, I also reviewed the list of books I'd read, and spotted at least one title I had no recollection of reading. A quick search brought back the plot, but this year, I want to be more intentional with my choices. Being "more intentional" has so far meant abandoning five books. Maybe removing this numerical goal will push me back to the final (for now) LBJ Robert Caro book.

Reading 101 books did help me get a clearer picture of my reading wheelhouse, as the Reading Glasses podcast hosts call it. What gets me to pick up a book? Birds, nature, a woman on a journey, multigenerational stories, a protagonist excelling at an unexpected skill -- and maybe that skill is magic -- and books prominently featuring food, especially a connection between food and family.

Books I read in 2022 that fell into these categories:

Late Migrations by Margaret Renkl - personal essays with lots of nature

All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders - birds, two characters excelling, one in engineering, one in magic. Also there's an AI. And a love story.

The Thirty Names of Night by Zeyn Joukhadar - birds, magical realism, multigenerational story told by a Syrian American trans protagonist. This was one of my favorite books last year.

Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin - cooking essays written by a woman whose voice reminded me of my grandmother's dry wit.

Empire of Wild by Cherie Dimaline - woman on a journey to reclaim her husband from some supernatural evil.

The entire A Court of Thorns and Roses series by Sarah J. Maas - women on journeys, some excelling at magic or fighting, also they're faeries. Sexy faeries.

This year, I’ve fully moved my book tracking from Goodreads to StoryGraph. Search and filtering work so much better than Goodreads, and my lists transferred easily from Goodreads to this new platform. I pop into Goodreads to see what folks are reading, because I have one contact on StoryGraph at the moment.

Anyway, here's the full 2022 list, the dates I finished them, and an asterisk for the ones I most enjoyed (there's a spoiler for Red, White, and Royal Blue, which was book #33):

1 The Secret to Superhuman Strength, Alison Bechdel, 1/1/22

2 The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, and the Horse, Charlie Mackesy, 1/2/22

3 Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha, Tara Brach, 1/8

4 Beach Read, Emily Henry, 1/11

5 Late Migrations: A Natural History of Loss, Margaret Renkl, 1/13*

6 Empire of Wild, Cherie Dimaline, 1/17*

7 Everyone Knows Your Mother is a Witch, Rivka Galchen, 1/23

8 The Flat Share, Beth O’Leary, 1/26

9 Three Girls from Bronzeville, Dawn Turner, 1/28

10 Crying in H Mart, Michelle Zauner, 2/5

11 Mad Men Unbuttoned, Natasha Vargas Cooper, 2/6

12 Feral Creatures, Kira Jane Buxton, 2/14 - another book about birds. This book follows ST, the foul-mouthed crow from Hollow Kingdom, which I might reread this year because I want more time with Ghengis Cat and Winnie the Poodle.

13 ¡Hola Papi! How to Come Out in a Walmart Parking Lot and Other Life Lessons, John Paul Brammer, 2/16

14 People We Meet on Vacation, Emily Henry, 2/19

15 Evvie Drake Starts Over, Linda Holmes, 2/22

16 Hop! Joshua Barkman, 2/26 - a little graphic novel about two crows.

17 A Song Below Water, Bethany C Morrow, 2/28

18 Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear, Elizabeth Gilbert, 3/5

19 Minor Feelings: An Asian-American Reckoning, Cathy Park Hong, 3/11

20 Behold the Dreamers, Imbolo Mbue, 3/19

21 The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, Aimee Bender, 3/27

22 Something from the Oven: Reinventing Dinner in 1950s America, Laura Shapiro, 4/2

23 A Court of Thorns and Roses, Sarah Maas, 4/5

24 Laziness Does Not Exist, Devon Price, 4/9*  - I often think of about Price writing, "The Duolingo owl will not kill you in your sleep," as I do one Duolingo lesson right before bed to maintain my streak.

25 The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy, 4/14

26 A Court of Mist and Fury, Sarah Maas, 4/17

27 A Court of Wings and Fury, Sarah Maas, 4/22

28 A Court of Frost and Starlight, Sarah Maas, 4/24

29 Hamnet, Maggie O’Farrell, 4/27

30 A Court of Silver Flames, Sarah Maas, 5/1

31 The Other Black Girl, Zakiya Dalila Harris, 5/7

32 How Our Lives Become Stories, Paul John Eakin, 5/12

33 Red, White, and Royal Blue, Casey McQuiston, 5/15* - Casey McQuiston gives me a blue Texas I'll probably never see and that win made me cry.

34 Touching the Rock, John Hull, 5/15

35 The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion

36 The Great Believers, Rebecca Makkai, 5/29*

37 My Bondage and My Freedom, Frederick Douglass, 5/29

38 The Stationery Shop, Marjan Kamali, 6/4

39 Fun Home, Alison Bechdel, 6/4

40 Annihilation, Jeff VanderMeer, 6/6

41 Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates, 6/12

42 Whip Smart, Melissa Febos, 6/15

43 Authority, Jeff VanderMeer, 6/15

44 Writing Down the Bones, Natalie Goldberg, 6/18

45 Writers and Lovers, Lily King, 6/20

46 The Yellow House, Sarah M Broom, 7/1

47 Don’t Ask Me Where I’m From, Jennifer De Leon, 7/3

48 The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music, Dave Grohl, 7/4

49 When We Were Magic, Sarah Gailey, 7/8

50 Bird Brother: A Falconer’s Journey and the Healing Power of Wildlife, Rodney Stotts & Katie Pipkin, 7/16*

51 Catfish and Mandala, Andrew X. Pham, 7/16

52 Acceptance, Jeff vandermeer, 7/19

53 The Immortalists, Chloe Benjamin, 7/25

54 The Lemon Tree, Sandy Tolan, 7/30

55 Real Life, Brandon Taylor, 8/1

56 The Thirty Names of Night, Zeyn Joukhadar, 8/8*

57 Paper Girls, vol 1, Brian k Vaughan , 8/12

58 Somebody’s Daughter, Ashley C Ford, 8/13

59 The Future of Another Timeline, Annalise Newitz, 8/15

60 Paper Girls, vol 2, Brian k Vaughan, 8/19

61 Paper Girls, vol 3 Brian k Vaughan, 8/27

62 Paper Girls, vol 4 Brian k Vaughan, 8/27

63 Paper Girls, vol 5 Brian k Vaughan, 8/28

64 Paper Girls, vol 6 Brian k Vaughan, 8/28

65 LaRose, Louise Erdrich, 9/4*

66 Putting the Rabbit in the Hat, Brian Cox, 9/5

67 Give Me Your Hand, Megan Abott, 9/6

68 Happy-Go-Lucky, David Sedaris, 9/9

69 Spinning Silver, Naomi Novik, 9/12*

70 Another Brooklyn, Jacqueline Woodson, 9/18

71 The Witch Elm, Tana French 9/25

72 The Field Guide to the North American Teenager, Ben Philippe, 9/27

73 You Never Forget Your First: A Biography of George Washington, Alexis Coe, 10/1

74 Harrow the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir, 10/8

75 The Sympathizer, Viet Than Nguyen, 10/9

76 Eat, And Love Yourself, Sweeney Boo, 10/10

77 Homicide and Halo-Halo, Mia P. Manansala

78 Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen, Laurie Colwin, 10/17*

79 Pet Sematary, Stephen King, 10/23

80 Flyaway, Kathleen Jennings, 10/24

81 Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany, Bill Buford, 10/30

82 Nona the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir, 11/3* - I understand about half of what's going on in these books and I'm still entirely enthralled by them. Who's dead? Who's alive? Who's who? What happened? When do we get the final book?

83 Black Cake, Charmaine Wilkerson, 11/7*

84 The Paris Apartment, Lucy Foley, 11/12

85 On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, Stephen King, 11/16

86 Book Lovers, Emily Henry, 11/17

87 Queenie, Candice Carty-Williams, 11/20

88 The Guncle, Stephen Rowley, 11/25

89 Today Will Be Different, Maria Semple, 11/27

90 Dirt: Adventures in Lyon as a Chef in Training, Father, and Sleuth Looking for the Secret of French Cooking, Bill Buford

91 A Snake Falls to Earth, Darcie Little Badger

92 All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr, 12/9

93 Home (Binti 2), Nnedi Okorafor, 12/10

94 The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson, 12/15

95 I Kissed Shara Wheeler, Casey McQuiston, 12/15

96 Hide, Kiersten White, 12/17

97 Circe, Madeline Miller, 12/21

98 All the Birds in the Sky, Charlie Jane Andrews, 12/25

99 The Night Masquerade (Binti #3), Nnedi Okorafor, 12/26

100 Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood, Trevor Noah, 12/28

101 The Most Natural Thing, David Keplinger, 12/31

Books I Read in 2021

In 2021, I only set one reading goal (50 books), and through the power of audiobooks, I met it.

Many of the books I loved this year had a nature focus and have stayed with me. Since learning about the axolotl in Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s World of Wonders, it seems to keep popping up in magazines and podcasts. Helen Macdonald’s Vesper Flights pulled me out onto our balcony to watch swifts circle our building at dusk. As I walk through a leafless Rock Creek Park, I think of her perfect description of woods in winter. I spotted asters and goldenrod around D.C. after Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass taught me what they look like.

I’ve started wondering how listening to a book changes my reception of it. Would I react differently if reading a physical copy? Because I can walk, wash dishes, play a phone game, fall asleep while listening, I might stick with the material longer. It takes more effort to commit to finishing a physical book. And sometimes it's insufficient only hearing words. I need to see them, reread them, write them down. Braiding Sweetgrass is one I want to reread for that purpose.

I switched between audio and e-book for Kira Jane Buxton’s Hollow Kingdom and its talking crow protagonist. I can still hear the narrator’s Genghis Cat and Winnie the Poodle, and sometimes I think, “Poodle doodle doo!” to myself. Would that have stuck with me had I only read it? But the e-book made copying down Buxton’s descriptions like “a charm of finches” and “a gaze of ruffian raccoons” easier.

Other favorites this year were Quan Barry’s witchy high school hockey team in We Ride Upon Sticks, Gail Honeymoon’s Eleanor Elephant is Completely Fine, and The Prophets by Robert Jones. Someone recommended this one to me, and it took me some time to get into. It was unlike anything I’ve ever read.

Anyway, here’s the list, with some notes and asterisks for favorites:

1. Mexican Gothic, Silvia Moreno-Garcia

2. The Glass Lake, Maeve Binchy - reread

3 Disability Visability, Alice Wong

4 There There, Tommy Orange

5 Dear Haiti, Love Alaine, Maika Moulite, Maritza Moulite

6 Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, Gail Honeyman*

7 The Last Black Unicorn, Tiffany Haddish

8 Shit, Actually, Lindy West

9 The House in the Cerulean Sea, TJ Klune *

10 Transcendent Kingdom, Yaa Gyasi - I really enjoyed this one and feel like I need to reread it in physical form

11 The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South, Michael Twitty* - meant to read this years ago, glad I finally did.

12 Black Buck, Mateo Askaripour

13 Save Me the Plums, Ruth Reichl *

14 Weather, Jenny Offill

15 Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche - reread

16 Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man, Emmanuel Acho

17 The Unhoneymooners, Christina Lauren

18 The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Neil Gaiman - reread

19 The Secret Life of Groceries, Benjamin Lorr

20 Nothing to See Here, Kevin Wilson - this was one of those audiobooks I shouldn’t have listened to trying to sleep. I kept renewing the sleep timer.

21 The Painted Drum, Louise Erdrich

22 The Night Circus, Erin Morgenstern

23 Fun Home, Alison Bechdel

24 Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, Lori Gottlieb

25 We Ride Upon Sticks, Quan Barry * - “Behold our Smurfy car!” made me laugh so hard.

26 A Little Princess, Frances Hodgson Burnett - reread/bedtime listening

27 The Latinos of Asia: How Filipinos Break the Rules of Race, Anthony Christian Ocampo

28 Hollow Kingdom, Kira Jane Buxton*

29 Alex & Me, Irene M. Pepperberg

30 Gingerbread, Helen Oyeyemi

31 Fierce as the Wind, Tara Wilson Redd

32 I Came as a Shadow, John Thompson

33 The Invisible Life of Addie Larue, V. E. Schwab

34 Caste, Isabel Wilkerson

35 You’ll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey: Crazy Stories about Racism, Amber Ruffin and Lacey Lamar - read and listened to simultaneously. Amber and Lacey read it together but there are pictures.

36 The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgkin Burnett - more bedtime listening rereading

37 The Midnight Library, Matt Haig

38 The Guest List, Lucy Foley

39 She Come by It Natural: Dolly Parton and the Women Who Lived Her Songs, Sarah Smarsh

40 A Children’s Bible, Lydia Millet

41 Vesper Flights, Helen Macdonald*

42 The Library Book, Susan Orlean

43 The Once and Future Witches, Alix E Harrow

44 My Sister the Serial Killer, Oyinkan Braithwaite

45 Blue Horses, Mary Oliver

46 Fiebre Tropical, Julián Delgado Lopera

47 American Fried, Calvin Trillin

48 Think Again, Adam Grant

49 The Vanishing Half, Brit Bennett

50 World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments, Aimee Nezhukumatathil*

51 Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer*

52 The Mountains Sing, Nguyen Phan Que Mai

53 Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art, James Nestor

54 The Last Apothecary, Sarah Penner

55 The Prophets, Robert Jones*

56 Dial A for Aunties, Jesse Q. Sutanto

57 Arsenic and Adobo, Mia Manansala

58 The Girl with the Louding Voice, Abi Daré

59 Becoming a Marine Biologist, Virginia Morrell

60 You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me, Sherman Alexie

61 The Night Tiger, Yangsze Choo

62 Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close, Aminatou Sow & Ann Friedman

63 Until Proven Safe: The History and Future of Quarantine, Geoff Manaugh and Nicola Twilly

64 Natalie Tan’s Book of Luck and Fortune, Roselle Lim

65 The Sea Around Us, Rachel Carson

66 The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, Taylor Jenkins Reid

67 The Final Girls Support Group, Grady Hendrix

68 God Spare the Girls, Kelsey McKinney

69 Beartown, Frederik Backman

70 Us Against You, Frederik Backman - I read three books about hockey this year, field and ice.

A Burrito Made Me Cry

The Nov 5th episode of the Dish City podcast featured Patrice Cleary, owner of Purple Patch, an American Filipino restaurant in Mount Pleasant. In the episode, Cleary talks about the struggle of keeping a restaurant open during the pandemic: investing her own savings, applying for government grants, constantly pivoting as regulations and the weather change.

Purple Patch opened about three months before we moved to DC. When we moved from Boston, Gabe said he wanted to find a Cheers*. Over time, Purple Patch became that. It had a happy hour that went til 8 p.m., an hour later than many places. The bartenders had Star Trek, The Next Generation on one of the TVs. We had phases where we went every Friday night, sitting at the downstairs bar, splitting wings and a sizzling sisig. We celebrated birthdays, anniversaries, and new jobs at Purple Patch. We’ve taken our parents, cousins, second cousins, co-workers, and high school friends there. If you’ve visited us in D.C., you’ve probably been to Purple Patch. We knew the bartenders’ names, and at least some of them knew our faces.

Purple Patch was the last restaurant we went to before everything shut down, one week before my last day in the office. Two or three weeks later, we got our first pandemic takeout from Purple Patch. I picked up our order and left impressed with their new set-up: hand sanitizer, clean pens for each receipt signature, and the Purple Patch pantry, where neighborhood kids can get free lunch and neighborhood adults can buy wine, liquor, pastries, and snacks (love you, shrimp chips). Seeing familiar faces after two weeks of avoiding people assured me.

We plated our food at home, wiped down various boxes, washed our hands. When I bit into my sisig burrito, I got all teary-eyed. “I don’t want to eat this at home. I want to be at the bar at Patch!”

Yes, we call it “Patch.” Yes, a burrito made me cry. Pandemic stress is real.

At the top of the Things I Miss from the Before Times List are feeding people in our home, going to museums, and sitting at the Purple Patch bar. In addition to providing almost a second home, Purple Patch has taught me more about Filipino food and culture. My Filipino great-grandfather, Generoso, was born in Dagupan and joined the Navy in 1909. He and my New Orleanian great-grandmother eventually moved to Norfolk, Virginia, where, for a time, Generoso ran his own diner, the Manila Cafe.

Genereso died years before I showed up. My dad’s cousin has been my main source for learning about him and what it was like for my grandmother and her siblings to grow up half Filipino in Virginia. The food I most associate with that side of the family is blue crab; Grandma and Aunt Marjorie and their three brothers loved crabbing, cooking crab, picking, and eating it. I can’t remember any Filipino dishes growing up, but that was the catering served at my grandmother’s funeral. Eating lumpia and pancit in the Methodist church basement inspired me to Google pancit recipes. Four years later, I have yet to make it. Why, when I can get it at Purple Patch? Eating pancit bihon or their ginataang alimasag gives me a sense of connection to my relatives, tenuous and imagined as it may be.

My pandemic anxieties mean no sit-down, table-service dining anywhere. We’re still eating our sisig burritos at home. Hearing Cleary on Dish City, learning they’re constantly struggling and worried about winter, reinforced my dedication to supporting them with my dollars. Comedian Laurie Kilmartin, on her podcast the Jackie & Laurie Show, mentioned finding three restaurants to support and rotating them. We haven’t fully committed to this idea, but Purple Patch would obviously be one of my three. Who would be in yours? What are you missing most these days?

A couple days ago, I pulled out “Favorite Recipes of Siapno Family and Associates,” a photocopied and stapled cookbook assembled by one of my relatives. In among meatloaf, beans, and stews, is a recipe for “Bean Thread.” A parenthetical subtitle lists this as “Sotanghon cellophane noodles” and “long rice.” The cookbook editor attributes it to my great-grandmother. I think I have to make it. Sotanghon isn’t on the Purple Patch menu.

*The Boston Cheers was not our Cheers, though we did go with visitors.

(I recognize that the disposable income to spend on take-out and worrying about what restaurants you’re going to support are privileges. Financial assistance to keep small businesses open should come from the government; as individuals, it is not our responsibility to save local restaurants. All that said, since that’s the position we’ve been placed in, some of my disposable income goes to trying to keep my favorite local restaurant open.)

Books I Read in 2020

Spotify delivered its 2020 “Year in Review” on December 2. Goodreads sent reading stats sometime around December 19. These annual round-ups feel early. What if I find a song I listen to 10 times a day for a week mid-December? The week between Christmas and New Year’s is perfect for inhaling at least two books. What if I finish my last read on December 31st?

I didn’t, Mexican Gothic will appear on next year’s list as the first book finished in 2021.

Anyway, here I am, days into this new year with last year’s book list. It was a weird year for reading. I found it difficult to focus on books like Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens, which I started sometime in March. Disappearing into Patricia Campbell’s nightmare life in The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires was a welcome escape from worry about COVID-19. Audio books helped when I couldn’t focus on the page or sleep (hello, Little Women).

I read some of the big antiracist books this year, which inspired self-reflection. So did books like Beloved and Such a Fun Age. I try to keep my reading varied and make sure it’s not just books by white men. In 2020, this meant reading my first romance novels in years, Alyssa Cole’s Reluctant Royals, a translated book, Convenience Store Woman, and Dominicana, a novel by Dominican writer Angie Cruz. My goal to finally finish Robert Caro’s LBJ series remains unfulfilled, but I surpassed the 50 books goal I set.

The Reading Glasses podcast and friends’ recommendations continue to guide my reading. Here are the 61 books I read and listened to in 2020. Some notes follow, I’ve asterisked those I loved, and the dates are when I finished each.

Got lots of reading done on a trip to Switzerland right before we locked down

1. The Winter of the Witch, Katherine Arden, 1/3*
2. An American Marriage, Tayari Jones, 1/5
3. Travel Light, Naomi Mitchinson, 1/7
4. Calling Dr. Laura, Nicole J. Georges, 1/9
5. This is How You Lose the Time War, Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, 1/12*
6. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard, 1/26
7. Go Tell It on the Mountain, James Baldwin, 2/1
8. How I Tried to Be A Good Person, Ulli Lust, 2/1
9. Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland, Patrick Radden Keefe, 2/8 - I really recommend the audio book, read by Matthew Blaney
10. The Testaments, Margaret Atwood, 2/12
11. Do What You Love and Other Lies About Success and Happiness, Miya Tokumitsu, 2/19
12. Where the Crawdads Sing, Delia Owens, 2/20*
13. True Grit, Charles Portis, 2/23

14. The Age of Miracles, Karen Thompson Walker, 2/29
15. Children of Blood and Bone, Toni Adeyemi, 3/3
16. The Cabaret of Plants: Forty Thousand Years of Plant Life and the Human Imagination, Richard Mabey, 3/4*
17. Convenience Store Woman, Sayaka Murata, 3/6
18. The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness, Sy Montgomery, 3/14 - Octopus are fascinating. Pairs well with the documentary My Octopus Teacher.
19. Magic for Liars, Sarah Gailey, 3/17
20. Mostly Dead Things, Kristen Arnett, 3/24
21. Dicey’s Song, Cynthia Voigt, 4/5 - I used to reread this book regularly as a kid and found it in a little free library. The series takes place on the Eastern Shore, and I enjoyed revisiting the story as an adult who lives in the region.
22. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott, 4/14
23. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Yuval Noah Harari, 4/17
24. The Party, Elizabeth Day, 4/23
25. Notes from No Man’s Land: American Essays, Eula Biss, 5/2*
26. The Essex Serpent, Sarah Perry, 5/3*
27. Exit West, Mohsin Hamid, 5/6*
28. The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires, Grady Hendrix, 5/15 - A couple years ago, I read The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay, at the recommendation of the Reading Glasses podcast hosts. It was thrilling and terrible and I’m afraid to read any of his other work. Grady Hendrix, I will read. TheSouthern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires disgusted me at times and scared me at others. It taught me I like horror. I can’t recall another book I’ve had to put down for a break while also really wanting to know what happens.
29. Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love, Dr. Sue Johnson 5/17
30. The Starless Sea, Erin Morgenstern, 5/30*
31. The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate, Gary Chapman, 6/10
32. How to Be an Anti-Racist, Ibram X. Kendi, 6/25
33. Gideon the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir, 7/2*
34. The Family Upstairs, Lisa Jewell, 7/4

Read Unapologetic in between walks around Mascoutah, Illinois

35. Unapologetic: A Black, Queer, and Feminist Mandate for Our Movement, Charlene A. Carruthers, 7/12
36. Such a Fun Age, Kiley Reid, 7/14*
37. Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life, Lulu Miller, 7/18*
38. A Princess in Theory, Alyssa Cole, 7/19
39. Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion, Jia Tolentino
40. Binti, Nnedi Okorafor, 8/13
41. White Fragility, Robin DiAngelo, 8/15
42. Beloved, Toni Morrison 8/24***
43. The Witch Boy, Molly Knox Ostertag, 8/27
44. Children of Virtue & Vengeance, Tomi Adeyemi, 9/7
45. A Duke by Default, Alyssa Cole, 9/19
46. The Book of Eels: Our Enduring Fascination with the Most Mysterious Creature in the Natural World, Patrik Svensson, 9/30*
47. Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist, Judith Heumann, 10/1
48. Parachutes, Kelly Yang, 10/3
49. My Beloved World, Sonia Sotomayor 10/16
50. Harrow the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir, 10/27* - Gideon and Harrow the Ninth are some of the weirder books I read this year. Harrow had me confused for most of the book. The reveal made me cry. I totally recommend this series for anyone intrigued by the summary “lesbian necromancers in space."
51. The Glass Hotel, Emily St John Mandel, 11/2*
52. American Journal: Fifty Poems for Our Time, edited by Tracy K. Smith, 11/11
53. On Apology, Aaron Lazare, 11/15
54. The Paying Guests, Sara Waters, 11/21
55. Dominicana, Angie Cruz, 11/21

A birthday bike ride before heading home to finish Dominicana

56. A Prince on Paper, Alyssa Cole, 12/11
57. Wintering: How I learned to flourish when life became frozen, Katherine May, 12/27* - great for those who, like me, are still coming to terms with cold and winter grey every year after living warm places.
58. Strong Female Protagonist, Book 1, Brennan Lee Mulligan, Molly Ostertag (illustrator), 12/27
59. Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, Mary Roach, 12/27
60. Best Christmas Pageant Ever, Barbara Robinson, 12/27
61. Strong Female Protagonist, Book 2, Brennan Lee Mulligan, Molly Ostertag (illustrator), 12/28

Books I Read in 2019

Happy New Year! 

I set out to read forty books in 2019 and am ending the year with fifty-four. I started using the Libby app to get audio books. I learned about the app from the Reading Glasses podcast, which I still love. The app connects to your library’s audio and ebook selections. I like its cute interface. I did lots of listening this year, which helped my count.

This year’s reading included more fiction and more Young Adult books. HBO’s His Dark Materials led to my rereading the first two books. One of the last things I read this month was the second book in Philip Pullman’s Book of Dust trilogy. I schlepped this 600+ page novel from D.C. to Illinois to Texas and back because I couldn’t wait. At least I managed to pace my reading, unlike some of the fiction I devoured this year.

I finished my anthropology Master’s a few weeks ago. I completed my classes in the summer, then spent the fall mostly not writing my final project. The list below includes the dates I finished books, and it’s clear how much more reading I did when I was supposed to be writing. 

I quit at least two books this year, which will remain unnamed. Next year, I hope to keep quitting books that don’t interest me. I’m also going to work on reading more of the many books crowding the apartment and finally finish Caro’s LBJ series. 

Anyway, here’s the list with stars for the books I most enjoyed, as well as some random notes.  

I finished Twain’s Feast on this snowy day.

1. Wit's End: What Wit Is, How it Works, and Why We Need It, James Geary, 1/6

2. **The Bear and the Nightingale, Katherine Arden, 1/9 

3. Twain’s Feast, (Audible Original), narrated by Nick Offerman, 1/13

4. The Underground Railroad, Colton Whitehead, 2/5 

5. **Sourdough, Robin Sloan, 2/17, (audio book)

6. Chicken: The Dangerous Transformation of American’s Favorite Food, Steve Striffler, 2/17

7. Ravina the Witch? Junko Mizuno, 2/21 (graphic novel)

8. Fear: Essential Wisdom for Getting Through the Storm, Thich Nhat Hanh, 2/24

9. **Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, Matthew Desmond, 3/3

10. Negroland, Margo Jefferson, 3/8 (audio)

11. China Rich Girlfriend, Kevin Kwan, 3/10

12. **The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, Anne Fadiman, 3/25 (reread)

First Guggenheim visit in April; listened to Celeste Ng on the bus.

13. The Oyster Question, Christine Keiner, 4/5

14. Everything I Never Told You, Celeste Ng, 4/14 (audio)

15. **Manhattan Beach, Jennifer Egan, 5/14 (audio)

16. Tribes on the Hill: The U.S. Congress Rituals and Realities, J. McIver Weatherford, 5/18

17. Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food, Paul Greenberg, 6/1

18. Rich People Problems, Kevin Kwan, 6/5

19. The Lady from the Black Lagoon, Mallory O’Meara, 6/7

20. Lot, Bryan Washington, 6/13

21. Vibration Cooking or The Travel Notes of a Geechee Girl, Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor, 6/21

22. I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, Michelle McNamara, 7/3 

23. **Why Karen Carpenter Matters, Karen Tongson, 7/4 - would I have loved this book as much if I wasn’t such a Karen Tongson & Pop Rocket fan? Hard to say, but this was an emotional read that led me to revisit some of my favorite Carpenters’ songs (all the hits). 

24. Tsukiji: The Fish Market at the Center of the World, Theodore C. Bestor, 7/14

25. **My Life as a Goddess: A Memoir Through (Un) Popular Culture, Guy Barnum, 7/21 (audio) - another Pop Rocket host’s memoir. I recommend the audio book because Branum reads it and is hilarious. After I finished it, I started it again, but then my loan ended. 

26. How to Kill a City: Gentrification, Inequality, and the Fight for the Neighborhood, Peter Moskowitz, 7/25

27. The Farm, Joanne Ramos, 7/27

28. Tomorrow Will Be Different, Sarah McBride, 8/7 (audio)

29. Swiss Watching: Inside Europe’s Landlocked Island, Diccon Bewes, 8/11

This book fit in my back pocket, which made me like it even more.

30. Meaty, Samantha Irby, 8/15 (audio)

31. An Elderly Lady is Up to No Good, Helene Tursten, 8/17

32. The Interestings, Meg Wolitzer, 8/25 (audio)

33. Chesapeake Requiem: A Year with the Watermen of Vanishing Tangier Island, Earl Swift, 8/31

34. **What If This Were Enough, Heather Havrilesky, 9/12

35. The Nest, Kenneth Oppel, 9/13 - this is a YA book that I finished in about two hours. It was weird and scary. 

36. Fleishman Is in Trouble, Taffy Brodesser-Akner, 9/22

37. Five Midnights, Anna Dávila Cardinal, 9/26

38. The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls, Anissa Gray, 9/28 (audio)

39. **Station Eleven, Emily St John Mandel, 10/14 - I had to think about how long I would survive in an apocalypse. As a result, I started storing more drinking water, but that’s as far as I got in my preparations. 

40. Amal Unbound, Aisha Saeed, 10/15 (audio)

41. **A Cosmology of Monsters, Shaun Hamil, 10/23 - so weird. 

42. The Dutch House, Ann Patchett, 10/26

43. Race, Class, and Politics in the Cappuccino City, Derek S. Hyra, 11/10

44. The Golden Compass, Philip Pullman, 11/15 (reread)

45. Text Me When You Get Home: The Evolution and Triumph of Modern Female Friendship, Kayleen Schaefer, 11/20 (audio)

46. **How We Fight For Our Lives, Saeed Jones, 11/24 - there were times I had to stop reading this because it hurt. 

47. Year of Yes, Shonda Rhimes, 12/4 (audio)

48. Eat Like a Fish: My Adventures as a Fisherman Turned Restorative Ocean Farmer, Bren Smith, 12/8

49. The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, Laurie R. King, 12/15 (audio)

50. The Girl in the Tower, Katherine Arden, 12/17

51. We Need to Talk: How to Have Conversations That Matter, Celeste Headles, 12/19

52. The Subtle Knife, Philip Pullman, 12/21 (reread)

53. The Secret Commonwealth (The Book of Dust #2), 12/27

54. Strange Planet, Nathan W. Pyle, 12/28

What were your favorite books this year? Are you setting reading goals for 2020? 

Books I Read in 2018

Hello, and welcome to the only blog post I write anymore, the annual list of books I read.

My Goodreads goal was 25, which seemed realistic last January, and forty-three books later seems low. 2018 was a Robert Caro off-year, so no LBJ tome, which always helps the total count.

This year, I added Reading Glasses to my weekly podcast diet. I’d heard their ads, and as with every new podcast recommendation, my reaction was, “I already don’t listen to all the ones I subscribe to, I don’t have time for a new one.” Once I started listening this summer, I regretted waiting so long. The hosts are hilarious (one of them read 157 books in 2018!), their recommendations have exploded my Goodreads To Be Read (TBR) list, and it’s making me a wider reader. They have a 2019 Reading Glasses Reader Challenge, and it’s only ten reading categories and activities, which feels achievable while also doing a part-time graduate degree.

Yes, that is still happening. Happily, one of the classes I took this year was a book-a-week class. That kind of syllabus is stressful but does wonders for book consumption. The assigned books took me on journeys to Japanese forests, Zimbabwean wildlife ranches, and the rainforests of Papua New Guinea. This class and the reading made me more excited about anthropology than any of the others I have taken over the last few years, probably because the theory included in most of these books felt accessible.

One of my reading goals for next year is to quit reading books I’m not feeling (not including required class reading). Logically, I get that everyone has different tastes, life is too short to spend time reading uninteresting books, and that just because I’ve started something, I don’t have to finish it. I find those ideas difficult to put into practice, but I forced myself to quit one book this summer. More of that in 2019!

Anyway, here is the list, with stars for recommendations and some notes about which books made me cry, among other things. Rather than a photo of a stack of books, I’m including photos taken around the time I was reading certain books.

1. Fire!! The Zora Neale Hurston Story, Peter Bagge

It took about three months to read Why Buddhism is True, and we went to Harper’s Ferry during one of those months

2. Rice and Beans: A Unique Dish in a Hundred Places, ed. by Richard Will and Livia Barbosa

3. Homegoing, Yaa Gyasi**

4. Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment, Robert Wright

5. Baby’s First Picture: Ultrasound and the Politics of Fetal Subjects, Lisa M. Mitchell

6. Stay with Me, Ayobami Adebayo**

7. After a While, You Just Get Used to It, Gwendolyn Knapp

8. À la recherche du temps perdu: à l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs, Marcel Proust/Stanislas Brézet

9. Lincoln in the Bardo, George Saunders** - weird, sad, and lovely. It briefly made me worry about heaven and hell.

10. Between You and Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen, Mary Norris

11. The Hate U Give, Angie Thomas** — While changing from work clothes to bike clothes in a public bathroom at my place of employment, I grabbed this book from my bike bag to finish a chapter. At least 20 minutes later, I remembered I was half-dressed, reading in a bathroom stall at my place of employment, when I could have been at home.

12. À la recherche du temps perdu: à l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs, vol  2, Marcel Proust/Stanislas Brézet

13. How to Say Anything to Anyone, Shari Harley

14. God Save Texas, Lawrence Wright** - This is a good book for homesick Texans. Wright includes a post-Harvey letter from New Orleans to Texas that ran in the Houston Chronicle. I read this letter in a doctor's waiting room and shed a couple of tears. Then I bought it for my dad.

15. Little Fires Everywhere, Celeste Ng**

Picked lots of berries in early July between books 21 & 22.

16. Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins - yes, I reread all three of these books again.

17. Catching Fire, Suzanne Collins

18. Mockingjay, Suzanne Collins

19. Sing, Unburied, Sing, Jesmyn Ward**

20. The Museum of Us, Tara Wilson Redd** - a former library colleague wrote and published this book! It takes place in Webster Groves, Missouri, where I went to college, and features St. Louis sites like the City Museum.

21. Mount Pleasant (Images of America: D.C.), Mara Cherkasky

22. Street Style: An Ethnography of Fashion Blogging, Brent Luvaas

23. Sharp Objects, Gillian Flynn - I impulse-bought this at the airport on our way to Switzerland. I do not feel like I need to watch the HBO series, because the world is dark and terrible enough without me giving myself additional nightmares. That said, if you like dark and terrible things, this one’s for you.

24. Buttermilk Graffiti, Edward Lee**

While reading about Edward Lee’s food adventures, I saw my first glacier.

25. The Girl on the Train, Paula Hawkins

26. Make Your Home Among Strangers, Jennine Capó Crucet** - Before we went on vacation, I did a frantic search for available e-books from the library and downloaded this. Crucet does a beautiful job depicting the first-generation student experience.

27. La Belle Sauvage: The Book of Dust vol. 1, Philip Pullman** - I read the His Dark Materials trilogy three years ago and was excited to return to this world.

28. Boy Kings of Texas: A Memoir, Domingo Martinez

In early August, I finished Kitchen Confidential and caught a laughable amount of blue crab in Norfolk.

29. Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain

30. Behind the Gates: Life, Security, and the Pursuit of Happiness in Fortress American, Setha Low

31. The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu and Their Race to Save the World’s Most Precious Manuscripts, Joshua Hammer**

32. Crazy Rich Asians, Kevin Kwan** - I have a library hold on the next book.

33. Imposing Wilderness: Struggles over Livelihood and Nature Preservation in Africa, Roderick P. Neumann

34. The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins, Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing** - Recommended if you want to think about the possibility of life in capitalist ruins! Not at all a light read, but man, I am still thinking about it months later.

35. The Nature of Whiteness: Race, Animals, and Nation in Zimbabwe, Yuka Suzuki** This is another one that stayed with me, maybe because I used it in my final research paper.

36. Gold Fame Citrus, Claire Vaye Watkins

37. Nature in Translation, Shiho Satsuka

38. The Cabin at the End of the World, Paul Tremblay - This book falls into the category of “I recommend it if you like dark and terrible things.” Reading Glasses recommended it and interviewed the author, and I wanted something scary to get into the Halloween mood. This was a tense and graphically violent read unlike anything else I’ve ever read.

39. Land’s End: Capitalist Relations on an Indigenous Frontier, Tania Li

40. Conservation is our Government Now, Paige West

41. We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Shirley Jackson - this is the spooky book I should have read to get into the Halloween spirit.

42. A Place for Us, Fatima Farheen Mizra*************** - Read this book. This one drove me to social media more than anything else I read this year. I received it randomly; a friend handed it to me after she finished it at Logan airport. “Did you grow up with much religion?” The dust jacket wasn’t on it, so I didn’t really know what it was about. Y’all. I cried at least four times reading this book and then two more times after I finished it, thinking about it. It is about siblings and parents and husbands and wives and first love and death and religion, and it struck some very deep chords.

43. Insectopedia, Hugh Raffles

What books did you enjoy this year? Did anything make you cry? Send your recommendations my way, and happy 2019 reading!

Just Exploring Wintery Washington

When you’re walking outside with your coat open because 30 degrees feels like spring, you know it’s been too cold. 

Since coming back to D.C. from Houston holidays, we’ve mostly stayed indoors, on our couch, under two or three layers of clothes. Our apartment doesn’t heat well, but at least it offers shelter from the wind that turns 4 degrees into “feels like -11.” 

Last week, a broken water main at work extended my winter break by a few days. Back to the couch! But cabin fever is real (the term turns 100 this year), and after seeing photos of the frozen reflecting pool, I wanted to witness some of the winter-transformed city. What I learned from that endless 2015 Boston winter was getting outside helps winter blues, as long as you bundle correctly. 

Here are a few photos from the times we’ve dared venture out. 

Meridian Park fountain

Joan of Arc 

"Stay off"

This Christmas display was on W between 15th and 14th Streets NW last week. I hope it morphs into a Valentine's Day decoration in the next few weeks. 

Books I Read in 2017

Happy New Year! 

I got through 28 books this year. My Goodreads goal was 20, and I achieved that with the help of several graphic novels. I got into the public anthropology program mentioned in last year’s post and spent lots of time reading journal articles. There was another art book, whose essays took me months to get through. New this year was an audio book, Ann Helen Petersen’s Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud. Petersen is the one reading her book to you. We listened to chapters as we drove between D.C. and St. Louis for the eclipse, a trip inspired by Annie Dillard’s The Abundance, one of my 2016 books. 

Unread books piled up around the apartment and my cubicle throughout the year. Ones I have yet to tackle include Yaa Gyaasi’s Homegoing, Stay With Me by Ayobami Adebayo, After a While You Just Get Used to It: A Tale of Family Clutter by Gwendolyn Knapp, and Rice and Beans: A Unique Dish in a Hundred Places, edited by Richard Wilk and Lívia Barbosa. I want to read the last one because it represents a large part of my weekly diet. Maybe this will be the year I get to Arthur Kleinman’s What Really Matters: Living a Moral Life Amidst Uncertainty and Danger. 

My only reading goal this year was to finish the third LBJ book, Master of the Senate. I’ve listed it here prematurely, because I still have about 20 pages to go. But there are four hours left to the year, and I believe in myself. 

What books did you love in 2017? What are you looking forward to next year? Any favorite graphic novels I should check out? 

Here’s my 2017 list, with stars for the books I recommend. 

1. Black & Blue: The Origin and Consequences of Medical Racism, John Hoberman

2. The Kindness of Children, Vivian Gussin Paley 

3. Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood, Marjane Satrapi**

4. Persepolis 2, Marjane Satrapi** - I've wanted to read these books for years. I walked by them repeatedly in the library and finally checked them out and tore through them. This panel made me laugh out loud. 

5.  My Brilliant Friend, Elena Ferrante** - Two women I admire loved and recommended this series. After I finished My Brilliant Friend, I was ambivalent. “Well… if they both like them, there must be some reason,” I thought and picked up the next book. 

6. The Story of a New Name, Elena Ferrante** - I devoured the second book, while despising the two main characters and their awful decisions. I really needed to know what happened to them, though, but as the semester was beginning, I put the series aside to focus on reading about Marx.  

7. Karl Marx, Anthropologist, Thomas Patterson

8. The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America, Michael Taussig

9. Anne of Green Gables, L.M. Montgomery  - Reread and cried again. 

10. Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connections, Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing

11. The Infinite Wait and Other Stories, Julia Wertz 

12. Difficult Women, Roxane Gay**

13. Enforcing Order: An Ethnography of Urban Policing, Didier Fassin** 

14. Eating the Ocean, Elspeth Probyn 

15. Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, Elena Ferrante** - The semester ended, and I was back to the Neapolitan novels. 

16. The Story of the Lost Child, Elena Ferrante** - By the time I finished this book, I’d convinced at least two other people to start the series. Names and relationships were confusing, and, as mentioned, I really hated the two main characters at times, but overall, I’m glad I stuck with it.

17. Becoming Unbecoming, Una - I didn’t know what this book was going to be and picked it because I liked the cover image. It was a about a British woman growing up when the Yorkshire Ripper was in the news. It’s about surviving rape and abuse, slut-shaming, misogyny, and the struggle of becoming a woman in a society that hates women. It was heartbreaking, enraging, inspiring, and way more than I expected from a graphic a novel. 

18. The Black Penguin, Andrew Evans**

19. Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud: The Rise and Reign of Unruly Women, Ann Helen Petersen**

20. Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, A Man Who Would Cure the World, Tracy Kidder - I reread this for class, then told my professor I was thinking of leaving the program to become a nurse. I did not carry through. 

21. The Land of Open Graves, Jason De León

22. Anthropology: A Student’s Guide to Theory and Method, Stanley R. Barrett

23. Beautiful Ruins, Jess Walter** - this was one I stayed in bed to finish on a Sunday morning.

24. Niki de Saint Phaille and the Tarot Garden - Jill Johnston, Marella Caracciolo Chia, Giulio Pietromarchi - This was the art book whose text took me months to read. Niki de Saint Phaille was married to Swiss artist Jean Tinguely, and she created this wonderful sculpture garden in Italy that we will get to one day.  

25. Lumberjanes vol 3: A Terrible Plan - Noelle Stevenson, Shannon Watters, Grace Ellis, Brooke A. Allen

26. Lumberjanes vol 4: Out of Time - Noelle Stevenson, Shannon Watters, Grace Ellis, Brooke A. Allen

27. Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty, Dorothy Roberts

28. The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Master of the Senate, Robert Caro**