At this time last year, a little birdie (recent debut author) warned me that I might never read for pleasure again after my pub day. While this turned out to be kind of true, I tried to carve out time for pleasure reading throughout the year, even when that meant falling behind on blurb requests and event prep deadlines, which was of course very enjoyable reading too! Somehow, because of these efforts and deadlines and the great privilege of a life and career where a lot of my work is reading, I read 47 books, four times more than 2021. I wish I could mention every title here.
My 2022 began in dramatic fashion with my debut novel, The School for Good Mothers, publishing on the first Tuesday in January. Since then, I’ve met more book people than I thought possible in one year: fellow writers, readers, booksellers, librarians, editors, journalists, festival organizers, students, book club members. After a lifetime of reading and making sense of my life through books, it’s been amazing (thrilling! surreal!) to be read.
My favorite book of 2022 was the exquisite memoir Easy Beauty by Chloé Cooper Jones, which is about motherhood, love, disability, art, travel, ambition, the pursuit of beauty, new ways of seeing, and being alive, but really no description I could write would do this book justice. It’s one of the best books I’ve ever read. Chloé and I met in fall 2021 during a virtual bookseller tour and since then, and especially since reading each other’s books, have both approached our new friendship with a “where have you been all my life?” intensity that’s brought me so much joy.
Winter book press and tour events gave me the chance to read Mercy Street by Jennifer Haigh, Joan Is Okay by Weike Wang, and Fiona and Jane by Jean Chen Ho, among many other wonders. More Than You’ll Ever Know by Katie Gutierrez stole my heart. While traveling in the spring, I treated myself to the female-gaze-celebrating Vladimir by Julia May Jonas and thought, I hope to write this well one day. I followed up Our Share of Night, the wild, terrifying, blood-soaked novel by Mariana Enriquez (translated by Megan McDowell, February 2023), with the elegantly sinister Mouth to Mouth by Antoine Wilson.
I was reading The Women Could Fly, the fantastic second novel by Megan Giddings, when the Alito draft opinion leaked, and Megan’s book gave me a way to understand my grief and rage, while also dreaming of a world where witches are real. During that brief window of time before Roe was overturned, when the world felt more hopeful, I read my friend Nellie Hermann’s gorgeous new novel, With Child, in manuscript form, as well as several great, varied books, including: Cost of Living by Emily Maloney, This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub, Three Women by Lisa Taddeo, and The Great Reclamation by Rachel Heng (March 2023).
In May, I received a gift from the gods: an artist residency at The Ragdale Foundation in Lake Forest, Illinois, via a last-minute cancellation. I arrived at Ragdale in late June with 15 books, clearly overcompensating for my first residency since 2016. There, I escaped from social media. I turned off my phone. I learned how to quiet my brain and write fiction again. Key to this effort was reading the excellent How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell, which was as insightful and perspective-shifting as friends promised.
Though we residents were only at Ragdale for 18 days, the world changed dramatically during that time. At the end of the first week, Roe was overturned. That evening was our first night of collective mourning. Then, a few days before we left, there was a shooting at a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, which is the next town over. We spent that afternoon sheltering in place and that night, we mourned again, shaken and furious at the insanity of gun violence in America and our country’s cowardly lawmakers. We continued with our planned open studios for that evening and shared music and dance, trying to remember our purpose as artists.
Books that fueled my creativity and helped me maintain hope in art-making during my residency included: I Love You but I’ve Chosen Darkness by Claire Vaye Watkins, Matrix by Lauren Groff, Intimacies by Katie Kitamura, and The Copenhagen Trilogy by Tove Ditlevsen (translated by Tiina Nunnally and Michael Favala Goldman), which I’ve been delaying finishing, because I don’t want it to ever end. I was most surprised by my devotion to Matrix, given that medieval nuns were not a subject that ever interested me before, but once I started reading, I couldn’t get enough. Such is the power of Groff’s prose.
Before fall festival season began, I tried to fit in as much “just because” reading as possible and finished Animal by Lisa Taddeo, Acts of Service by Lillian Fishman, and Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change by Angela Garbes, which I’d love to give to every mother in my life, everyone who’s considering becoming a mother, everyone who cares about mothers, everyone in charge of designing public policy for mothers. Soon after, an invitation to read Kelly Link’s new collection White Cat, Black Dog (March 2023) arrived in my inbox and I had to wrap my head around the idea of writing a blurb for one of my writing heroes. What adjectives could even capture my love for her work? Reading her new stories, which are reimagined fairy tales, made me feel like I was discovering the magic of books for the first time.
Adding to my surreal good fortune this year, in October I traveled to the Cheltenham Literature Festival in England at the behest of guest programmer Celeste Ng, whose brilliant and daring new novel Our Missing Hearts made me feel so seen. On the plane ride home from London, I read Happening by Annie Ernaux and wondered how I’d made it to age 44 without reading her work. Recently, I read Simple Passion, up next is A Girl’s Story, then Getting Lost. Like you, I’m now obsessed with her and want to drop everything to read the Ernaux canon.
In the last few weeks, I’ve had the pleasure of reading two wonderful forthcoming debut novels: A Quitter’s Paradise by Elysha Chang (June 2023) and The Nursery by Szilvia Molnar (March 2023). And for a perfect nonfiction pairing with my novel, I’ll forever be recommending Screaming on the Inside: The Unsustainability of American Motherhood by New York Times parenting columnist Jessica Grose (forthcoming on December 6). I’m now midway through Camp Zero by Michelle Min Sterling (April 2023) and Pure Colour by Sheila Heti, which I’m savoring in small bites. In December, I plan to read Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (April 2023), whose collection Friday Black is one of my favorites.
This has been the most eventful year of my life, full of conversation and travel and discovery and new friends and old friends, as well as a lot of cake. The question I’ve been asked most often is what I’m working on next. I’m not sure yet, but I hope my reading will guide me.
More from A Year in Reading 2022
A Year in Reading Archives: 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005
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