Books of the Year, etc.
December 11, 2022 9:44 AM   Subscribe

In a long article similar to a recent Meta, "The White Review asks friends and contributors what books they've enjoyed reading and rereading." This year, Sofia Samatar (previously) suggests books such as Amina Cain's A Horse at Night: On Writing, and Elvia Wilk (previously) suggests books such as Ned Beauman's Venomous Lumpsucker.

A few other suggestions--not necessarily published in 2022, or even recently: Previous "Books of the Year" roundups at The White Review: 2021; 2020; 2019; 2018; and 2017.

See also LitHub's "Best Reviewed" roundups for Fiction, Literature in Translation, Graphic Literature, and Nonfiction, not to mention the Goodreads Choice Award Winners and largehearted boy's Online "Best of 2022" Book Lists.
posted by Wobbuffet (18 comments total) 65 users marked this as a favorite
 
Flagged as fantastic and saving for a full read later. Thanks for all the links/reading recommendations. :)
posted by Fizz at 9:50 AM on December 11, 2022 [4 favorites]


wow. thank you Wobbuffet this is amazing.
posted by supermedusa at 10:02 AM on December 11, 2022 [3 favorites]


Klemperer's notebook is essential for understanding the creeping language of fascism. Also highly reccomend his diaries, which document the language and every day life of a German Jew 1933-1941 - very observant chronicling of fast (but more interestingly) slow changes in terminology, rules, and principles in the 3rd Reich.
posted by Rumple at 10:33 AM on December 11, 2022 [3 favorites]


so is white any good or not
posted by dismas at 11:21 AM on December 11, 2022 [4 favorites]


(this is amazing)
posted by dismas at 11:21 AM on December 11, 2022 [2 favorites]


This is a wonderful post destined to swell my "to read" list which is already impossibly large. Many thanks for collecting and posting!

At the risk of giving even more coverage to an old white American man with critical aperçus out the wazoo, I must recommend both The Passenger (mentioned offhand by Max Lawton in the White Review piece) and the companion book Stella Maris, both by Cormac McCarthy
posted by chavenet at 12:21 PM on December 11, 2022 [2 favorites]


Fabulous post! Thanks for sharing this!
posted by danabanana at 12:27 PM on December 11, 2022 [1 favorite]


"an attempt to write with art, rather than just about it."

I'm going to be irritated by that quote all afternoon.

But not the post, though, which is wonderful!
posted by ZaphodB at 12:55 PM on December 11, 2022 [2 favorites]


"Free" by Lea Ypi was soooo good. As a person who also grew up in a 'socialist country', albeit on the other side of the continent, I found much to identify with in her stories.
posted by of strange foe at 1:37 PM on December 11, 2022 [2 favorites]


Ooh thanks for this, even if only for the Really Techno essay(?), which I enjoyed.
posted by TangoCharlie at 2:46 PM on December 11, 2022 [3 favorites]


Wendy Erskine, Dance Move (suggested by Luke Brown

This book is fantastic, but was hell to find in North America until recently. I brought in copies for my shop (which is run out of a loft in Toronto, and by no stretch a "bookstore"). At the time, I was the only shop in the country to have the title (which I bought directly from the author). I did this only after contacting every indie bookstore in the city and no one had it or had any plans to bring it in. Amazon and Indigo also didn't have it. Erskine was kind enough to sign copies for my shop and even personalized ones I got pre-orders for.

Mind-boggling to me that no Canadian or North American publisher seems to have picked it up. It was first published by Stinging Fly in Ireland and then Picador in the EU. Looks like Amazon now has copies as an import. Highly recommended.

Other books in this excellent post that I recommend are The Copenhagen Trilogy, Kick the Latch, and Small Things Like These.

Another fave read of the year is Septology by Jon Fosse (still working through it).

I did my annual re-read of Denis Johnson's Jesus' Son and it was as marvelous as always.
posted by dobbs at 3:53 PM on December 11, 2022 [2 favorites]


Started Venomous Lumpsucker this evening...
posted by supermedusa at 4:52 PM on December 11, 2022 [2 favorites]


There's a lot to digest here.
posted by ovvl at 5:27 PM on December 11, 2022 [2 favorites]


Fabulous post. Thank you. I don’t think this is included but I would love to give a shout to ‘The Island Of Missing Trees’ by Elif Shafak, which I just finished yesterday. As someone who was born on a British Air Force base in Cyprus in ‘67, so many memories of my father came flooding back, him still being posted there in 1974 when the Turks invaded the island. In the last year I have been conducting interviews with him about his life but had forgotten about this period. Excited to ask him about it. Anyway I digress. Wonderful book.
posted by grumblemf at 10:23 PM on December 11, 2022 [1 favorite]


This is excellent stuff.

That Clare Keegan book —Small Things Like These—is a marvel. Highly recommended. I’m about 1/2 way through Books of Jacob and i’m delighted to say that it is living up to the hype
posted by thivaia at 5:50 AM on December 12, 2022 [1 favorite]


Thanks Wobbuffet for such a well thought out and detailed list of recommendations and the people who recommended them. Very nice work, bookmarked for future reference.
posted by drossdragon at 11:16 AM on December 12, 2022 [1 favorite]


As if I don't have twenty odd unread books on my Kindle already... But seriously, great list. I could just pick all my books from here for the next year or two.
posted by zardoz at 5:50 PM on December 15, 2022 [1 favorite]


UK comedian Matt Green on Books of the Year [YT 2 min.]
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 10:03 AM on December 21, 2022 [1 favorite]


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