A Year in Books: 2022

I usually present this list straight up, in the order that I read the books, but this year I noticed some themes in my reading, so I’m sharing the list broken down by categories. Links to order go to my favorite local bookstore, BookPeople. Enjoy!

“Quit Lit”

• Quitter — Erica Barnett
• The Recovering — Leslie Jamison
• Not Drinking Tonight — Amanda White *good for those early in their sobriety journey
• Nothing Good Can Come From This — Kristi Coulter
• Sunshine Warm Sober — Catherine Gray
• Soberful — Veronica Valli *good for those early in their sobriety journey

Feminism, Baby

• Hood Feminism — Mikki Kendall
• Girlhood — Melissa Febos
• Sexual Revolution — Laurie Penny
• White Feminism — Koa Beck *required reading for white ladies
• The Right to Sex — Amia Srinivasan

Addition and Mental Health

• Dopamine Nation — Anne Lembke
• In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts — Gabor Maté
• The Biology of Desire — Marc Lewis
• Prozac Nation — Elizabeth Wurtzel

History

• In the Garden of Beasts — Erik Larson
• Israel: A Concise History of a Nation Reborn — Daniel Gordis
• My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel — Ari Shavit
• The Pale-Faced Lie — David Crow
• As Texas Goes… — Gail Collins

Big, F*cked Up Systems

• American Prison — Shane Bauer
• The New Jim Crow — Michelle Alexander *required reading for everyone
• Highway of Tears — Jessica McDiarmid
• People Love Dead Jews — Dana Horn
• The Color of Law — Richard Rothstein
• Undoing Drugs — Maia Szalavitz

Relationships (to Self and Others)

• Opening Up — Tristan Taormino
• Attached — Ami Levine & Rachel Heller
• Anxiously Attached — Jessica Baum
• Polysecure — Jessica Fern
• The Ethical Slut — Janet Hardy and Dossie Eaton
• The Lonely Hunter — Aimée Lutkin

Other?

• Social Startup Sucess — Kathleen Kelly
• Educated — Tara Westover

Fiction

• Transcendent Kingdom — Yaa Gyasi
• Pachinko — Min Jin Lee *received as a gift and highly recommend
• Waiting for the Night Song — Julie Carrick Dalton
• The Incendiaries — R. O. Kwon
• There, There — Tommy Orange
• Firekeeper’s Daughter — Angeline Boulley
• A Thousand Miles from Nowhere — John Gregory Brown
• To All Who Call in Truth — Michael Oren
• Ruin’s Wake — Patrick Edwards
• The Water Cure — Sophie Mackintosh
• The Mars Room — Rachel Kushner
• Filthy Animals — Brandon Taylor *highly recommend
• White Fur — Jardine Libaire *the only word to accurately describe this is: delicious
• Docile — K. M. Sparza
• Valentine — Elizabeth Wetmore
• California — Edan Lepucki
• The Power — Naomi Alderman
• 1Q84 — Haruki Marukami *at nearly 1,200 pages, a good vacation read
• Hell of a Book — Jason Mott *read this
• The Nickel Boys — Colson Whitehead