My 2022 Reading List
My only New Year's resolution for 2022 was to read more books. While the total numbers don't look that different (only a couple more than last year), one of those was the two volumes of War and Peace, which altogether at 1440ish pages is the longest stand-alone book I have ever read and is probably at least 4 books' worth of reading, so I feel okay about it.
I think I said something similar to this last year, but I find I am really struggling to recall any details for books I read earlier in the year. I should probably start making notes as I read things (or give up on doggedly writing a comment for each title!)
I couldn't pick a single 'Book of the Year' this year so my half-dozen favourites are highlighted in light blue.
1. Mrs M. by Luke Slattery
A fictionalised version of Mrs Elizabeth Macquarie during the time she spent with Governor Lachlan Macquarie in NSW. Some (speculated) emotional hanky panky with an architect. I quite enjoyed reading some Australian historical fiction, though from what I know of the Macquaries I'm sure some of the interactions with the local Aboriginal people were highly sanitised in this version of things.
2. The Skies of Pern by Anne McAffrey
Having always loved the Pern books, I picked this up somewhere a while ago second-hand. Chronologically it's the last in the Pern series, and I wanted to know how things ended up. I remember at the time I read it it was eerily relevant; including a tsunami (I was reading this in the days after the January tsunami in Tonga), a comet crashing into the planet (I had just watched the fantastically depressing film 'Don't Look Up') and a movement of ignorant anti-science people afraid of new advances in medicine (hello anti-vaxxers).
3. Everywhere I look by Helen Garner
Borrowed this book of essays from Gran's bookshelves because I'd been meaning to read some of Helen Garner's nonfiction for a while now. The essays were great but her diaries left more of an impression on me (see further down the list).
4. Factory 19 by Dennis Glover
Most frustrating book of the year. I'm usually great at suspending my disbelief; I mean, I read fantasy and speculative fiction, I'll believe anything as long as it makes at least a vague attempt to make sense. But with this book I could never quite buy the premise that people would want to live in a romanticised 1940s/50s factory-work 'utopia' (even in contrast to the financial instability and unreliable gig-economy work of the 21st century). This was so obviously-slash-painfully written from a straight/cis/white male point of view, with no effort made to adjust the concept for anyone else, that I could never get invested in the story. It was satire of course, it didn't take itself super seriously, but it missed the mark for me. I think it either needed to take itself less seriously and be more farcical, or take itself a little more seriously and make an effort to create a believable premise. It hovered frustratingly between the two.
5. Archy and Mehitabel by Don Marquis
I began to read this little book of poems the day after Russia invaded Ukraine. Sitting on the train on the way home in the evening. Rat a tat tat went my alley cat heart as I thought I felt the world start to crumble around us once again.
(Archy is a cockroach who composes poems by dive-bombing a typewriter. Mehitabel is the headstrong lady cat who visits him when she's not busy out chasing tom-cats, stealing cream and living her best alley cat life. It's hard to really describe how excellent the whole weird premise is, just read it).
6. Atonement by Ian McEwan
Knocked my socks off. I'm glad I didn't realise going in to this book how much of the entire middle section would be set in a war zone, because generally I avoid reading war books (too depressing) and I wouldn't have read this if I'd known, but then I would have missed out on something incredible.
7. The Girlo Travel Survival Kit by Anthea Paul
This is a book of travel advice that really by this time of my life I have grown out of (it is intended as a sort of 'baby's first travel book', after all). I re-read it this year specifically to remind myself of the message on this page:
"Wherever you go, there you are. [...] You need to be where you are. You can't spend your time wishing you were somewhere else. Be here now."
(Whether I was actually successful or not at following this advice is another story).
8. The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert
I really enjoyed this even more than I thought I might - I think Gilbert has a (perhaps unfairly) somewhat tarnished reputation because of Eat Pray Love (which in fairness I haven't read), but this book was a compelling and well-written piece of historical fiction about the life of a (fictional) lady botanist, Alma Whittaker, throughout the century of the 1800s. Women's place in society, biology, nature, sexuality - it covers a lot of ground with a great character as the conduit.
9. Son of Sin by Omar Sakr
My first appreciation of Omar Sakr was through his twitter account, which is a delightful mix of Australian political and racial insight, ephemeral poetic brilliance, and occasional no-bullshit life commentary or silly memes. The contrast is exquisite and so is Son of Sin, his first novel, about growing up as a queer Muslim in Western Sydney. Not all poets make the leap to prose well, but he more than stuck the landing.
10. The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki
Unfortunately I did not realise when I started this book that the main character was a kid with developing schizophrenia. Stories around this particular type of mental health challenge are a bit of a trigger for me, so I couldn't fall in love with this book like I could with all the other Ozeki novels that I have read.
11. Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín
Not too much in the way of plot but I was glued to the pages just because it was beautifully written. Very passive characters though (in the way all Literary Fiction seems to be these days). I wanted to yell "MAKE A CHOICE, SERIOUSLY, ANY CHOICE WILL DO" at the main character multiple times throughout.
12. Gallant by V. E. Schwab
This is more of a 'young adult' book than the excellent Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, and so while it was enjoyable and an easy read it didn't grab me quite as much. It was a gripping and gothic story but it didn't really have anything to say, in the way that Addie LaRue did.
13. The Midnight Girls by Alicia Jasinska
I saw the author at the Sydney Writer's Festival. When asked about how she came up with her idea for the book, she answered that she wanted to write something like 'Wicked' except where Glinda and Elphaba run off to be Sapphic lovers at the end and live happily ever after.
Friends, I have never slammed my credit card down to buy a book so quickly.
Delightful.
14. We of the Never Never by Jeannie Gunn
I read an ebook version of this classic autobiography set in 1902 when I was visiting the Never Never of the Northern Territory myself one hundred and twenty years later, in mid-2022. I didn't expect to fall in love with it so much but it exceeded all of my expectations, both in terms of the prose and the author's attitude to Aboriginal people. There are many horrific examples of racism in this book - she was a sheltered middle class white woman travelling deep into the harsh countryside for the first time, after all - but ultimately I think her blind naivety actually helped her to see through the bullshit self-justifications of colonisation, in some ways. At one point she comes right out and says (and I paraphrase): 'Look, we stole their entire country from them and killed them, can we really complain if they steal our cattle or kill us back? We have no moral superiority here.'
But what I really loved were her descriptions of people and place.
"For a moment we waited, spellbound in the brilliant sunshine; then the dogs running down to the water's edge, the gallahs and cockatoos rose with gorgeous sunrise effect: a floating gray-and-pink cloud, backed by sunlit flashing white. Direct to the forest trees they floated and, settling there in their myriads, as by a miracle the gaunt, gnarled old giants of the bush all over blossomed with garlands of grey, and pink, and white, and gold."
15. Ransacking Paris by Patti Miller
I have dog-eared so many pages of this book because there were so many bits in it that I loved.
It's about French writers, and about reading, and about language, and about Paris. I read the whole thing more or less within the three days I spent in the very isolated Mary River Wilderness Retreat, halfway between Darwin and Kakadu. Zero wifi signal, a glass of warm white wine, cockatoos nibbling the trees outside, I dreamed of Paris. (One of those books where you will forever remember the place you were in when you read it).
16 & 17. The Gurkha and the Lord of Tuesday and Kundo Wakes Up by Saad Hossain
Pairing these two novellas together as they both had a similar genre-bending vibe; optimistic, dystopian, cyberpunk, a mash-up of ancient djinn and futuristic AIs. Just about as crazy as possible; I have to applaud the audacity if nothing else.
18. Mirror Sydney: An Atlas of Reflections by Vanessa Berry
Book cover/design of the year! (Awarded not just for the cover but beautiful ink line drawings for every chapter).
A wonderful collection of non-fiction writings on place and memory and the intersection of the two. And about Sydney, past and present. A book full of love for our much-maligned home city. I particularly enjoyed the reflections on my little corner of the north shore - always exciting to see your tiny home suburb make it into print!
19. Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
A very dream-like book; it could have been a flimsy concept but the author forged it into something fascinating and powerful. I finished the last page with my mouth hanging open in wonder.
I won't even try to explain what it's about because I'll do a terrible job. Just go and read it.
20. How to End a Story: Diaries: 1995–1998 by Helen Garner
A great read for anyone who has been through or is going through a divorce. It's both sad and also somehow comforting that one of Australia's great writers has in the past been stuck in the same sort of rubbish relationships with rubbish men as the rest of us. It's quite a relief to watch her finally fight her way out.
(Eucalyptus isn't even that good, Murray Bail, you twat! I always knew you were a raging sexist!)
21. The Bee and the Orange Tree by Melissa Ashley
The premise of this book - women writers of fairytales in the literary salons of 1699 Paris - was like catnip to me. Unfortunately the end result was a little underwhelming. The most interesting character abruptly disappears for at least a quarter of the book and I found it a little bit of a slog to get to the end.
22. Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
Some reviewers have compared this title to Cloud Atlas, one of my all-time favourite novels, and I suppose I can sort of see why. Emily St John Mandel and David Mitchell have always had a connection in my mind because of the excellent Sydney Writer's Festival panel that I saw them both on (many years ago now), about books that play with time to tell stories about climate change or other apocalypses. (Apocalypsii??)
Sea of Tranquility is very much a 'cli-fi' novel and a pandemic novel, but it's about so much more than those things. It might be a bit of a cliche but I suppose all of the best novels are about being human, ultimately.
23. Normal People by Sally Rooney
I didn't actually hate this book but when it came time to write my two-sentence review I couldn't help but think of this tweet-thread I saw recently... hah. It GOES OFF on a particular kind of modern literary fiction in a way that I instantly recognised and found very amusing. Read the whole thread, it's gold.
24. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
My energy did start to flag a bit in the last 100 pages or so, in which Tolstoy goes on a long digression about the nature of History:
25. The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow
I wanted something easy to read after staggering over the finish line of War and Peace, and this was a page-turner that hit the spot perfectly. Vibrant, bold, witchy, feminist, good. Salem witch history meets women's suffrage meets pagan/celtic Triple Goddess traditions, with a little sprinkling of rural punk.
26. When Things Are Alive They Hum by Hannah Bent
Another beautifully written book (with a killer title), the story of two sisters and how their lives and their relationship was shaped by the loss of their mother when they were children. One of those stories where you totally don't agree with a character's choices but you can't really hold it against her because of her understandable trauma. Sometimes I get annoyed by these, but this one pulled it off.
27. Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr
As I said above - all the best books are essentially about what it means to be human. This one is also about books and storytelling and how they bind us together through the generations and the centuries, across cultures and technologies. I loved the way the three distinct timelines and different characters ended up intertwining. Such a clever book, unashamedly full of heart.
28. Writing Your Life: A Journey of Discovery by Patti Miller
Since the other Patti Miller book was such a success with me, I knew I had to borrow this off my Gran's shelves. I found it less interesting than Ransacking Paris but it's a different sort of a book, more of a straightforward guidebook to a writing course (which is exactly where it came from). I liked what she had to say about the purpose of autobiographical nonfiction: how at first it might seem self-absorbed or narcissistic, but really, writing about life is a celebration of the shared human experience. It is a generous act, and it connects us. That's exactly how I felt about Ransacking Paris - that you can feel so close to a person you've never met through their words.
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