Book Lists 2022 • Page 2

Hi all.

1. Meditations in an Emergency - Frank O’Hara
2. Giovanni’s Room - James Baldwin
3. Child Lucia and Other Library Fabula - Nick Perilli
4. Watership Down - Richard Adams
5. Hunger - Knut Hamsun

6. Les Fleurs de Mal - Charles Baudelaire
7. Lucy - Jamaica Kincaid
8. Dept. of Speculation - Jenny Offill
9. Life is a Dream - Pedro Calderón de la Barca
10. Cry, the Beloved Country - Alan Paton

11. Winesburg, Ohio - Sherwood Anderson
12. Hour of the Star - Clarice Lispector
13. Holy the Firm - Annie Dillard
14. Book of the Green Man - Ronald Johnson
15. The Essential W.S. Merwin - W.S. Merwin

16. Philosophers Know Nothing About Love - Alison Lubar
17. Horror - Anthony Palma
18. Shakespeare's Sonnets - William Shakespeare
19. A Season in Hell and Illuminations - Arthur Rimbaud
20. The Magic Mountain - Thomas Mann

21. Time is a Mother - Ocean Vuong
22. The World According to Garp - John Irving
23. The Woman Who Fell From the Sky - Joy Harjo
24. Cafes and Comets After Midnight - Nikos Engonopoulos
25. The Other Alexander - Margarita Liberaki

26. The Summer Book - Tove Jansson
27. Averno - Louise Glück
28. Kafka on the Shore - Haruki Murakami
29. Selected Poems of PB Shelley - Percy Bysshe Shelley
30. Iconostasis of Anonymous Saints (Vol. 1) - Yiannis Ritsos

31. On Time - Joanne Kyger
32. With My Dog-Eyes - Hilda Hilst
33. The Sea in You - David Whyte
34. The Book of Light - Lucille Clifton
35. Silent Spring - Rachel Carson

36. Cul-de-sac - Nick Perilli
37. The Trial - Franz Kafka
38. My Ántonia - Willa Cather
39. The Day of the Locust - Nathanael West
40. Kitchen - Banana Yoshimoto

41. Space Neon Neon Space - Luna Rey Hall
42. The Book of Disquiet - Fernando Pessoa
43. Dad During Deer Season - Lane Chasek
44. Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude - Ross Gay
45. Before We Were Strangers - Nadya Aisenberg

46. Gold - Rumi
47. The Man Who Loved Children - Christina Stead
48. The Opposing Shore - Julien Gracq
49. Song - Brigit Pegeen Kelly
50. The House of the Spirits - Isabel Allende (currently reading)

My favorite of 1 - 5, all incredible books, is probably Watership Down. Just a perfect novel with characters I was sad to leave after the book was over. I absolutely did not expect to fall in love so deeply with Adams’ tale of wild rabbits, as well as his prose. I also want to plug a local Philly author Nick Perilli on his excellent fiction chapbook. Amazing magical-realism stuff. I also really enjoyed Hunger and its page-turning delirium. An unforgettable story about a starving artist.

6 - 10 was not as consistently great as what came before, but some incredible books. Baudelaire is undeniably good, dark sensual poetry—never fell in love, personally, but of course he was a master of the craft. Kincaid and Offill didn’t really wow me either. Lucy isn’t terrible, but I can’t say I liked Dept. of Speculation much. I struggled with Dept.’s fragmentation, a style obviously inherited from (the more enjoyable) Renata Adler. I unfortunately never came to feel like I was enjoying it while reading, just that I wanted to reach the end. Totally not the case with the 1600’s Spanish drama Life is a Dream and the post-colonial masterpiece Cry, the Beloved Country, which both blew me away. I wanted to bask in those texts for much longer than their pages allowed me.

I enjoyed most of 11-15. I can see some sneaking into my favorites. Winesburg, Ohio is excellent, about a small Midwestern town and its soul-searching residents. I didn't like Dillard's "book-long metaphysical prose-poem" Holy the Firm, even though I loved Pilgrim of Tinker Creek. Too much fluff. I also wish Hour of the Star and Book of the Green Man were longer--both great, one fiction and the other poetry. As for the Merwin collection, I'd been reading it for months, patiently, entranced by his work... beautiful insights on time, nature, life's mystery. My favorite poems are from Rain in the Trees, Present Company, The Shadow of Sirius, and Garden Time.

16 and 17 are chapbooks from local poets, both highly recommended. I also really enjoyed my experience with Rimbaud, never read him before. Really strange/surreal, highly imaginative poetry. Shakespeare is Shakespeare, undeniably good stuff. Obviously I read a lot of poetry but even moreso while reading Mann’s The Magic Mountain, which was … good but also totally baffling at times, frustratingly long and longwinded; so much went over my head. But I’m glad I read it—some truly brilliant writing. It just could’ve been about 200-300 pages shorter.

21 - 23 are all masterpieces. You can't go wrong with Irving, Vuong, and Harjo. Garp was probably the funniest I've ever read by Irving, while keeping all the heart. This was also my introduction to Harjo and she is instantly now one of my favorite poets. 24 and 25 I picked up on my honeymoon in Greece. Cafes and Comets is a poetry collection with the original Greek alongside the English translations. I really enjoy Engonopoulos as a poet, very surreal and melodic. I wasn't as into the Liberaki book, but the premise is very cool. A family, with a brutal father as patriarch, discovers that he has secretly kept a second family--and that he'd given the same names to both legitimate and illegitimate children. The two families encounter one another. It's pretty melodramatic, but also nothing really stood out besides the beauty of Liberaki's prose. I'd like to try again with another of her books.

Everything 26 - 30 is special. The Summer Book is a quiet story of serene perfection. Averno's poems are mystically gorgeous. Kafka on the Shore is imaginative, immersive, and wonderfully dreamy (though I think I prefer Murakami's Hard-Boiled Wonderland). Shelley's poems are incandescent and deliberate messages about nature's calm and chaos, solitude, the power and fragility of love, the seasons, the elements... Ritsos' prose-poetic novel is a surreal trip into the mind of an artist/wanderer, where dreams, memories, confessions, and speculations form a bizarre mosaic of self. All great stuff.

My favorite of the next batch (31 - 35) is probably Clifton's The Book of Light which is a perfect collection of poetry. Hilst's novella is good, absurd fun--incredibly lyrical and experimental in its utilization of language--but also not nearly as good as her other work I've read. This one is basically about a professor losing his job and then his grip on reality. I also enjoyed Whyte's book of love poems (one of the poems from this collection was read at my wedding). Each piece is gorgeous while as a whole felt a bit samey. I didn't finish all of Silent Spring but got pretty far. Its historical context is fascinating to me and I'm glad I got through a chunk of it. Definitely boring, though.

36 - 40 are all incredible fiction works. Cul-de-sac is the debut novel by local Nick Perilli, whose chapbook I read early this year. I was honored when he asked me to blurb this one. It didn't disappoint, a darkly imaginative, hilarious, suburban fantasy, reminds me of an extended Twilight Zone. The Trial was great, as expected. I do love me some Kafka. The Metamorphosis and a few others I've already read triumph over it, but it was fun getting back into his work--still need to get to The Castle. Both Cather and West's novels were beyond gorgeous in different ways. Locust was downright funny at times with driving imagistic prose, unafraid of making you uncomfortable, while Antonia is tender and sentimental, a nostalgic love letter. Kitchen is also perfect, my second by Yoshimoto. Her work always feels so cozy and warms my heart.

A lot of poetry in batch 41 - 45. Luna Rey Hall's chapbook is all about self-liberation and gender identity; I've read their work before since we connected over Twitter and traded manuscripts for feedback. Amazing poetry, well worth checking out. Pessoa's The Book of Disquiet utterly blew me away, to like a different dimension. Maybe my book of the year? Every page was filled with heartwrenching prose--just brilliant stuff--reenvisioning what fiction actually means. Back to poetry for the other books. Chasek's chapbook is great. Didn't really love Ross Gay as much as I'd have liked, though I did enjoy some poems; he was rec'd to me by a friend.

 

I read this one a few weeks ago and was also a big fan!

 

January:

1) The Inheritance Games by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
2) Memento by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

February:

3) Five Total Strangers by Natalie D. Richards
4) A Line To Kill by Anthony Horowitz
5) Lethal Lit: Murder of Crows by K. Ancrum

 

January:
1. American Elsewhere - Robert Jackson Bennett
2. Come With Me - Ronald Malfi
3. The Collective - Allison Gaylin
4. Local Missing Women - Mary Kubica
5. Video Night - Adam Cesare
6. A History of Wild Places - Shea Ernshaw

February
8. Twenty Years Later - Charlie Donlea
9. The Last Thing He Told Me - Laura Dave
10. In My Dreams I Hold A Knife - Ashley Winstead
11. The Sanatorium - Sarah Pearce
12. The Whisper Man - Alex North
13. The Overnight Guest - Heather Gudenkauf
14. Kill Creek - Scott Thomas

 

Updated my post with my next five!

 

Updated! I had been making good progress on cutting down my Audible backlog before the Audible sale yesterday, haha.

 

The perennial problem, haha. How are you liking the AG Riddle books? My dad recently got into them and really likes them, was thinking about checking them out.

 

They were nothing like I expected. They were fun if you turn off your brain. Most of the plot could be solved by simple conversations. I’d skip them unless you’re itching for just digestible sci-fi.

 

Interesting, thanks. That definitely will scratch a very particular itch, so I'll keep that in mind.

 

The MC is a bit of a Gary Stu. But I read them all in like four days. One of those situations. I like brain Candy sometimes.

 

Oh yeah for sure, I've got a bunch of books like that that I enjoy. It's fun to be able to just sit and enjoy something for a couple hours without complications.

 

Big update, my first one this year. A few thoughts.

Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising is one of the finest works of fantasy literature, and I'm very excited to get to the final volume in the next couple months. I think these will be annual rereads for me from now on. (I had previously read the first three, but this was my first time reading book four.) Evershore was a great novella in the Cytoverse. Beyond Redemption was disgusting, in a great way, and I loved it. Definitely enjoyed my first foray into Cradle and I'll be diving back in soon. Swords of Mars was a classic Barsoom tale and a stellar addition to the series. It was nice to finally read Volsungs/Loðbrók for myself, since I'm pretty familiar with the stories but I'd never read them. Very compelling stuff and a good translation from what I could tell. The Alex Rider books by Anthony Horowitz are literally page-turning excitement; I read most of the series like a decade ago, but there are a couple books I never got to, so I'm doing a reread. I blow through these books in an afternoon each. Great YA spy thrillers. Finally, Sakura was an interesting one. I started reading it a couple years ago and got bogged down halfway through. It's 666 pages, and I think if it had been like 300 max, it would have been twice as good. As it is, I still enjoyed it, there's a lot of cool stuff going on (android metal vocaloid goddess in a dystopian cyberpunk mecha Japan fighting the government), and it explored some neat concepts and had some really satisfying battles. Also, I don't really think any of my criticisms are fair since the author died shortly after completing the rough draft of the book and two of his friends helped flesh it out with his other ideas and publish it to benefit his widow. That's why I picked it up in the first place. So it's weird to be like "Yeah this book would have been way better if XYZ" because, well, the late author probably agrees—but for what it's worth, his friends did a great job and it's still a great book. Anyway, long explanation over.

For comics & manga, Arslan and Kimi ni Todoke continue to be fantastic. Ms. Marvel was a good one, super disappointed that series was cancelled as she's an amazing superhero, but with the upcoming TV show/movie I'm sure we'll get more comics about her. The Old Guard was interesting because I watched the movie first, a couple months before, and it's like a shot-for-shot remake of the comic. I really enjoyed the movie; I liked the comic too, but not quite as much. Hard to say why exactly. Spider-Gwen is weird for me: love the character, baffled at some of the choices Jason Latour makes in writing about her. Still enjoying it, and I think once we get to Ghost-Spider it'll get a lot better. And Wicked + Divine was wild and great, definitely going to be continuing that.

As for March, with novels I'm going to be finishing The Starless Crown soon, and then it's back to a Stormlight Archive readthrough in tandem with more Cradle. Probably going to hit a couple more Alex Rider books. I'm almost done with Beowulf and Purgatory Mount, and I've got a couple more audiobooks queued up. The Starless Crown was my January 2021 purchase; Rise of the Mages will be my February read, but probably not until April, haha.

In comics and manga, I've got a giant stack of library stuff under my bed and I'll just go through them in whatever order they happen to be in. Some new stuff, some continuing series.

Thanks for reading this super long update lol.

 

I've never read Alex Rider but Anthony's two current mystery series I absolutely love. He's become one of my favorite authors due to those alone.

 

I know he got his start in TV writing for Agatha Christie stuff, so I’m definitely planning to read his mystery series too. Glad to hear you like them so much. The Alex Rider books are so tightly written and a lot of fun. I probably like them more because I first read them as a teen, but they’ve still been a lot of fun to go back through.

 

Is recommend starting with Magpie Murders. That was the coolest execution of a book that I've ever read.

Haven't read any of his Sherlock Holmes stuff but it's on my list for sure

 

Updated my post (at the top of page 2)

 

Updated. Clearly slowing down right now that half marathon training is over. Been craving music more in the gym/on my drives lately.

 

Yikes, it's been forever since I updated this. Got a lot to talk about; I'll try to be brief.

March
I continued my reread of the Alex Rider books. I paused after book five, I'm thinking I'll jump back in soon here. These are fun teen spy thrillers, perfect for an afternoon's read. Eating Salad Drunk was fine; there were a couple haikus that made me laugh, but the rest were just kind of okay. I read it in about 20 minutes at the library. The Starless Crown was phenomenal and highly recommended; James Rollins/Clemens is one of my favorite fantasy writers, and it's so exciting that he's back with a new series. Absolutely loved this book. Edgedancer was a lot of fun; I really like Lift, and it was nice to get some more detail about her backstory before going into Oathbringer. For comics, I read the first volume of A Certain Magical Index, and that was neat. I only ever saw the first season of the anime, so I might use the manga to refresh my memory before watching more.

April
Okay, Purgatory Mount. I should have written about this sooner when my thoughts were fresh. This was a really interesting read. It's my first Adam Roberts book, and he seems like a cool, erudite, clever, maybe-a-little-pretentious-but-maybe-he-deserves-it kind of guy. This book reinforced those impressions. The far-future god stuff at the beginning and end was more interesting to me than the bulk of the near-future story, and there were a handful of times where I wondered what the point of the whole narrative was and why I should keep reading if it was just going to be pages and pages of clever (too clever?) dialogue and pop-culture-meta-references and oblique hints about the apocalypse without anything substantial. For a while, I was pretty sure I was going to describe this book as really overwrought and trying way too hard. But then the last third of the near-future story hooked me, and I found myself actually caring about the characters, and the big plot twist hit me like a bag of hammers and made me rethink the rest of the book, and then the far-future gods epilogue was really poignant and powerful and explored themes that I hadn't realized had been present throughout the whole book, and I finished it feeling like it was a masterwork. So make of all that what you will, but I think I'll read more of his books.

Otherwise, Cicero was enjoyable, I'm glad I finally read Beowulf in its entirety, and the Hounds of Rowan was a fun new YA series with some good Celtic influence, which I love. I read a ton of comics this month as well. Monstress is, as ever, incredible. Scene of the Crime was interesting, not as good as their later stuff, but still fun. Postal and Deadpool were both good, I'm looking forward to continuing both. It was neat to read the first Deltora Quest manga since I loved that series when I was younger and it's a nice blast of nostalgia. I'll talk more about Spider-Gwen later on. For Amazing Spider-Man... there were some cool moments and concepts in the Nick Spencer run, but a lot of it I was just trudging through, unfortunately. Not wasted time, but I won't be rereading these issues or anything.

May
Not sure what keyed me in on 17776, but that was truly a delight and very moving by the end, I loved it. Self-Portrait is the best work of poetry of this or any generation. Oathbringer was wonderful, I loved every second of it, and I'm glad to finally have read it, and to have had so much new-to-me Stormlight to plow through. For comics, Harrow County was interesting enough that I'll keep reading, and Aero was pretty fun, though I'm not really surprised it wasn't picked up for further volumes; it's not really offering anything new. Spider-Gwen... I think I honestly like the concept and art design of Spider-Gwen more than any of her stories so far, and I've heard that's not an uncommon opinion. I don't dislike these storylines, but they're often a little too confusing or low-stakes or odd for me. But the art is a real treat, and I'm enjoying the transition into Ghost-Spider.

June
Not much reading this month. I guess I was busy? But both novels I finished were fantastic. Extreme Makeover is a great, compelling apocalyptic thriller, whereas On Lavender Tides is a charming Pokémon-inspired adventure. Loved both.

Whew.

 

The newest Monstress arc just ended and they somehow keep getting better and better.

Postal is pretty good. It gets better as it goes along. builds a pretty epic story.

 

did you stick this in here just to see if anyone would just let this slide

 

Yeah I really wanted to get a rousing debate about it going haha.

 

Updated. I miss marathon training/reading more, but my brain is having a lot harder time focusing these days so I've slowed way down (compared to previous years, admittedly).

 

I see no lies

 

January:
1. American Elsewhere - Robert Jackson Bennett
2. Come With Me - Ronald Malfi
3. The Collective - Allison Gaylin
4. Local Missing Women - Mary Kubica
5. Video Night - Adam Cesare
6. A History of Wild Places - Shea Ernshaw

February
8. Twenty Years Later - Charlie Donlea
9. The Last Thing He Told Me - Laura Dave
10. In My Dreams I Hold A Knife - Ashley Winstead
11. The Sanatorium - Sarah Pearce
12. The Whisper Man - Alex North
13. The Overnight Guest - Heather Gudenkauf
14. Kill Creek - Scott Thomas

March
15. A Flicker in the Dark - Stacy Willingham
16. Moon Lake - Joe R. Lansdale
17. The Night Shift - Alex Finlay
18. The Nothing Man - Catherine Ryan Howard

April
19. The Resting Place - Camilla Sten
20. Summer of Night - Dan Simmons
21. Rage - Richard Bachman
22. My Lovely Wife - Samantha Downing

May
23. The Maid - Nita Prose
24. The Children on the Hill - Jennifer McMahon
25. Dark Roads - Chevy Stevens
26. Hidden Pictures - Jason Rekulak

June
27. The Perfect Child - Lucinda Berry
28. Hide - Kiersten White
29. The Shadows - Alex North
30. Cujo - Stephen King
31. The Regulators - Richard Bachman
32. Boy's Life - Robert McCammon
33. Seed - Ania Ahlborn

July
34. The Final Girl Support Group - Grady Hendrix
35. The Loop - Jeremy Robert Johnson
36. Brother - Ania Ahlborn
37. The Island - Adrian McKinty
38. Suffer the Children - Craig DiLouie

 

I should really update my list here....