What I Read in 2022

A few lines on everything I read last year.

The Black Coast (God-King Chronicles #1/3) | Mike Brooks
Fascinating premise: cultural conflict, rather than warfare. Didn't quite carry it off. Run-of-the-mill prose, its gender systems might've been interesting had they been developed. 

A Marvellous Light (Last Binding #1/3) | Freya Marske
In that weird place where it's at once too long and needed more time for some of the ideas it tried to touch upon. Central romance great; magic system vaguely interesting; everything else not really well-developed.

Exciting Times | Naoise Dolan
Can't really remember this one. It was okay.

The Wild Iris | Louise Gluck
Rather beautiful.

Small Gods (Discworld #13/41) | Terry Pratchett
Excellent—funny and intelligent and filled with the smart observations Pratchett is known for. He's funny without ever being cruel.

Don Quixote | Miguel de Cervantes (translation Edith Grossman)
Took a long time to get through this. It's interesting to observe how stuff that would be left nowadays as subtext, or be saved for Big Portentous Theme Statements, is just said in the text several times. Feels like older literature demands the reader to tune themselves.

Summer Sons | Lee Mandelo
Really good—one of the books contributing to my very slowly-growing appreciation for horror. Southern, Gothic, and gay.

Even Greater Mistakes | Charlie Jane Anders
Great short fiction, carefully balancing off-beat humor, yearning and introspection, and combining a handful of odd ideas that don't necessarily seem to work together and then steadfastly demonstrating that they do.

Humankind: A Hopeful History | Rutger Bregmann
A pleasant read, and nice to have some confirmation of my take on humankind.

Frankenstein | Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
I wasn't the right reader for this book, when I read it. I'm sure I will be one day.

Medici Money: Banking, Metaphysics, and Art in Fifteenth-Century Florence | Tim Parks
Covers a lot of ground. Parks' has a very stripped prose style, one that tends to cut as many unnecessary words as possible. 

Light from Uncommon Stars | Ryka Aoki
Mildly pleasant, but... not worthy of its Hugo nomination. The central romance lacked chemistry—it was only what it was because the narrator said so. Some real empathy gaps, too. Not deep.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell | Susanna Clarke
Still an incredible book, filled with subtle depths, and of course Clarke's lovely prose. Of the various means of magic I've read about, it's Clarke's that seems the eeriest.

The Only Good Indians | Stephen Graham Jones
Enjoyable, though with a bizarre amount of basketball. The ending was particularly good.

A Slip of the Keyboard: Collected Nonfiction | Terry Pratchett
A solid collection of Pratchett's essays—if there is the occasional moment that seems dated, well, it's equally obvious, when taken in conjunction with his fiction and with every single account of interacting with him that I've ever read, that he was a kind, intelligent, perceptive individual with that crucial sense of anger necessary to the best humorists.

American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin | Terrance Hayes
Some good ones, some okay ones. Poetry's a hard read.

Devil House | John Darnielle
My favorite novel of the year, probably, certainly my favorite new read. Incisively takes a shot at everything I find morally shaky about true crime. It's gorgeously written and strikingly empathetic.

For the Relief of Unbearable Urges | Nathan Englander
No longer sure why I read this. A collection of fun, very Jewish stories that I'm probably the wrong audience for.

The Bookman (The Bookman Histories #1/3) | Lavie Tidhar
If you like plot and action, this is probably great. I like character, and could barely finish it.

Amoralman: A True Story and Other Lies | Derek DelGaudio
Now this was a fun read, tracing a path of deception and trickery which ends with the question of whether or not anything is actually true.

Exploring Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil | Ron Rosenbaum
A remarkable work of investigation and philosophy exploring various "Hitler theories"—philosophical, theological, and historical ideas to explain Hitler. A bleak read but a smart and consistently compelling one.

Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain: Bitcoin, Blockchain, Ethereum, & Smart Contracts | David Gerard
Smart, witty takedown of the gobsmacking idiocy of the blockchain.

The Backwater Sermons | Jay Hulme
Some queer Christian poetry. I appreciated it.

Age of Ash (Kithamar trilogy #1/3) | Daniel Abraham
In keeping with the author's other fantasy series', the first book isn't quite going to instantly hook. This will need a reread to fully appreciate it. But the prose is as beautiful as ever, there is more attention to place and world than ever before in an Abraham work, and its story of grief was compelling. I'm excited for the second book next year, as Kithamar is structured such that each book is an independent story, all three of which take place in the same year.

The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity | David Graeber & David Wengrow
My favorite non-fiction read of the year. Incredible scholarship that really rewrites the early history of humanity. Hard to say what's the best of it—Kandiaronk, the three elementary forms of domination, so many other things. Gonna be a great reread.

The Secret Parts of Fortune | Ron Rosenbaum
Fabulous collection of Rosenbaum's writings, which hit somewhere between essay and investigative journalism. I admire his attitude of curiosity to whatever his subject—and his subjects range impressively widely—whilst always, akin to his friend Errol Morris, leaving it evident for the intelligent reader what his opinions really are.

If on a winter's night a traveler | Italo Calvino
Pretty damn good. I can't quite get over Calvino's weird attitude towards women though.

Bridge of Words: Esperanto and the Dream of a Universal Language | Esther Schor
A wonderful look at Esperanto's history as well as its present-day speakers. Not going to lie, I kinda want to learn how to speak it.

Legacy of the Brightwash (Tainted Dominion #1) | Krystle Matar
I did review this.

Bits and Pieces: A History of Chiptunes | Kenneth B. McAlpine
An excellent bit of academic work on chiptune music.

Monsignor Quixote | Graham Greene
A rather beautiful and melancholic book. I wrote about this one, also.

An Event, Perhaps: A Biography of Jacques Derrida | Peter Salmon
Good biography of a postmodern French philosopher whose writings were about exactly as dense as you'd expect.

The History of Philosophy | A.C. Grayling
The thing that took me the longest to read this year. Thorough, but dry.

The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare | G.K. Chesterton
A weird metaphysical thriller. Highly entertaining, and in my view, pessimistic.

Maurice | E.M. Forster
Modest, unpresuming, and solid. 

Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference | Cordelia Fine
A better class of pop science book than usual. This one's very smart and comprehensively breaks down most of the bullshit arguments about the differences between 'male' and 'female' brains.

The Ghost: The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster James Jesus Angleton | Jefferson Morley
Solidly entertaining, but suffers from the same problem Benjamin Moser's Sontag biography did, which is that it's bitty-feeling. Caro and McCullough were willing to go pages before a section break. Moser and Morley don't. Rarely does something go for more than a couple of pages before section breaking. When I read, I want to be immersed in the place and life of the subject.

TARDIS Eruditorum Volume VI: The Peter Davison & Colin Baker Years | Elizabeth Sandifer
My days of being a Doctor Who fan are over—despite the return of Russell T. Davies piquing my interest, despite writing music for DW fan audio dramas—but Sandifer is hugely readable and was, and often still is, a big influence on me.

Portraits: John Berger on Artists | edited by Tom Overton
Good shit. What a mind Berger had.

How High We Go in the Dark | Sequioa Nagamatsu
Enjoyable enough.

Neoreaction as Basilisk: Essays On and Around the Alt-Right | Elizabeth Sandifer
An incisive analysis of the neoreactionary movement and it even includes a fantastic bit of formalism looking at Donald Trump. The essay on the Austrian School, co-written with Jack Graham, is just as good.

Manhunt | Gretchen Felker-Martin
In retrospect, I expect that people talking about trans fiction will talk about a before and after this one, because it basically broke open the whole notion that it had to be either literary fiction or, if it was genre fiction, had to be cute hurt/comfort things or cartoons. 

Infinity to Dine | lazenby
The one collection of essays I read for the year. Lazenby's approach to answering questions is absolutely unique and these essays are beautiful and intelligent.

Landscapes: John Berger on Art | edited by Tom Overton
It's not as good as Portraits.

Alan Moore: Conversations | edited by Eric L. Berlatsky
I've become something of a fan of Alan Moore, and if I don't quite love his works the way I love other artists' works, then I really, really enjoy the way this man's brain works.

Watchmen | written by Alan Moore, art by Dave Gibbons
It really is that good.

Emperor and Galilean | Henrik Ibsen
Let me get back to you after I listen to the Radio 3 dramatization (and abridgment, since in its original form it would run something like thirteen hours if I remember right).

Fortune Favors the Dead (Pentecost & Parker #1) | Stephen Spotswood
Light, fluffy, not actually all that funny, not really that compelling, actually rather boring.

Lying for Money: How Legendary Frauds Reveal the Workings of the World | Dan Davies
A smart look at the four basic forms of fraud. What's more interesting is the way in which Davies makes it clear how much the functioning of things works on trust, and the ways that this can go awry.

A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire #1/?) | George R.R. Martin
Really perfectly put together. The pacing, the characterization, yes the prose—it's very good.

A Clash of Kings (A Song of Ice and Fire #2/?) | George R.R. Martin
An excellent follow-up.

Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? | Mark Fisher
A book which however short is so good that when reading it I kept thinking of writing down quotes and then realizing I'd basically be writing down the whole damn book.

V for Vendetta | written by Alan Moore, art by Dave Lloyd
Not quite as good as his later work, but still very good, and gets better as it goes on.

The Frozen Water Trade: How Ice from New England Lakes Kept the World Cool | Gavin Weightman
A fun history that was as much a history of the ice trade as a biography of the man who started the whole venture. 

The Point Is to Change It!: An Introduction to Marxist Philosophy | John Molyneux
An excellent book that does exactly as the title suggests.

The Twilight World | Werner Herzog
Solid, with beautifully sparse prose and some classically gnomic Herzog utterances.

Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation #1/5 | Mo Xiang Tong Xiu
Interesting. Like with older literature, I sometimes feel that Asian literature demands a certain degree of tuning the brain to match it.

The Summer Tree (Fionavar Tapestry #1/3) | Guy Gavriel Kay
Gods save me from an endless stream of generic fantasy names and "somehow she knew." I sure do hope Kay's other work is better.

A Storm of Swords (A Song of Ice and Fire #3/?) | George R.R. Martin
The first signs of sprawl begin to appear, but, nevertheless, this is still fantastic and successfully climaxes multiple ongoing storylines whilst also setting up even more.

Tetralogue | Timothy Williamson
An interesting way to explore, albeit in somewhat basic form, a bunch of different philosophical ideas: four people on a train car, debating.

Hazards of Time Travel | Joyce Carol Oates
I wrote about this elsewhere, but will save you the trouble: it's boring and tedious rubbish.

The Outlier: The Unfinished Presidency of James Earl Carter | Kai Bird
Inasmuch as I have developed a real distaste for electoralism and for elected politicians, Carter is one of the few that I harbor some modicum of respect for.

The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone | Olivia Laing
A beautiful exploration of what it is like to be lonely, which makes particular mention of something I hadn't been able to articulate: if you're not experiencing it in the moment, it's difficult to think about.

A Feast for Crows (A Song of Ice and Fire #4/?) | George R.R. Martin
The sprawl continues and Martin is forced to handle it by splitting up the sequel into two volumes, separated geographically. There are disadvantages—an absence of popular and beloved characters in this volume, and a lot of new viewpoint characters that weren't present before—but one strength is that A Feast for Crows, focusing so much on the Riverlands where much of the War of the Five Kings actually occurred, is able to present a sustained argument about the brutality of war in a way that the other books aren't.

The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer | Siddhartha Mukherjee
Very, very interesting, but a bit slow. A friend of mine is reading Gene and I'm told that it's similar that way.

Gunmetal Gods | Zamil Akhtar
Quite good and with a fascinating premise and covering an enormous amount of ground. Most of the book bounces between two viewpoints, but there are a couple chapters near the very end that are forced to leap into other characters' heads to further the story—an odd break from the book's formal structure that doesn't quite work.

My Lunches With Orson: Conversations Between Henry Jaglom and Orson Welles | edited by Peter Biskind
A fun read. Welles was smart, egotistical, sensitive in the way that a certain manner of ego is, and very funny.

After the Revolution | Robert Evans
A great post-apocalyptic mix of dystopian and utopian ideas. Evans's experience as a battlefield reporter really shines.

Escape Everything! | Robert Wringham
Working on it.

The Good Life for Wage Slaves | Robert Wringham
Working on it.

A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire #5/?) | George R.R. Martin
The other half. It's a return to form in the sense that it returns to how ASoIaF books have usually been—the tail end includes a couple viewpoints from Crows as the timeline advances—and, really, it probably is a better book than Crows.

Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA | Tim Weiner
Basically, they're clowns, but dangerous ones.

TARDIS Eruditorum Volume 7: The Sylvester McCoy Years | Elizabeth Sandifer
Another throwback to my DW fanhood. I'm still a big of Sandifer's style and McCoy's my favorite of the classic Doctors.

Orson Welles: The Road to Xanadu (Orson Welles biography #1/4) | Simon Callow
Lengthy paragraphs abound, but this is an excellent telling of the first portion of Welles's life—I knew, of course, a little about Citizen Kane and the Mercury Theatre, but I knew nothing of the other theatrical ventures he undertook, nor indeed his writing and illustrating of a book on Shakespeare.

Boyfriend Material (London Calling #1) | Alexis Hall
I had one of the occasional urges to read something soft and fluffy and cozy. This was a good one for it. It actually is funny, too!

Inventor of the Future: The Visionary Life of R. Buckminster Fuller | Alec Nevala-Lee
An interesting biography of the man who sort of invented what has now become practically a genre of human, the Tech Superstar. And he was even touched by the gods of charlatanry, too. (I still want a dome.)

Cat Brushing | Jane Campbell
A really good collection of short fiction focusing mostly on older women and their sexuality, without any of the disgust, contempt, or mockery such things are usually treated with.

The Icon Thief (Icon Thief #1/3) | Alec Nevala-Lee
A conspiracy thriller. A fun read.

Stoner | John Williams
Probably the most compelling gloomy book I've ever read. 

Process: The Writing Lives of Great Authors | Sarah Stodola
Fun bit of nonfiction fluff.

Fire & Blood | George R.R. Martin
Invented history: the Targaryen dynasty from ASoIaF up until the civil war that brought about the death of their dragons. (A second book will follow for the rest of them.) It's an interesting read. Some of it's as good as anything Martin wrote in the mainline series; other times, it almost feels like self-parody.

Or What You Will | Jo Walton
A reread. A metafictional novel, but one with feeling. It's a beautiful story, beautifully told. I keep waiting for the announcement of a new Walton novel and it keeps not coming, alas.

The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love | bell hooks
My first bell hooks, on recommendation of a very good friend. Smart, perceptive analysis of how patriarchal masculinity is, for men, functionally, psychological self-mutilation.

Number: The Language of Science | Tobias Dantzig
Great book on maths. I don't pretend to understand a lot of it—my newfound appreciation for mathematics is in conflict with two decades of hating it—but it was an interesting read and I especially appreciated the history in it.

Luda | Grant Morrison
Messy and brilliant. 

Virology: Essays for the Living, the Dead, and the Small Things In Between | Joseph Osmundson
With a few months separation from reading it, I can better appreciate how beautiful its prose is and, especially, its intelligent consideration of race. At the time of my initial read, I had expected something a little bit more academic.

Marcel Proust | Edmund White
Solid short bio.

Illuminations | Alan Moore
Great collection of Moore's short fiction (though, given that this is Alan Moore, it's only so short).

Best Served Cold | Joe Abercrombie
At last! I am an Abercrombie fan after all!

She Who Became the Sun (Radiant Emperor duology #1/2) | Shelley Parker-Chan
This was really, really good. I can't get enough of the complexity of gender and how people relate to their bodies in this. Beautiful prose, as well. 

Liberation Day: Stories | George Saunders
I really thought I'd enjoy this, but I found the narrative voice repetitious and annoying after the first couple stories.

A Shadow in Summer (The Long Price Quartet #1/4) | Daniel Abraham
It was time for my regular reread of TLPQ. And, as has been the case, this one grows in my estimation each time; though certain flaws—a complete absence of queerness, most specifically—are more evident. Still. Amat Kyaan's one of my favorite protagonists.

A Betrayal in Winter (The Long Price Quartet #2/4) | Daniel Abraham
So obvious a reading of Maati Vaupathai as bisexual is that... Is it really unintended subtext when it's so strong that the author all but confirms it in the text? Well, anyway.

An Autumn War (The Long Price Quartet #3/4) | Daniel Abraham
This one has the story that's closest to a traditional fantasy and so it's the one where the way in which Abraham twists and inverts those cliches is most evident. 

Vagina Obscura: An Anatomical Voyage | Rachel E. Gross
A fascinating and compelling journey through some of the most recent developments in scientific understanding of the vagina.

Nothing But the Night: Leopold and Loeb and the Truth Behind the Murder That Rocked 1920s America | Greg King & Penny Wilson
Basically okay. Occasional touches of what I think of as shlock, but it was a quick read, and it lacked some of the other deficiencies true crime usually has.

Leech | Hiron Ennes
I just reviewed this. Five-star ideas, four-star execution.