2022 in books

an un-Wrapped assemblage of the words that shaped my attention and imagination this year

Dec 21, 2022

We can tell a lot about the rhythms, cadences, and swerves of a year by the books we chose to read. They map where our attention wandered and reveal the questions that tugged most heavily at our hearts at any given moment. As pages and days turn, they enter into conversation, giving shape to the way we live and attune to the world (and—what we choose to read next). Each December (*cue seasonal nostalgia*), I revisit my reading list as a compass of the twelve months past. On this winter solstice, I’m sharing my 2022 in books with you in hopes that you might find some reading inspiration for the year to come, and as a prompt to revisit your own past year as told by books.

2022 Favorites

Highlighting a few favourites here, with others starred in the at-a-glance list below.

Aftershocks by Nadia Owusu (February)

February for me was landscape, borders, migration—in my writing, reading, living. I read Aftershocks spanning the time before and after I was granted Swedish citizenship, and Owusu’s meditations on belonging, home, geography, family and identity— its fissures and faultlines — were so salient and expanding. Aftershocks also contains my favourite paragraph I read this year:

“Let me show you my home. It is a border. It is the outer edge of both sides. It is where they drew the line. They drew the line right through me. [...] It is a live fault line. The fault line is in my body. [...] I am made of the earth, ocean, blood and bone of all the places I tried to belong to and all the people I long for. I am pieces. I am whole. I am home.”

Pure Colour by Sheila Heti (March)

I distinctly remember tracing the mountainscape outside the airplane window somewhere between Bend and Santa Fe, tears streaming down my face, devouring the last pages of Pure Colour (it’s been awhile since a book made me cry, and this one did several times). Pure Colour’s quirky poetics and magical realism, its meditations on grief and love, spoke straight to the depths of me. This book ushered me from the greys of post-defense fog into the pure colour of a spring spent more awake to life. Sheila Heti is one of my favourite writers, and it was a thrill to witness the evolution of her art in this daring work. It’s probably not for everyone (nothing is), but it unquestionably was for me.

Adrift by Miranda Ward (June)

The alternate subtitle of Adrift (I’m not sure if it’s the UK or the US version) is “Fieldnotes from Almost-Motherhood,” which I find just brilliant. Fieldnotes to me, as an anthropologist, aptly describes the meanderings of this prose. Ward skilfully weaves her scholarship in geography with personal narrative about infertility and miscarriage, threaded fluidly by the metaphors of water and embodied language about swimming—all of which felt deeply personal and intimate. Almost-motherhood is such a fitting descriptor of the liminality, devastation, and hope of opening oneself to the possibility of becoming a mother. (cw: pregnancy loss)

Strangers to Ourselves by Rachel Aviv (November)

In fall my reading dwindled as I struggled to keep pace with an intense season of work and life. The books I read in this season buoyed me, Strangers to Ourselves above all. Aviv, a New Yorker journalist whose writings on mental illness and psychiatry I have long admired and appreciated, masterfully interrogates the ways story and (what gets called) illness constitute—and unravel—one another. This book widened my sense of possibility for narrative nonfiction as a genre (I also was thrilled by how many anthropological works she referred to!).

2022 in books at-a-glance

***= most-loved

January
The Cost of Living by Deborah Levy***
Complaint! by Sara Ahmed***
My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh
These Precious Days by Ann Patchett
Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

February
Out of Office by Charlie Warzel and Anne Helen Petersen
Aftershocks by Nadia Owusu***
I Came All This Way to Meet You by Jami Attenberg

March
Pure Colour by Sheila Heti***
Writing Begins with the Breath by Laraine Herring
Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman***
The Red Zone by Chloe Caldwell*** (read my review in The Rumpus here)

April
Body Work by Melissa Febos***
Outline by Rachel Cusk***
Little Labors by Rivka Galchen

June
Adrift by Miranda Ward***
My Misspent Youth by Meghan Daum

July
Body Full of Stars by Molly Caro May
Ordinary Affects by Kathleen Stewart***
The Swimmers by Julie Otsuka

August
Before and After the Book Deal by Courtney Maum
Summer Solstice by Nina MacLaughlin***
The Art of Waiting by Belle Boggs

September
Calamities by Renee Gladman***
Real Estate by Deborah Levy***
Wild Mind by Natalie Goldberg

October
The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan
All Down Darkness Wide by Seán Hewitt***

November
Strangers to Ourselves by Rachel Aviv***
Rest is Resistance by Tricia Hersey
A Woman on Paper by Anita Pollitzer***

December
Simple Passion by Annie Ernaux
Devotions by Mary Oliver*** (a yearlong read)
The Nerves and Their Endings by Jessica Gaitán Johannesson***
Wintering by Katherine May (*re-read every winter)

your year in books

What was your year in books? What maps did they draw? Which books spoke most directly to the depths of you, this year? Did you also happen to read any of the above?

I (and I’m sure others who read here) would truly love to know—a warm welcome to drop a comment below: