I’ve been bumping into a lot of year-end book lists. (I think I just didn’t notice them before I started writing a book of my own.) The sheer number of lists reminds me of the sensation I sometimes feel looking down a library stack and feeling buried alive in words I’ll never read. And at the same time, when it’s someone I respect, I can’t help but engage. What did they value? What moved them this year? The way I choose books can be mercurial. Maybe one of these is for me! I’m curious!
Recently I’ve been thinking about the power of having my own newsletter. Someone asked me how I decide what to write and publish here, and I answered honestly: “I follow my gut.” This is a space that has no gatekeeper (besides me). While that sounds self-indulgent—which it is—it’s also empowering. I love that I don’t have a publication schedule (as you may notice since I write in bursts and then not at all). When I feel inspired, I write. When I’m slammed with work (noodles! my book!), I let myself off the hook. I haven’t monetized this because I don’t want paid subscriptions to be its guiding benchmark—i.e. was the content worth a certain dollar value. I can stray into experimental spaces OR do something unbelievably predictable! I can learn as I go!
With that in mind, I realized I wanted to write a year-end book recommendation list. Yes, this is my encouragement for you to read and buy books by contemporary authors! Every book sale really matters—these people are part of our greater community, sometimes very directly. I want to feed into the ecosystem that supports contemporary writers. I’m omitting some of my favorite books I read this year because I already wrote about them. (Case in point: Heaven is a Place on Earth by Adrian Shirk and What You Have Heard is True by Carolyn Forche.) There are some others that I may write about later and others I’m in the middle of now that I’m in love with—for future newsletters. If one of these books speaks to you, or feels relevant to someone you love, get it!
What books did you love this year? Any recommendations for me?
Wishing you a happy winter solstice. It’s really dark out. Time to read!
My Favorite Books I Read This Year
Interior States by Meghan O’Gieblyn, Anchor, 2018
American evangelicalism as interpreted by a once-devout follower in vivid, shining, slippery, ultra-intelligent essays (nonfiction personal essays)
There’s a moment in this book when O’Gieblyn describes being a theological seminary student and joining other young people on the streets of Chicago to proselytize to people walking by. It’s the kind of moment when I get to be inside the mind of the person on the other side of an experience I’m familiar with and am startled by what I see there—someone with as much (and honestly, more) intelligence than me who is just trying to understand how to live, like all the rest of us. For anyone interested in American evangelicalism, this is a great way to enter the topic. O’Gieblyn, who was a deeply cerebral evangelical Christian until she wasn’t—gets very specific with scripture. She looks at the way the idea of Hell has changed overtime. She explores what Vice President Mike Pence means to Evangelicals. I knew so little of this terrain, but after reading her incredible book (I do honestly think it’s brilliant), I felt a little more sense of what in the Hell is happening in America. It seemed less blurry and maddening, more human and maddening, but still, fascinating. This was a magnifying glass I needed for something I’ve mostly looked away from. The writing is also sharp and engaging.
The Buried by Peter Hessler, Penguin, 2020
The Arab Spring seen through the eyes of everyday Egyptians as it ricochets off ancient history (nonfiction political journalism)
If there is one writer whose style feels like what I’m aiming for—funny, smart, riveting—it’s Peter Hessler. His observational humor comes from looking closely at people and situations, lingering on the specifics, and trying to contextualize the mundane and human as they bump against larger outside forces. Human existence is so strange, never stranger or more wonderful than through his eyes. I never thought I would love, or even read, a book focused on Egypt during the Arab Spring, but I lapped up the stories—about the garbage man and garbage system in Cairo, Chinese lingerie merchants in rural Egypt, his experience learning the language. They’ve stayed with me vividly because they were so vividly told. In an especially embarrassing turn, I gave this book to a friend for her bridal shower. Sitting in a circle with the other women, we laughed hysterically at this powerfully unromantic gift. But I guess it depends on what you think intimacy and closeness is! I was trying to tell my friend, and you, that this book has the power to become part of you.
Elegy for an Appetite by Shaina Loew-Banayan, [Pank], 2022
The chilling places where food obsessions, eating disorders, and professional cooking overlap (nonfiction poetry prose)
In this very short book of prose poetry, the chef of Cafe Mutton writes vignettes that get the closest to anything I’ve ever read to describing how closely linked the love of food and eating disorders are. (I think Melissa Febos captures something at the heart of Loew-Banayan’s book in her own Girlhood when she writes, “What we hate or fear most in ourselves tends to be among the things we notice most in others. As anorexics read cookbooks, I started to read hands.” Hooboy, yes! Anorexics and cookbooks… I know this from personal experience, and it stings.) Loew-Banayan’s whole book stings with painful honesty, the kind most of us cannot allow ourselves. It scorches, really. But it’s also moving, lyrical, funny, personal. I feel like this book will move and light up anyone who has a deep love for food, and maybe with it as the surprisingly common flavoring, some deep body image and self-esteem issues. There is such odd and real catharsis in feeling less alone in things that have been sources of shame. I’m making this book sound so heavy—but I read it in a day! So yes, it’s heavy, but think less cassoulet, more panfried sweetbreads with cabbage and brown butter.
Other Favorites This Year
Denial by Jon Raymond, Simon & Schuster, 2022
Dystopian fiction in a gumshoe detective format
What if we convicted and tried climate change criminals, and then decades passed? This book contained one of my favorite descriptions of a road trip, and made me want to go to Guadalajara, um, right now!
Sinkhole by Juliet Patterson, Milkweed, 2022
Gripping memoir about suicide and layered grief
The lasting toll of family suicide running parallel with the environmental effects of mining. Some books put you in close proximity to the author in such a way that they feel beside you. This one did!
Hot Comb by Ebony Flowers, Drawn & Quarterly, 2019
Coming-of-age graphic novel
Intimate portraits of Black girls dealing with their hair, their families, anxiety, and ideas of beauty. Funny, sad, expertly told. This is one of those books that I hope sells one million copies!
Fermentation Journeys by Sandor Katz, Chelsea Green, 2021
Narrative cookbook
Our national fermentation evangelist takes us to places he’s visited around the world and explains in detail how various fermented foods are made. As my friend Jordan said, “this one’s a game changer.” I even fermented RAW PORK following his instructions and it was gooood!
Brothers on Three by Abe Streep, Celadon Books, 2021
Immersive narrative journalism
Dazzling high school basketball on a Montana indigenous reservation, and goddamn it, why can’t Native kids catch a break?! God, I love basketball. Do I say that all the time?
The Ones Who Don’t Say They Love You by Maurice Carlos Ruffins, One World, 2022
Fictional short stories
First-person stories that are as close to breathing the air in New Orleans and living in the skin of people in that city as anything could be! Painful, so true it hurts, definitely expanded how I understand love.
Honesty by Jae Yuen Choi / Compley by Ethan Swan, F Magazine, 2022
Chapbook in two halves, one poetry, the other prose
My friend Jae wrote one half of this beautiful and evocative chapbook—her half is comprised of short poems that feel at once accessible and revelatory. I felt a sensation like coming-into-older-age that was bittersweet sweet. Ethan Swan’s half is a rumination on the art world and how he has related to it and its fickleness that is wonderfully perceptive. I immediately wanted to give this to all my friends—it feels good in the hands.
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk, Riverhead Books, 2020
Murder mystery novel
Oh my gosh, a hippie Polish crone who feel the pain of animals—I didn’t know I needed her voice in my head. I didn’t know it would be so funny, so consuming. This book is a hippie sendup love letter—what a romp.
How to Be Both by Ali Smith, Anchor Books, 2015
Savant novel, art history reimagined, in two parts
I almost don’t want to describe this in too much depth because I loved knowing nothing and going in and getting eaten alive, but, to ensure you read this (you should read this)—this books takes you inside the consciousness of a long-dead artist; there’s gender bending; there’s grief; it’s stunning, a masterwork!
I mostly wanted to encourage you to read contemporary authors, but if I’m being fully honest, my favorite book I read all year was…
The Autobiography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley
Seminal Black American leader telling his life story in his own voice—needs no introduction! (memoir meets oral history)
HOLY SHIT, HIS VOICE! I was totally riveted. The charisma was like a drug. Have you read this recently? You have to read this! I don’t know what inspired me to pick this up at long last, but once I did, I never put it down. I was standing under a tarp in rural northeast Wisconsin in a pounding rainstorm, and I could have sworn I was actually at the March on Washington (or as he calls it, the Farce on Washington). There was so much American history in here that I knew only superficially. I fell in love with this book, with his life story, which I now feel inhabited by, with him. I’m glad this book is so well-read. I’m glad there has been such a reckoning with his significance. I am heartbroken by his vicious murder. I’m astounded by the way Alex Haley constructed this. I am not the same person as I was before I read this. Also, for reference: Lindy Hopping.
Hey Lola, thanks for the inspiration!
I have a list for this year! First year I have ever made such a list. It is not inclusive though indicative of what is shaping my world. Ones that inspire and amaze me. Some outrage me though I am less and less susceptible to outrage as a strategy for living. It costs a lot of my heartbeats and does not save many of mine or anyone else.
Speaking of heartbeats, two books by an author new to me. Caitlin Doughty explores what happens to us when they stop - heartbeats that is.
She is a good writer with a fascinating story I read two of hers this year. Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And other Lessons from the Crematory
and From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death
Healing Grounds by Liz Carlisle is a collection of stories of people (mostly Women) recovering from chemical agriculture and producing living food for living people. One of the star women on my list.
This change in attitude may be because I am currently in the midst of some very amazing works by other Women writers. Almost all I am reading right now are women, and I have 4 open right now calling me to their attention.
I Think You are Wrong (But I’m Listening): A guide to Grace-filled Political Conversations by Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers from opposite perspectives who refuse to let these perspectives keep them separate. Very good for these times. Especially as we Montanans enter into our bi-annual legislature with a super-majority. So I am also reading The Montana Constitution written by 100 people in 1972 and the envy of many states and governments. The right to a clean and healthy environment is imbedded in this document and perhaps vulnerable to this super majority.
So Vandana Shiva’s story as an activist advocate for this living environment is so important and riveting. Terra Viva: My Life in a Biodiversity of Movements and along with Sarah and Beth, shares the top of my list with Kristin Ohlson Sweet in Tooth and Claw: Stories of Generosity and Cooperation in the Natural World confirms my belief in life being beautifully connected in ways so amazing that I fall down in awe of being so lucky to be on this planet at this time!
Bet the Farm: The Dollars and Sense of Growing Food in America by Beth Hoffman is close to Liz Carlisle’s work in how screwed up agriculture has come to be by the numbers and how she and her husband and father-in-law are working out the transition of land management from Commodity production to Food production. Eye opening from start to finish.
One of the men I read this year and who inspired deeply is Tyson Yunkaporta Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save The World And I think he may be right. Big change in how most of us “Civilized people” see and experience life. I don’t usually read a book more than once, yet this is an exception
Another man from this year and who has inspired some of that change Tyson calls for is Joseph Jenkins The Humanure Handbook: Shit in a Nutshell How we turn drinking water into toxic waste streams by pooping and peeing into it, then flushing the combination into cesspools. And what we can do about it to close the loop on soil fertility and health through compost!
Charles Eisenstein’s thinking and writing have opened awareness of though patterns that have controlled me and that can set me free when I read A More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible probably about 9 years ago. It is so good! That was followed by Climate, A New Story that did the same thing to my heart and brain. So I gave him my attending in attempting to navigate the mine-fields of covid. He helps a lot. The Coronation: Essays from the Covid Moment has helped me find my path in this experiment of health and well-being.
And I explore much of what I find (and I actively look for as well as am surprised by) people exploring the world of Dowsing as a way to deeper knowledge and connection with the living world. So Joey Korn was one of those whose work I am practicing. Dowsing: A Path to Enlightenment is beautiful and fits in very well with Prayers of the Cosmos: Reflections on the Original Meaning of Jesus’s Words translated from the original Aramaic by Neil Douglas-Klotz bringing the feminine to light through his teachings. My “go to guy” for destroying the illusions of what is possible/impossible is Raymon Grace The Future is Yours (do something about it): True stories about Dowsing, Spontaneous Healing, Ghost Busting, and the Incredible Power of the Mind He consistently pokes my mind through the cultural, social, educational, religious, scientific barriers to what holds us back. I keep reading and listening to him!
This incomplete list of important books will close with one I have read every year for the past 2 or more decades. The Man Who Planted Hope and Grew Happiness by Jean Giono (also known as The Man Who Planted Trees) is one I will close the year with. I never get tired of reading it - mostly aloud and to others. I cry every time!
How blessed I am to be in the presence of such beautiful thoughts and with the time to read them.
Thanks for all of the recommendations! I appreciate that they’re not all 2022 books so I can find them in paperback/used. I also loved Drive your Plow!