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 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 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!

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** 

Books I Read in 2016

Happy 2017! 

2016 was generally a rough year, and the 27 books I read this year are unimpressive compared to last year’s 48. I only reached 27 thanks to four comic books. Then again, I took two graduate classes and had a job the whole year, versus 2015’s five months of fellowship and four months of employment. So in between pleasure reading, there were hours of chapters on archival document management and capitalism. I’ve applied to a graduate program, and if that goes well, there will be many more hours of reading capitalism in 2017.

Looking back at last year’s post, I did accomplish my goals of reading The Education of Henry Adams and Sula. There was a stark lack of LBJ in 2016, so my only reading goal for next year is to finish book three in the Years of Lyndon Johnson series, Master of the Senate. I’ve also got both Persepolis books on my night stand and an ever-growing list of books to read on Goodreads.

What were some of your favorite books this year? What’s on your list for 2017? 

Here are the 27 books I read in 2016, with stars for the ones I really loved and recommend: 

1. White Teeth, Zadie Smith**
2. The Education of Henry Adams, Henry Adams - this one is interesting for the history. I started reading it in 2015 for Jamaica Kincaid's Autobiography and Memoir class. She pointed out that Adams writes his life story without once mentioning his wife, Marian "Clover" Hooper Adams, who committed suicide by drinking photo chemicals. He makes one allusion to her death when he mentions going to the Washington cemetery "known as Rock Creek, to see the bronze figure which St. Gaudens had made for him in his absence." One reference in 505 pages. 
3. The Sparrow, Mary Doria Russell
4. Kehinde Wiley: New Republic, various authors
5. Lafayette in the Somewhat United States, Sarah Vowell ** - I recommend this so much I wrote a blog post about it. It pairs especially well with lots of Hamilton soundtrack. 
6. On My Own, Diane Rehm** - definitely recommended for Diane Rehm fans. Maybe not recommended if you’ve lost someone recently and might cry on the bus on your way to work as you read it. Or perhaps it’s just what you  need? 
7. Growing Up Brown: Memoirs of a Filipino American, Peter Jamero
8. Kentucky Bourbon Whiskey: An American Heritage, Michael R. Veach
9. Sula, Toni Morrison**
10. H is for Hawk, Helen MacDonald** - there were times I had to stop reading this because it was so heartbreakingly sad.
11. Au revoir, les enfants, Louis Malle - read to get ready for France! 
12. My Kitchen Year: 136 Recipes That Saved My Life, Ruth Reichl 
13. Bad Feminist, Roxane Gay**
14. The Queen of the Night, Alexander Chee
15. The Abundance, Annie Dillard** - this, like H is for Hawk, made me think, “I will never write this well.” Beautiful. 
16. Driving Hungry, Layne Mosler
17. East Along the Equator, Helen Winternitz
18. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, J.K. Rowling, John Tiffany, Jack Thorne
19. Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan
20. Black Panther, Ta-Nehesi Coates
21. Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie** - I loved this book. It might be my favorite of the ones I read last year. 
22. The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World, Andrea Wulf**  
23. The Paper Garden: Mrs. Delany Begins Her Life's Work at 72, Molly Peacock**
24. Lumberjanes vol 1: Beware the Kitten Holy, Noelle Stevenson, Shannon Watters, Grace Ellis, Brooke A. Allen
25. Lumberjanes vol 2: Friendship to the Max, Noelle Stevenson, Shannon Watters, Grace Ellis, Brooke A. Allen
26. Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed: 16 Writers on the Decision Not to Have Kids, ed Meghan Daum
27. French Milk, Lucy Knisley

You Should Read "Lafayette in the Somewhat United States"

If you’re obsessed with the musical Hamilton and want to learn more about “America’s favorite fighting Frenchman,” now is as good a time as any to take a break from spreading the Hamilton gospel to your co-workers to read Sarah Vowell’s Lafayette in the Somewhat United States. 

I am well aware how embarrassingly little I know about history. Vowell, in a conversation with Quakers, helped me realize a potential reason for my disinterest in the history I learned in school. She visits the Birmingham Friends Meetinghouse near the Brandywine Battlefield in Pennsylvania, where Lafayette got shot in the leg. After telling her new acquaintances that she’s researching Lafayette, one of them says, “We understand our history as war.” 

“Yes,” I thought, remembering my history education as notebooks filled with battles and dates, the only one of which I can clearly recall being 1066, William the Conqueror. No wonder I thought history was boring for so long. I don’t care about battles.

Reductive as that may be, I do care about people, and Vowell, with huge doses of snark, presents all these historical figures as imperfect humans. Yes, George Washington led the Continental Army to victory, but he had a lot of help (and slaves). Yes, a very young Lafayette crossed the Atlantic a few times to help the United States in their fight against Britain, but to do so, he deceived his in-laws and pregnant wife. Yes, the Continental Army triumphed against its colonial oppressor, but man, were they a hot, underfunded, unshod and barely-clothed mess.

Lafayette and some friends at Lafayette Square. Photo by Gabe Bullard. 

Now for some highlights of the many, sarcastic gems from the book.

-On Lafayette’s seasickness during the boat ride to the United States: “He spent the miserable voyage learning English, presumably mastering how to conjugate the verb ‘to puke.’” 

-Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben’s assessment of the American soldiers’ bayonet skills before he taught them Bayonet 101: “'the American soldier, never having used this arm, had no faith in it, and never used it but to roast his beefsteak.'” 

-On Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the first draft of Notes on the State of Virginia while the Continental Army struggled to defend his state: “Basically, the governor of Virginia had thoughts on everything but how to arm and feed and reinforce the soldiers risking their lives to save his state.” 

-The horror expressed by a French officer dining in Washington’s tent when the general failed to serve the meal “in a succession of courses like in civilization. Apparently Washington ‘gave, on the same plate, meat, vegetables, and salad.’ On the same plate? Were these Americans people or animals?” I think the French are still wondering this now that the doggy bag has found its way to their country. 

If I included all the parts that made me laugh, there would be little left for you to read. Overall, I was left feeling admiration and some warmth toward our Revolutionary War heroes, plus a desire to read more of Washington’s correspondence. I also added several more places to visit to the Travel List, like Lafayette’s birthplace and the cemetery in Paris where he’s buried. 

I’m working on improving my loose grasp on history. Hamilton and books like Vowell’s help immensely. And actually, it’s really easy to read this book and also annoy your coworkers about Hamilton.  

Books I Read in 2015

Happy New Year! 

At 48 books, 2015 was a good reading year. Then again, seven of those were Harry Potter books, three were the His Dark Materials series, and one was a comic book. Thanks to the Nieman Fellowship in the first half of the year, I had time to read and take a class on Autobiography and Memoir, which meant more reading, roughly a book a week (still haven’t finished The Education of Henry Adams, though. There’s always next year).  

Here’s the list with stars for recommendations.  

1. The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. Du Bois** 
2. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, J.K. Rowling
3. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
4. Untamed: The Wildest Woman in America & the Fight for Cumberland Island, Will Harlan** 
5. Fairyland: A Memoir of My Father, Alysia Abbott** - Abbott was a Nieman affiliate (the people the Fellows bring with them) and spoke to us at the beginning of the fellowship. Fairyland is her story of growing up in 70s and 80s San Francisco with a gay father. It is a beautiful book.  
6. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
7. Yes Please, Amy Poehler
8. Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire
9. The Autobiography of Thomas Jefferson
10. Narrative of a Life of Frederick Douglass
11. Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada, Clarence King** - early mountaineers were madmen. Also, Clarence King led a double life, which you wouldn't know from reading this book, because he wrote it before the double life began. He married Ada Copeland, an African American woman, who knew him as a James Todd. He told her he was a Pullman porter (and of African descent). He was actually white, a geologist, and the first director of the U.S. Geological Survey. It’s interesting reading this book with this knowledge and looking for clues about his future.  
12. The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Neil Gaiman** - this was my first Neil Gaiman book, and it won’t be my last.  
13. Behind the Scenes, Or, Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House, Elizabeth Keckley** - Fascinating. Read this.  
14. Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix
15. Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands, Mary Seacole
16. Tiger, Tiger, Margaux Fragoso
17. Aké, Wole Soyinka
18. How I Became Hettie Jones, Hettie Jones
19. Family, Ian Frazier
20. The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon
21. Against Football - One Fan’s Reluctant Manifesto, Steve Almond**  
22. Swiss Life: 30 Things I Wish I'd Known, Chantal Panozzo
23. The Imperfectionists, Tom Rachman
24. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
25. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
26. Rock Creek Park, Gail Spilsbury
27. Tenth of December, George Saunders
28. Forest Hills (Images of America), Margery L. Elfin
29. Micrographica, Renee French  
30. On the Map, Simon Garfield
31. The Might Have Been, Joe Schuster
32. The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, translated by Edward FitzGerald
33. A Trail Through Leaves: The Journal As A Path to Place, Hannah Hinchman
34. Writing About Your Life: A Journey into the Past, William Zinsser
35. Dandelion Wine, Ray Bradbury** - I wrote a separate post about how great this book is and why you should read it. 
36. Loitering, Charles D’Ambrosia
37. Women Don’t Ask, Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever** - This was suggested reading at the end of a negotiation workshop. While it isn’t a page-turner, I recognized lots of truth in it and have been recommending it to all my lady friends, co-workers, and my boss.  
38. Cosmicomics, Italo Calvino
39. Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehesi Coates**  
40. Wench, Dolen Perkins-Valdez
41. Une Si Longue Lettre, Mariama Ba
42. At Swim-Two-Birds, Flann O’Brien  - This was certainly the strangest book I read all year.  
43. The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Means of Ascent, Robert Caro** - I gave the first book in this series to both my brother and my dad this year. I wish I could have a Caro biography or a Lin-Manuel Miranda musical about every part of history. Caro's description of former Texas governor Coke Stevenson’s work ethic and reading so inspired me that I woke up early to read for at least five of the ten days it took me to finish this book.  
44. The Taste of Country Cooking, Edna Lewis 45.    Northern Lights, Philip Pullman** - I plowed through all three of these books in less than a week and loved them, but wow, the third book is way too long.  
46. The Subtle Knife, Philip Pullman
47. The Amber Spyglass, Philip Pullman
48. Beautiful Swimmers, William Warner - If you are at all interested in the blue crab, this book is required reading. I am very interested in the blue crab and hope to inspect some closely this summer.  

What was the best book you read in 2015? What’s on your list for this year? I’d like to get through at least the next two LBJ books and have been instructed to read Toni Morrison’s Sula. I keep an ever-growing and generally ignored To-Read list on Goodreads. What do you recommend?  

Wishing you all a year full of excellent reading.  

You should read "Dandelion Wine"

“I mustn’t forget, I’m alive, I know I’m alive, I mustn’t forget it tonight or tomorrow or the day after that."

Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine is the perfect book to read at summer’s end. It’s perfect at the beginning of summer, as well. Really, it’s a perfect book.

Not dandelions.

Dandelion Wine is Bradbury’s semi-autobiographical story of the summer of 1928 in Green Town, Illinois (Waukegan). We see the town through the eyes of twelve-year-old Douglas Spaulding and his younger brother Tom as they crash through the summer, tallying traditions and new discoveries.

If that description makes you think, “I don’t care about a story about two little boys,” stop thinking that. It doesn’t matter what Douglas Spaulding looks like or how old he is, because he is you, and Dandelion Wine is about childhood and summer and boogeymen and death and goodbyes. It’s beautiful and sad, and it’s maddening because I can only dream of achieving such excellent writing. Each sentence is alive and sensual. You see, feel, smell, or taste what Bradbury describes. Every sentence hums, electric and alive with verbs and clear language. It’s sentimental, but so am I. I cried three or four times throughout the book. Once during the introduction, probably because of this: 

“I see my grandfather there looking up at that strange drifting light, thinking his own still thoughts. I see me, my eyes filled with tears, because it was all over, the night was done, I knew there would never be another night like this.” 

I’ve seen brown leaves on D.C. sidewalks in the last few days. Maybe the leaves are already turning wherever you are. Prolong your summer a little longer with Dandelion Wine. Save it for winter to brighten those cold, short days. Just read it.