THE BEST BOOKS I READ IN 2022
plus, join me for a subscribers-only creative co-working session this wednesday
My current book stack: in the middle of Refuse to Be Done, just finished Swing Time, and about to read Summonings (poems), Nevada, Body Work, Daddy, and Fruiting Bodies.
I fucking love books.
I have never been able to get on the ebook or audiobook train.
I love a book in my hands: the smell of it, the weight of it, what it might hold between paper pages.
As a kid, I would emerge from the library with a stack of books as tall as I could carry - and that they’d let me check out - and return the next week for another one having read them all.
That is to say, I was a shy kid who was given the gift of stories, and ran with it.
In today’s newsletter, I want to share my favorite books I read last year (an expansion on this Reel I posted to Instagram sharing my favorite queer books of 2022). At the bottom of the newsletter, you’ll find a Zoom registration link to sign up for our free creative co-working session this Wednesday at 10 am!
Most of the books below are fiction and most are queer, although for clarity I’ve broken them into two categories: fiction & memoir, and nonfiction. I link memoir with fiction because even though it’s nonfiction, I read it in the same way and for the same reasons I read fiction.
All books are linked with affiliate Bookshop links, so if you feel so inclined to support in that way, please do! I also love Thriftbooks and, as previously stated, I’m forever a library girlie.
Fiction & Memoir
Butter Honey Pig Bread - I’ve been telling everyone I know how good this book is and how famous it should be. A gorgeous & queer story of three Nigerian women that beautifully & sensually weaves food throughout.
Cantoras - my other favorite from the year. A group of lesbians in the 1970s and beyond under dictatorship in Uruguay - so much beautiful queer friendship and love amidst the struggle and heartbreak.
Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls (memoir) - queer coming-of-age pain & magic.
Dirty River: A Queer Femme of Color Dreaming Her Way Home (memoir) - Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha’s memoir — so compulsively readable, I zoomed right through it.
Tastes Like War (memoir) - Grace M. Cho’s exploration of her mother, who has developed schizophrenia. It weaves together history, food, her relationship with her mother, and research about schizophrenia to tell a beautiful and complicated story.
Acts of Service - I sometimes think about this book randomly and feel unsettled about it. So much here about queerness, desire, self-destructive impulses, fever dream worlds, safety and danger.
Portrait of a Thief - Is this book becoming a movie? It should really become a movie. Chinese American college students on a heist to steal back Chinese art from Western museums. *chefs kiss*
My Broken Language (memoir) - set in Philly and last year’s Philly book of the year! Truly all you need to know is the last line of the book blurb — “narrated by an obsessed girl who fought to become an artist so she could capture the world she loved in all its wild and delicate beauty.” 10/10.
The Girls - 1960s, a cult, queer yearning, really poetic prose. I want to read everything Emma Cline has written now.
Parable of the Sower - I don’t think I have anything to say about this very famous Octavia Butler book that hasn’t already been said but: read it, you won’t regret it.
Sirens & Muses - gay and gorgeous. Follows three students and a professor at an art school through creativity, love (and not), trying to make it in the art world, and figuring out what they really want.
Tell Me an Ending - could not put this one down. It’s a world where you can choose to get a memory wiped. We follow four characters as they go through the process of being told they had their memory wiped and deciding whether to get it back or not.
On Beauty - I’m late to the Zadie Smith party but adored this read - and the craft lesson of telling stories about a lot of different people in one book.
Burnt Sugar - a beautiful book about a really ugly mother-daughter relationship.
Nonfiction:
The Jakarta Method - read this if you want to dive deeper into *exactly* how fucked up the US government is in regards to stamping out socialism and communism around the world.
Jesus and John Wayne - an exploration of how the evangelical religious right has been shaped and grown into the terrifyingly powerful force it is today. Gets into: the Falwells, how evangelicalism became a culture, toxic masculinity, and much more.
Girls Can Kiss Now - I’m really not a pop culture person but I adored this book and laughed out loud so many times. Also, I was too Christian in the early 2000s to know the details of a lot of the moments Jill talks about, so it was fun to get into it all.
Laziness Does Not Exist - anti-capitalist dream book and some practical advice.
The Wild Edge of Sorrow - absolutely gorgeous grief support. Read this when your heart is breaking open, share it with a friend.
Radical Acceptance - I tried to read this book for years without getting past the first twenty pages, but I was finally ready for it last year and loved. So much goodness here about acceptance, presence, vulnerability, and healing from Buddhist teacher Tara Brach.
Please share: what were your favorite books you read last year? What are you excited to read this year? I would love to hear in the comments!
I’ll be back in your inbox/on your app soon with February’s paid essay: I’LL NEVER WRITE SOMETHING AS GOOD AS MELISSA FEBOS AND THAT’S OKAY. Make sure you subscribe at the paid tier to receive it and a full archive of pieces on healing, creativity, writing, and more.
And join us for a subscribers-only creative co-working session on Wednesday (the 22nd) at 10 am EST, okay? Zoom registration for the link & password here.
With care,
Eryn
Several books in common with you this year!
I read Swing Time a few years ago and absolutely loved it - anything Zadie Smith writes, I will read (slowly lol). Absolutely loved Sirens & Muses and Acts of Service. Completely agree with you re: how unsettling AoS is.
A book I recently read and loved was Yolk by Mary H.K. Choi. Absolutely breathtaking and readable reading--I couldn't put it down and was genuinely moved throughout. A rare deviation for me from exclusively queer literature (lol) but I highly highly recommend if you haven't already read.
Adding Butter Honey Pig Bread and The Girls to my Goodreads!!