Best Books (I Read) in 2022

Let’s keep it simple this year: these are, simply, the best books I read in 2022 out of all those I read. As is my tradition, I narrow the list to about 10 or so. I often add a separate list of excellent books I read by some of my writer friends, but I decided doing so stresses me out, as I have lots of awesome writer friends, and I know I could (should??) easily spend ALL my time reading their books…yet I don’t, which probably makes me, what, a bad art friend?? So, you’ll see some special categories at the end, but I’ll keep the praise for my friends’ books private this year.

 

In a secret order known only to me (well, in chronological order of when I read these books):

 

The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy: Short and brilliant. The intensity of my reading experience was aided by reading this in the deep winter, and shortly after suffering a horrific bout of Covid. My introduction to this edition talked about how Tolstoy wanted to pare things away at this point of his writing life, and this book burrows down to perhaps the core of what it means to be human, living a life while knowing we will one day die. Given the title, there’s no surprise here, yet the ending revelation took my breath away. Here’s where I note that I also wrote this in my casual book journal: “Oh, and all the deep stuff with perfect descriptions and funny moments and observations.”

 

No Diving Allowed by Louise Marberg: I was lucky enough to be asked to write a blurb for Louise’s current book of stories, You Have Reached Your Destination, and once I read those, I raced to read these. Great dialogue, sharp endings (like, razor-wire sharp!), humor, and complicated people in complicated settings. As a fan of linked stories, I admired the linkage here: swimming pools! See, kids, if you’re a good enough writer, you truly can get away with anything!

 

*The Sum of Trifles by Julia Ridley Smith: A memoir in essays about the “stuff” we accumulate in our lives, what it adds up to, what it means, how we wrestle with its history. The author’s parents were antique dealers who died within a fairly short time span, leaving the author to tackle a house full of THINGS and a family full of complications. *I recommended this book to others at least 1000 times and bought some copies to give away, so I’m calling this my most recommended book of 2022.

 

Marrying the Ketchups by Jennifer Close: Sometimes you want a charming, funny book set in your beloved Chicago! Smart and sparkly, the sort of book that cheers you up instantly (especially if you root for the Cubs). I read avidly and happily, pretty much without stopping or worrying about the plot or trying to examine writerly tricks. I saw the author speak at the Gaithersburg Book Fair, paired with one of my favorite “smart & sparkly” authors, Katherine Heiny, so I had to give Jennifer Close a chance, and how happy I am that I did.

 

The Annie Year by Stephanie Wilbur Ash: This is a bit of a cheat, since I spent a Converse low-res MFA residency with this author (which may make us “friends”??), but because, like me, she also grew up in Iowa, I’m stretching my “no friends on the list” rule because I admired and enjoyed this quirky book so much and because Iowans have to stick together. It’s set in small-town Iowa and has one of the sneakiest, snarkiest, saddest, voicey-est first person POV narrators I’ve ever encountered. Masterfully done! Beyond the Iowa setting, I loved all the musical theatre jokes—and the humor in general. Warning: by the end, I was homesick for a pork tenderloin the size of my head.

 

Against Memoir: Complaints, Confessions & Criticisms by Michelle Tea: A collection of essays that will make your brain fire along new synapses! Verve, sass, and an exploration/celebration of queer culture I confess to not knowing enough about: music, feminist festival controversy, a well-known San Francisco lesbian gang, and more. I bought this book at the AWP writing conference bookfair, sort of as a random purchase to support a press I wanted to support, and the person who took my credit card said, “Oh, I just LOVE Michelle Tea.” Me too!

 

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy: Is it really fair when a list includes TWO works by Tolstoy? This was a reread, and I was curious to see if the book would maintain its space on my “Best Books” bookshelf. YES. Yes, there are some slower sections, yes, Tolstoy was a terrible husband/person IRL. But the scope of this book is so massive and so specific to this segment of Russian culture—while also being universal to today, and, likely the years to come. The reader experiences society, religion, economy, class struggles—and all the complicated emotions that make humans human. Some of the scenes I found especially memorable were the peasants scything, the bees at the end, and Anna’s horrific breakdown. A book that left me feeling the awe of witnessing true artistic achievement.

 

Jackie & Me by Louis Bayard: A novel set in 50s DC about Jack Kennedy’s courtship of Jackie…if “courtship” is the right word for dumping her on ice and expecting your dear, gay friend to entertain her until you’re ready to settle down. I loved the old-timey DC details (Garfinckel’s!) and the Nick Carraway, outsider POV. What is the cost of giving up one’s own authentic life?  What does a “great man” deserve from us? Plus, sorry, but I’ll probably always be a little bit of a sucker for the Kennedys.

 

Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis: I once read half of this novel and then set it aside. But now, having read all of it, I’m not sure why/how I stopped reading before. One of the classic “campus novels”—poor, ambitious junior professor Jim is just not getting any breaks, and—surprise—he’s surrounded by nitwits and saboteurs. This book is HILARIOUS, with perhaps the single funniest scene I’ve read in my entire life, coming at the end, on a glacially slooooow, super-suspenseful bus ride. This book is dated, so one does have to—ahem—overlook some pretty crummy stuff. I managed to do so, but I understand that some may choose otherwise.

 

Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro: Another reread, for a book club. Same reaction as when I read this way back when: WOW. At least half of the blurbs on the back of my edition call this a “perfect novel” and about half of the writers commenting on the FB post I wrote about the book also called it a “perfect novel” and by the time my book club meeting was over, a majority show of hands also agreed it’s a “perfect novel.” Make what you will of all that. 😊 The use of the unreliable, first person narrator is perfection; using the trope of the English butler is smart, offering important and nuanced commentary about money and class; and the depiction of a man coming to a certain point in his life and being forced to question everything is a heartbreaker.

 

Come Back in September: A Literary Education on West Sixty-Seventh Street, Manhattan by Darryl Pinckney: If you’re read my list before, you know that one of my favorite genres is the Venn diagram where NYC and writers meet, especially if there’s a well-defined historical time period and/or a literary clique and/or a young person discovering themselves. Here we’ve got the perfect bullseye, with this impressionistic memoir of a young (black) (gay) man getting a vast (and enviable!) literary education from writer/critic Elizabeth Hardwick (ex-wife of poet Robert Lowell), who starts in the 70s as his teacher and ends as a beloved friend in the 80s. This loose (but brainy) writing style maybe is not for everyone, but I fell into it and eventually it didn’t matter that I didn’t recognize the name of every famous writer/publication/downtown personality mentioned: I let the whole thing sweep over me and simply wished I were there.

 

Special categories:

 

Here are two collections of short stories that I loved. Because I’ve decided to excuse myself from having to read EVERY story in a collection, I feel funny adding them to my larger list because technically I didn’t finish these books entirely. (Why are there so many stupid rules here? Who runs this enterprise?)

 

We Were Angry by Jennifer S. Davis

Proof of Me by Erica Plouffe Lazure

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Lest you think I don’t read poetry, here are a few collections I loved this year. (Yes, I can LOVE a book of poems despite not reading every single poem in it! Yes, I know this is an act of chaotic evil! Yes, these are poets I know IRL that deserve attention!)

 

89% by Sarah Cooper

Fixed Star by Suzanne Frischkorn

Reparations Now! by Ashley M. Jones

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Finally, here are some books I wrote blurbs for, so look for these books in 2023:

 

Our Sister Who Will Not Die by Rebecca Bernard (stories) (already out!)

The Company of Strangers by Jen Michalski (stories)

Set Adrift: A Mystery and a Memoir by Sarah Conover (CNF)

Bookish People by Susan Coll (novel) (already out!)

Bone Country by Linda Nemec Foster (prose poems)

 

Cheers, and here’s to another happy year of reading in 2023!

 

Best Books (I Read in) 2021

 

Best Books (I Read in) 2021

 

Another year of good reading, and after I drafted this write-up, I noticed how often I used the words “in conversation with,” which is one of my favorite ways to think about books and about art in general, as a wide-ranging, open-to-all, free-flowing, connect-the-dots, ongoing conversation in my own head. So here’s a randomly-ordered list of favorite books I read in 2021, culled down in a cold, agonized sweat to 10(ish).

 

I long ago determined that I won’t include a book by a friend in my top 10, so I’ve moved those books to a separate list (which I stress over nevertheless because I’m not always timely about reading a friend’s book in the same year in which it was published).

 

Finally, I should note that in the spirit of honesty, here’s the place where I can mention that, ahem, another book that I liked this year is my OWN book, published in 2021 by Unnamed Press—ADMIT THIS TO NO ONE, linked(ish) stories about “official” DC—so it seems silly not to mention it or to point out that it got some very good reviews. You can buy it through the press, at your fave indie bookstore, or Amazon.

 

Anyway: you’re here for the books, not shameless self-promotion. Do I mean “best,” or do I mean “favorite,” or do I mean “book that was exactly right for the moment I read it”? Maybe I simply mean that each of these is a “book I literally and truly recommended to others at least once over the year.”

 

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BEST BOOKS

 

The Good Lord Bird by James McBride [novel]: I watched (and loved) the Showtime limited series and had to immediately read the book, which I also loved. John Brown is a fascinating, complicated pre-Civil War character, and as with many larger-than-life people, he’s best viewed through the POV of someone else, and here it’s a young Black boy called Onion (mistaken by the whites for a girl) who travels with John Brown’s militia. This voice-y book is funny and provocative, and here’s one time where I can’t quite say the book is significantly better than the show because the show is so excellent. Honestly, try to carve out time for both.

 

Hamnet: A Novel of the Plague by Maggie O’Farrell [novel]: Hmmm…do you think that “A Novel of the Plague” might have been added by the marketing department?? Nevertheless, this book is an immersive look at 16^th century England, when a writer we know to be Shakespeare (he’s never named) is working on plays as his wife tries to keep the family surviving and thriving. Then…a great loss. The writing is gorgeous, and I’m a sucker for a book where art and grief are intertwined. One favorite section is the set-piece that follows the path of a plague-carrying flea, shows how a global pandemic winds its way toward intimate (a lesson we’re now all too familiar with).

 

Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family by Robert Kolker [nonfiction]: What a big and terrible and terribly sad and rippling story about a single family in the 50s and 60s in which 6 brothers out of 12 kids are afflicted with schizophrenia. Despite the vastness of these events, the book is perfectly organized and structured; the family’s bravery as they sift through the secrets and family myths will break your heart; and you’ll emerge with a deeper ache over the toll of mental illness. One bright spot is the usefulness of this family as a case study in medical research.

 

*Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Raddon Keefe [nonfiction]: I knew only the broad parameters of The Troubles in Northern Ireland, and this book was riveting. Again, perfectly structured and organized, especially given a massive cast of “characters” and long-time span and, well, a big, huge history of several cultures and countless events. If you’re someone who thinks you only like novels, this book reads like one. Note: There are many lenses through which to view The Troubles, and this book focuses on the IRA…not that this is a rosy view, not in the least. I remembered reading an early, chilling piece of this book in The New Yorker that never left my mind. *One of my most-recommended books this year.

 

Collision Low Crossers: A Year Inside the Turbulent World of NFL Football by Nicholas Dawidoff [nonfiction]: Football?! Remember, I’m working on a novel about a football player, so reading this book started as research and ended up as pure pleasure. Journalist Dawidoff embeds himself with the coaching staff of New York Jets during the 2011 season, back when the Jets were enjoying glorious times with Rex Reed as head coach. Full access means fascinating observations and insight into an extraordinarily stressful life, where everybody gets a collection of elite, talented athletes to work with, yet only one coach emerges on the top of the heap come Super Bowl Sunday.

 

11/22/63 by Stephen King [novel]: I’m sure Mr. King will be as surprised as I am to find his book on my annual list. My husband and I watched the Hulu production of this book, which was enjoyable, and my husband—who cares deeply about all things JFK—kept telling me that I would really like the book. “Yet again, honey, (spoken in sing-song), you’re right, and I’m wrong.” This time travel book asks if one man might stop the assassination of JFK. How, and at what cost? The plot was compelling, smart, and well-built as I’d expect from King, but I actually responded more to the emotional storyline of the characters, and their depth and complexity. A clear case of the book being superior to the show. (Note: this one’s a doorstop at 849 pages!! Feel free to award yourself credit for reading 3 books as I did!)

 

*Early Morning Riser by Katherine Heiny [novel]. Cross Anne Tyler with Laurie Colwin and set this smart rom-com in small-town Michigan, and you get this charming, funny, joyful book that’s elegantly written without being show-offy. As I said when I recommended this novel at least 1000x, do NOT pay attention to the jacket copy, which is dopey. Just read this book if you want to feel happy! *One of my most-recommended books this year.

 

A Faithful but Melancholy Account of Several Barbarities Lately Committed by Jason Brown [short story collection]: These multi-generational stories are linked, though not so much so that one really needs the (admittedly scary-long) family tree in the front of the book; I suggest no more than a quick glance. Here’s a “good” but bedraggled, OLD—like, Puritan-old—family in Maine, trying to crawl out from under that historical burden of being “special” in that “shining city on a hill” Puritan founding fathers way. If you like reading work set in Maine, the author captures that rugged beauty and seems to know and understand the landscape and the culture. Sparse, elegant, cutting: every moment of triumph comes at great cost.

 

The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw [short story collection]: Often there’s a reason that “everyone” is reading a book all year, and the reason everyone has been reading this book about Black women is that it’s INCREDIBLE. These stories aren’t linked per se, but they’re in important conversation with each other, adding layers to the collection as a whole. It’s a smart and deeply-rooted world; a super-voice-y book; and the author creates ordinary-yet-extraordinary characters living novel-deep lives in 20-30 pages.   

 

**Hell of a Book by Jason Mott [nove]: Is it “in conversation with” or a straight line from Ellison’s Invisible Man through Toni Morrison’s Beloved to the here and now, with maybe a nod to Huck Finn, if Jim had been allowed to take charge of his own story? There’s definitely plenty of humor here in this sharp and stylish story about a best-selling Black author traveling on book tour, reckoning with the life he’s lived and the life Blacks, especially Black men, live in America—but mostly there are worlds of pain and an insatiable ache. **I haven’t recommended this book much—only because I just finished it. (In fact, I held up writing this list, certain after 5 pages that this book would end up on it.)

 

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A HALF-BOOK I’M ADDING TO THIS LIST BECAUSE I’M IN CHARGE AND I CAN

 

The first 3 stories of The Pugilist at Rest by Thom Jones [short stories]: Blistering stories about Vietnam; the kind of writing that makes you want to grab someone and say, “Read this right now.” I enjoyed many of the other stories, especially the voice, though too many felt dated to my contemporary eye and out of synch with modern times.

 

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BOOKS I LOVED BY WRITER FRIENDS/FRIENDS-ISH

 

Woman Drinking Absinthe by Katherine E. Young [poetry]: These poems about an affair are dark and disturbing, mesmerizing and memorable, in exactly the right ways.

 

This Is What America Looks Like: Poetry and Fiction from DC, Maryland, and Virginia edited by Caroline Bock and Jona Colson [anthology]: Okay, I admit that there’s an excerpt from ADMIT THIS TO NO ONE in here, but setting that aside, this book captures the mood of the moment, in all its nuances.

 

The Escape Artist by Helen Fremont [memoir]: An honest and searing account of being disowned by one’s family following the publication of another memoir. So much emotional work for the writer to dive so deeply and cleanly into a tangled family and these secrets; I’m in awe.

 

Surrendered Child: A Birth Mother’s Journey by Karen Salyer McElmurray [memoir]: Lyrical and lingering, infused with loss and longing. This book about giving up a child for adoption burrows into your soul.

 

I Grape, Or the Case for Fiction by Brock Clark [craft book]: I’m a fan of books about the craft of writing, and these essays made me ponder and (re)consider my own work. Also, these essays made me laugh out loud.

 

Made to Explode by Sandra Beasley [poetry]: Lots of places and people familiar to citizens of DC and Virginia, and a poet asking lots of uncomfortable (but necessary) questions of herself and making uncomfortable (but necessary) observations about race and white privilege in these superb poems.

 

All These Hungers by Rick Mulkey [poetry]: Elegantly structured and thoughtfully organized, this collection of smart and dynamic poems speaks to hunger—for food, of the flesh—and every inexpressible hunger we all feel.

 

The Hive by Melissa Scholes Young [novel]: Four sisters in blue collar Missouri have financial worries and emotional woes as the family pest control business is threatened and their mother is retreating into survivalist prepping. An empathetic exploration of life outside the coastal siloes.

 

What Happened Was by Anna Leahy [poetry chapbook]: A stellar example of the small but mighty form of the chapbook; poems about chilling and complicated interactions women have with men, inspired by the #metoo movement.

 

Children of Dust by Marlin Barton [novel]: Set in the late 1800s in Alabama, a white mother may have murdered two of her own babies fathered by her hateful husband. Or perhaps her husband’s mixed-race mistress did the deed? Or…? Not a whodunnit, but a deep and affecting exploration of the interwoven complications of race and gender during Reconstruction, of how an uncomfortably shared past informs the present—still.

 

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BLURBED BOOKS

 

This may be cheating?? I wrote blurbs for 2 books that will be published in 2022, and I hope you’ll keep an eye out for them:

 

The Other Ones by Dave Housley [novel; January 2022]: What happens when some of the people in the office are in the winning lottery pool but others aren’t? I’m a fan of books set in the workplace, and I love ensembles of characters. This crisp, funny book contains lots of heart.

 

You Have Reached Your Destination by Louise Marburg [short stories; fall 2022]: New Yorky stories with pitch-perfect dialogue that reminded me of Grace Paley and a forlorn ache that’s in conversation with an Edward Hopper painting.

 

TBR: Bride of the Sea by Eman Quotah

TBR [to be read] is a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books who will tell us about their new work as well as offer tips on writing, stories about the publishing biz, and from time to time, a recipe!

 

Give us your elevator pitch: what’s your book about in 2-3 sentences?

A young Saudi couple moves to Cleveland to study in the early 1970s. When they divorce, the wife fears her daughter will be taken from her because of Saudi custody law. She disappears with the little girl, and the husband is left to search for his lost daughter.

 

Which character did you most enjoy creating? Why? And, which character gave you the most trouble, and why?

I loved writing Haleemah, who is the mother of Muneer, the young husband. Haleemah is loosely based on my grandmother and women of her generation. My grandma was illiterate, a child bride, had 12 children. As the matriarch of our large family, she was loving and sweet but also sometimes petty and willing to pit one of her children against the other. In an early draft, I wrote a whole section from her point of view, and although later that section ended up being told in Muneer’s point of view, I was really able to get to know her.

Saeedah, the young wife who abducts her own daughter, was the hardest for me. Unpacking Saeedah’s motivations was such a challenge and a process. She’s one of the reasons this novel needed time to germinate. I wanted people to see the deep trauma her actions caused for Muneer, their daughter Hanadi, and others, while at the same time not painting her simply as a villain. That was hard!

 

Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s road to publication.

I started Bride years ago when I first learned of a family friend’s reunion with his daughter, long after she’d been abducted by her mother. I workshopped some of the early pages but I never got real momentum, and then I set the book aside to work on another novel. When I finished that manuscript, I scrapped everything I’d written on THIS one and started over. That’s when I slowly started to figure out how to interweave the three perspectives of Hanadi, Muneer and Saeedah.

While my agent, Steven Chudney, and I were submitting the manuscript to editors, I ended up reworking it because of feedback we got. So, there’d be a low of “I need to rethink X and Y” and a high of “Eureka! I think I’ve got it.”

Tin House acquired the book last March, the same week my kids’ schools shut down because of COVID-19. It was a thrill to find Bride a home at such a well-respected indy house with an editor, Masie Cochran, who really loved it. Of course, back then I thought that by early 2021 we’d be back in person, but it’s still enormously exciting to have my first book coming out, no matter the challenges.

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

My favorite piece of writing advice is not about novels at all, it’s about opinion writing. Former USA Today opinion editor John Siniff told me, “If no one would argue against it, it’s not an opinion.” Here’s how I translate his advice for fiction and essay writing: Don’t be safe, and find the things that only you can say.

 

My favorite writing advice is “write until something surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?

The ending surprised me. I had long envisioned a particular way of ending the book, and then my editor suggested that I cut the last 20 to 25 pages. Now I think the place where the reader leaves the narrative is perfect.

 

How did you find the title of your book?

The book’s title is the nickname for Jidda, Saudi Arabia, where I grew up. I can’t remember exactly when I decided on the title, but it’s so poetic and speaks to so many of my novel’s themes. For me, the title also evokes the regional identity of the Hijaz, the part of western Saudi Arabia where Jidda is located.

 

Inquiring foodies and hungry book clubs want to know: Any food/s associated with your book? (Any recipes I might share?)

Food definitely helps me tell the story and reveal the themes of Bride. As newlyweds, Muneer and Saeedah try to make their mothers’ rice and lamb recipes, and how they go about it tells us something about their marriage. Then, when mother and daughter are on the run in Ohio, Hanadi watches Saeedah make the Saudi version of shakshuka, but to Hanadi it’s just tomatoes and eggs. She doesn’t know the cultural significance of it. And when Hanadi finally meets her paternal grandmother in Jidda, the first thing Haleemah does is feed Hanadi, as though it’s Haleemah’s way of speaking her love across languages and making up for lost time.

 

Saudi-style Shakshuka

Chop ½ onion (or a whole one) and sauté in olive oil until soft. Meanwhile, peel a tomato (or two) and squeeze out the seeds and juice. Chop the tomato and toss in the pan. Sauté until the tomato thickens a little. Add two to three beaten eggs. Season with cumin, salt, and pepper. Swirl with a chopstick or spatula as the eggs cook. Eat with pita, white cheese, and zaatar. 

 

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READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: http://emanquotah.com

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR TBR STACK: https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9781951142452

 

READ AN EXCERPT, “You Drive Me Crazy”: https://themarkaz.org/magazine/you-drive-me-crazy-from-bride-of-the-sea

Best Books (I Read) in 2020

I’ll say this about this crummiest of years: I read more books than usual, since reading is my favorite way to escape the world. Narrowing what I read down to 10ish books for my annual list of “best books I read this year no matter when they were published” is consequently VERY DIFFICULT. (Nothing about 2020 is easy! My first cull gave me 21 options!!) As always, I’ve refrained from including on my list books by writers I know/“know”, and I’ve moved those to a separate category. Order is chronological to how I happened to read these books, which basically means the order is random. And do I mean “best,” or do I mean “favorite,” or do I mean “book that was exactly right for the moment I read it”? Maybe I simply mean, “book I literally and truly recommended to others at least once over the year.”

Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips: Linked stories (not a true novel, sorry publisher who claims it is) set in a remote peninsula of Siberia. Beautiful language, an austere setting…I was mesmerized.

You by Caroline Kepnes: Voice x 1000! Dark, funny, smart, New Yorker, bookish, creepy. I loved the TV show, but the book is even better.

Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell: I ended up reading a lot of books about dire situations this year, and this (non-fiction) depiction of the working poor in the 1930s was one of the most dire. A disturbing, compelling book.

How Much of These Hills Is Gold by C. Pam Zhang: Here’s another very dire and very harrowing book, about two Chinese-American girls struggling to survive in the 19^th century American west. You’ll rethink the myths of the west and the immigrant tale. Well-structured, gorgeously written, unforgettable. But DIRE x 1000!

Master Georgie by Beryl Bainbridge: She’s an under-appreciated writer in the U.S., I think, as I’ve admired several other books she’s written. Wonderful historical fiction, inventively told, about a surgeon and his circle of affiliated people. The sections in the Crimean War are (wait for it) incredibly dire. Also, a truly shocking ending that was, nevertheless, inevitable. Interesting to read for structure if you’re struggling with that in your WIP.

Among the Thugs by Bill Buford: A horrifying (and dire) immersion into 1980s British “football” hooligan culture. Lots to think about with regard to group-think. A violent book, but a thoughtful one. We like to think we’d never fall sway to mob violence, but I’m not so sure.

Your Blues Ain’t Like Mine by Bebe Moore Campbell: It’s rare these days to find a novel that sweeps through decades as this one does, starting with a fictionalized Emmett Till character, and following the ripples and waves outward from that terrible murder. It’s also rare to see a novel tackle so many POVs, including that of the woman who incited this incident.

**The Pursuit of Love & Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford: Life is not entirely dire, and maybe there’s a reason this is my **favorite book of the year; after finishing, I immediately crammed it into my “favorite books bookshelf.” I absolutely loved everything about these two companion books in one volume; I didn’t read, I inhaled them! Funny, frothy, smart, provocative, zany…about a rich British family after WWI. Rabbit holes I traveled down after reading include researching Nancy Mitford and the Bright Young Things (be assured she’s not the Nazi Mitford sister); ordering a special marmalade mentioned; researching and baking a special walnut cake alluded to; watching the (delightful!) movie on Amazon Prime. Truly, for me, this was a magical reading experience, made more so by the fact that I’d randomly grabbed this book at least a year ago out of a Free Little Library, mistakenly thinking it was a memoir about the Mitfords. What a joyful discovery.

 Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alum: So eerie and unsettling that I had to make sure I still had cell service several times. This book is about the (possible) end of the world, as seen through two very different couples who are ensconced in a luxury house beyond the reach of what we imagine must be mayhem and destruction, who have no way of knowing what’s going on. (Nitpick: no one has a radio??) A good book to read if you’re into interesting POV, as I thought the omniscient narrative worked well to create a disturbing sense of distance.

Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu: IMHO this book totally deserves the National Book Award that it recently won. It’s inventive, funny, dark, and on-point with regard to thinking about issues of race today. The book is told in the form of a screenplay, which I found easy to melt into, and on the surface is about a young Chinese-American male actor trying to get better roles in a police procedural called “Black & White.” So…clearly, it’s about much, much more than TV.

Rereads I’m Sneaking onto My List

 Sometimes one just needs to comfort-read a beloved volume from childhood. These two still stand up for me:

 From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg: I was missing NYC, and this charming story about a brother and sister who run away from home and live in the Metropolitan Museum of Art is about as perfect as a novel gets. I’m incredibly jealous if you’ve never read it and get to encounter it for the first time!

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger: I was missing NYC (a different time) and returned to one of the books that changed my teenage life, now viewing Holden’s struggles with the “phonies” as an extended meditation on unexpressed grief and loss. Maybe I’m smarter now, or, more likely, just older and possibly wiser. Brilliant book.

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And now a shout-out to the books I read by my friends and social media friends that I love-love-loved!

Malawi’s Sisters by Melanie S. Hatter: After a young Black woman is murdered in a “stand your ground” incident, we follow the family left behind as they try to cope with this shattering loss. Great use of multiple POVs.

The Cactus League by Emily Nemens: Spring training baseball in Arizona captured with depth and nuance.

Jack Kerouac Is Dead to Me by Gae Polisner: YA…lost friendship, the lure of the boyfriend with the motorcycle, butterflies, and a surprising yet inevitable ending I so admired.

I Brake for Moose by Geeta Kothari: Short stories about a thousand different things, including feeling placed (or not) in the world. (My favorites were the title story and “Foreign Relations.”)

This Is One Way to Dance by Sejal Shah: Lyric essay collection; here’s a super-short sample, about the author’s “Indian” wedding, one of my favorite pieces: https://brevitymag.com/nonfiction/things-people-said/

 Until We Have Faces by Michael Nye: Short stories, and what I especially loved was seeing people at work, in a variety of jobs (including, not for the faint of heart, a man raising dogs for meat after chickens have been wiped out).

Coal Black Horse by Robert Olmstead: Set during the Civil War, this lyrical novel is spare, precise, and urgent. Oh, and dire.

Clutter: An Untidy History by Jennifer Howard: Part memoir, part exploration of why we have SO. MUCH. DAMN. STUFF.

wife | daughter | self: memoir in essays by Beth Kephart: I’m cheating, since this book will be officially released in the spring (pre-order now!!). Relentless exploration of self, with sentences that will stop your heart with their exactness.

The Fear of Everything by John McNally: Immersive short stories that made me feel I was getting a novel in 20 pages. My two favorites: “The Creeping End” and “The Blueprint of Your Brain.”

 The Rest of the World by Adam Schwartz: The author uses his two decades of experience as a schoolteacher in Baltimore to capture the tough yet fragile complexities of adolescence in these short stories. Dire, nuanced, hopeful.

 

Happy holidays, everyone, and happy 2021! I'm grateful you're part of my  literary/reading/social media/real life community!

Best Books (I read in) 2019

Yes, yes…I know these books were not necessarily published in 2019. But it’s my list, so I can organize it as I please! Every year I cull down the books I’ve read over the year to 10ish or so of my favorites. Because I don’t want to stress myself out or hurt anyone’s feelings, I choose not to include books by friends or even “friends” I interact with on social media; instead, I list books I’ve read (and loved) that were written by friends in a separate section. And I’m sorry if I’ve bought your book and not yet read it…I’ll get to it. One of the great pleasures of reading is finding the exact right book for the exact right time and place and mental space. (That’s why I’ve always got at least 250 unread books ready and waiting!)

So, in no particular order:

Dare Me by Megan Abbott: Megan Abbott gets lumped into the mystery/thriller sections, but no one is better about writing about women and girls and power and secrets and friendships. Yes, dead bodies show up, but Abbott’s work is really about group dynamics, and Dare Me may the best of all, exploring the dark world of competitive cheerleading. Read the book before you watch the new series on the USA Network. (Now that I’ve typed that, I’m stressed out, wondering if You Will Know Me is better than Dare Me. Hmmm…read them both!)

The Child Finder by Rene Denfeld: Dark and elegant, literary and gripping, a book you can’t put down. There’s a missing child, so beware if that’s a trigger for you, but Denfeld finds the humanity in each character. The ending is something of a miracle, and that last paragraph makes me tear up, just thinking of it right now.

H Is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald: This book had been on my shelf forever, and it was my experience last year with falconry that finally got me to crack open the cover. What a stunning memoir, weaving together the author’s grief over the death of her father and the way she copes with this loss, by training a beautiful, wild goshawk named Mabel. I’m not usually one for long passages of descriptive writing, but I would listen to Macdonald describe the pavement on a strip mall parking lot. Luckily, she chooses instead to describe meadows and birds and trees and nature. An exquisite eye, a singular memoir.

*The Throwback Special by Chris Bachelder: Keep reading, even if you think this doesn’t sound like your kind of book! A group of 22 men meet once a year to re-enact the horrifically iconic football moment in the 80s when Lawrence Taylor tackles quarterback Joe Theismann and his leg gruesomely snaps as millions watched on Monday Night Football. (Do NOT google this video.) The book has a tight focus—this one weekend, at this one hotel where the men gather—but the point of view is expansive, touching (I believe) each of the men. (That’s right: 22 POVs!) And while it’s helpful to know something about football, this book is really about men and love and the meaning of ritual and aging and nostalgia and so much more. *Tied for my most favorite book of the year!

Heaven’s Coast by Mark Doty: A lyrical memoir of grief set (mostly) in weather-wracked Provincetown, MA. Doty’s lover has died of AIDS, during the height of the epidemic, and how can one find the words to convey such a loss? How can one find a way to continue living? Metaphors of the natural world and the landscape of Cape Cod feel one thousand percent fresh here; Doty is a highly-regarded poet, and each word in this memoir feels perfectly, effortlessly selected. Possibly the best grief memoir I've ever read.

The Black Notebooks: An Interior Journey by Toi Derricotte: Hard questions about identity and race. Not a single easy answer, only difficult self-revelations leading to more difficult questions. Feels to me as relevant today as it was when published in 1997. If you responded to Citizen by Claudia Rankine, you’ll respond to this book…and if you’re me, you’ll actually prefer Derricotte. (Did I really just say that??!!) 

The Hard Way on Purpose: Essays and Dispatches from the Rust Belt by David Griffels: My husband randomly picked up this book in an independent bookstore in a town we were visiting, loved it, and suggested I read it, especially as I was touring through the Midwest this summer. I loved it too: essays about growing up in the “Rust Belt”—which is a place not an oft-annoying political voting bloc—essays that muse about the area’s rise and fall, and what it means to live in a place that used to “make things.” If you grew up as a Cleveland Browns fan, there’s an essay in here that you can’t miss!

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead: Focused and spare, the haunting story of an African American boy in the 60s who unfairly ends up in a horrific juvenile facility. Equally awful is the depiction of regular life outside the facility under Jim Crow laws. (Based on a real institution in Florida that for years covered up countless deaths of young boys.)

*The Blind Side by Michael Lewis: Another football book? Well, yes—though this book is much more than a book about football. It’s a book about the education system, white privilege, money, class, how college recruiting really works, how NFL recruiting really works, and the myriad ways talented kids fall through mile-wide cracks. If you’ve got in mind that dopey “white savior narrative” movie starring Sandra Bullock, THIS BOOK IS NOT THAT. That storyline is tucked in, and of course that’s what Hollywood would choose to focus on, but on the page, no one escapes Lewis’s sharp eye, and he is both merciless and merciful. A thorough reporter, but also a superb narrative writer. *Tied for my most favorite book of the year!

Paper Lion: Confessions of a Last-String Quarterback by George Plimpton: More football?? (Confession: I’m writing a novel about a football player.) Anyway, this classic is a bit dated, but still hilarious and smart about football and what makes a “team.” Paris Review editor George Plimpton is a charming and self-deprecating narrator/reporter who goes “undercover” at the Detroit Lions training camp for the 1963 season…okay, so no one believes the skinny guy who went to Yale is a professional football player. But he manages to blend in enough to hear all the good stories, and he even finds himself out on the field, playing quarterback—!!

____

Here are the books written by my friends that I loved reading this year:

Crude Angel by Suzanne Cleary: Smart, sharp, and funny poems by my fabulous Converse low-res MFA colleague/roommate, tackling a range of subjects to include Morgan Fairchild’s lipstick.

Shelf Life of Happiness by Virginia Pye: Lovely short stories that take on the writer’s most challenging topic of all, happiness. Yes, a collection can be cohesive without being linked. This is one to study if you’re assembling your own collection.

Stay by Tanya Olson: Masterful poems, especially the long poem “txt me im board” that takes us through a hairy airplane ride through life and death and art, with these lines I love so, so much: “God takes no poet / until his best poem is written / You my friend will save us all.”

Meteor by C.M. Mayo: Gorgeous prose poems that offer a sense of narrative, along with an extraordinary wash of language and images.

Anything You Want by Geoff Herbach: Hilarious and voicey YA book about the world’s most heart-breakingly optimistic boy, by my new Converse MFA colleague! For all the humor and deluded optimism, these characters have a tough road, and the author pulls no punches. I loved this book in 2019, but wow, would I have really loved it when I was 14, back in 19-mumble-mumble.

The Unrhymables: Collaborations in Prose by Denise Duhamel & Julie Marie Wade: Incisive essays for people who don’t think “feminist” is a bad word co-written, back and forth, to various prompts, by two of the most creative writers I know. (Denise is yet another fabulous Converse colleague, and Julie has visited our program several times!)

The Lightness of Water by Rhonda Browning White: Gritty and voicey short stories set (mostly) in Appalachia by my Converse MFA fiction thesis student! I admired these stories when I worked with Rhonda on her thesis, and to see the whole collection honed to a razor's edge, makes me as proud as can be. (debut)

Be with Me Always by Randon Billings Noble: Blazingly honest and elegant essays about the ways things and absences haunt us. If you don't believe me, you can read a very short essay from the collection right here...and thank me later: https://brevitymag.com/nonfiction/torn-muscle/

One Night Gone by Tara Laskowski: Two storylines intertwine and intersect in this fabulously atmospheric mystery about a missing girl set in an East Coast beach town, seen in the full onslaught of summer in the 80s, and then in the eerie off-season in contemporary times.

Scattered Clouds: New & Selected Poems by Reuben Jackson: Real DC of “Chocolate City” days, jazz, Trayvon Martin, and modern life tinged with elegiac undertones create a powerful brew. (I played Ellington as I read, which was just perfect.)

Once Removed by Colette Sartor: This collection of short stories won the prestigious Flannery O’Connor Award, and it’s easy to see why. Lush and aching, each story is a deep dive that could be its own novel. I didn’t want this book to end. (debut)

~~Happy reading in 2020--and happy new year to all!~~

I'm guessing that Work in Progress will be quietish (if not fullly quiet) until mid-January, when I'll start up with another round of author interviews. As always, thank you for reading this blog that now contains more than 2000 posts!

TBR: Scattered Clouds: New and Selected Poems by Reuben Jackson

TBR [to be read] is a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books who will tell us about their new work as well as offer tips on writing, stories about the publishing biz, and from time to time, a recipe! 

We don’t expect an elevator pitch from a poet, but can you tell us about your work in 2-3 sentences?

My poetic efforts attempt to honor the places and people who had, and still have, a deep impact on the way I view the world.  I often semi-jokingly borrow the title (tweaked, mind you) of an NPR program called This American Life. My version would be This African American Life. 

What boundaries did you break in the writing of this book? Where does that sort of courage come from?

I am happiest about the continued emergence of my emotional honesty. We (and when I say we, I mean my peers, my boys, my posse) taught ourselves how to sublimate (if not suffocate) our “feels”, as the kids say these days.  I got really good at it.  This time around, there isn’t as much humor as emotional deflection.  I pray it continues.

The Amir and Khadijah section of the book is as close as I will ever come to playing

Ballads like Miles Davis.   (Dear Diary- I fell in love.. once. Got some poems out of

It… )  The hardest were the poems with references to cancer.  My body and my life

were too much in shock to delve as much as I should have.  But I wanted the poems to be “a graph of me”— as Amiri Baraka once said.  

Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s road to publication.

I never expected to publish a book again….  When asked, I felt like someone being asked to dance at the prom. The lows?   The anxiety surrounding the book’s birth. Would people hate it? Laugh as if it were an item of clothing from, say, the late 1960s? I mean, it has been… ahem… 20 years…..

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

Keep moving the thematic furniture around. Revision is possibility!

My favorite writing advice is “write until something surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?

I would have to say the fact that my longing (which has always been a kind of screaming secret) made its way into a few of the poems.

How did you find the title of your book?

Scattered Clouds came to me after a walk in Central Park–early December 1989.  It was my initial choice for the book which became fingering the keys.  People (which includes editor-type people) thought the title was too somber.  In retrospect,  it is a better fit for the newer poems, which don’t shy away from themes of loss and longing.

Inquiring foodies and hungry book clubs want to know: Any food/s associated with your book?

Would this include the bourbon I consumed while assembling the manuscript?

*****

READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: https://alansquirepublishing.com/book-authors/reuben-jackson/

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR STACK: https://alansquirepublishing.com/bookstore/scattered-clouds/

LISTEN TO REUBEN JACKSON READ SOME POEMS FROM THIS BOOK: https://alansquirepublishing.com/book-authors/reuben-jackson/#1224

TBR: Pigs by Johanna Stoberock

TBR [to be read] is a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books who will tell us about their new work as well as offer tips on writing, stories about the publishing biz, and from time to time, a recipe! 

Give us your elevator pitch: what’s your book about in 2-3 sentences?

Four children live on an island that’s the receptacle for the entire world’s garbage. Garbage washes ashore, and the children feed it to a herd of giant, magical pigs. It’s a perfect system until one day a boy washes up in a barrel and the children have to decide whether he’s garbage, too, meant to be fed to the pigs, or whether he’s one of them. What follows is a fable for adults about social responsibility, environmental justice, and the things we throw away.

Which character did you most enjoy creating? Why? And, which character gave you the most trouble, and why?

My favorite character to write was the only fully formed adult in the novel, a castaway named Otis. I loved how flawed he is, how he tries so hard to do the right thing (by his wife, by his son, by the children on the island, by, ultimately, the entire world), but how, even wanting badly to follow a moral compass, he just can’t help but be driven by his own desires.

The hardest character for me was actually the book’s central character, a twelve-year-old girl named Luisa. I think I just knew her too well—the kind of frustration she feels at her situation, and the way anger takes over and gets in the way of strength: those are all emotions that I know from the inside out. The thing that was hard about writing her was finding ways to show that emotional life from the outside in. I wanted to write her disappointment, but also her fortitude within disappointment. And I wanted to write the way she handles guilt. And through all that, I wanted her to remain a child, with all the immediacy of response that children can access. It was hard!

Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s road to publication.

It’s been a long road to publication, so there have been lots of highs and lows. The biggest high was probably the first time I shared any of Pigs in public: I read from the first chapter in a local reading series, and for months and months afterwards people around my very small town kept coming up to me and telling me they couldn’t wait to read the whole thing. I’d never had that experience before.

The second high was when I sent it to my agent. I was worried that she would think it was too strange. But instead, she was excited by its strangeness, by the way it didn’t feel like something she’d read before.

And then there was hearing that it had been accepted by Red Hen, and the first conversation I had about it with Kate Gale, Red Hen’s Managing Editor. She so clearly saw a life for the manuscript out in the world, and she had so much faith in it, and her excitement was catching.

The lows? I’ll be selective.

Sometimes it’s lonely to write. And writing a novel takes a long time, so that’s a long stretch of loneliness. And then you get so used to living inside the world of your novel, that when you emerge, you kind of forget what life is like outside it, so that prolongs the loneliness even further.

On a more concrete level, one particular low was revisiting the same scene over and over, recognizing that it wasn’t working, but not having a solution to make it better. It took me years to fix that scene!

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

I once attended a reading by Ramona Ausubel. Afterwards, someone in the audience asked if she had any writing advice, and this is what she said: “follow your weird.” When I heard that, it felt like something just clicked inside of me. My imagination can go to very unusual places, and it was wonderful to have someone frame that strangeness as a strength rather than a weakness.

My favorite writing advice is “write until something surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?

The very first line surprised me: “The pigs ate everything.” It came to me before I had a plot or a setting or a central character, and so Pigs is really built around the growing lists of stuff that the pigs of the novel eat (“Kitchen scraps. Bitter lettuce from the garden. The stale and sticky contents of lunch boxes kids brought home from school. Toenail clippings. Hairballs pulled up from the drain. After the pigs were done, there weren’t even any teeth left over, not even any metal from cavities filled long ago”). Once I’d accepted that, it became a great source of freedom—a structural device, and a device for seeing the world of the novel in great detail. And the more I thought about what we throw away, the more the characters themselves came into focus. So I guess the biggest surprise of all was the way the world of the novel created the characters rather than the characters creating the world.

How did you find the title of your book?

There was never any question what the title would be: it’s like the book entered the world with a name. At times I’ve wondered if it’s too on-the-nose, too in-your-face. But I like that the real “pigs” of the novel are not the actual pigs, and I like that the title puts a focus on animals rather than humans, and I like it’s single-syllable-ness, and I like that somehow, in our collective imagination, pigs have such resonance.

Inquiring foodies and hungry book clubs want to know: Any food/s associated with your book? (Any recipes I might share?)

Well (spoiler), there’s a pig roast three quarters of the way through the book. And whole roasted pig is unbelievably delicious. But somehow I don’t think that’s quite the right recipe to share. So I’ll go with this: before the pig-roast, but well into the novel, Luisa, the main character, tries a macaron for the first time. While I’ve never made them myself, I’ve eaten quite a few, and think this recipe for chocolate macarons looks fantastic: 

https://leitesculinaria.com/3324/recipes-french-chocolate-macaroons.html

*****

READ MORE ABOUT THE AUTHOR: www.johannastoberock.com

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR TBR STACK:

https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781597090445

TBR: One Night Gone by Tara Laskowski

TBR [to be read] is a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books who will tell us about their new work as well as offer tips on writing, stories about the publishing biz, and from time to time, a recipe! 

Give us your elevator pitch: what’s your book about in 2-3 sentences?

Allison Simpson is offered the opportunity to house-sit in Opal Beach, a wealthy beach town, during the off-season, which seems like the perfect chance to regroup and start fresh after a messy divorce. But when she becomes drawn into the story of a girl who disappeared from town thirty years before, she begins to realize that Opal Beach isn’t as idyllic as it seems.

Which character did you most enjoy creating? Why? And, which character gave you the most trouble, and why?

I have two points of view in my book--Maureen and Allison. Maureen, who is a teenager in the 1980s, was definitely the most fun to write. I enjoyed getting in her head, and I also enjoyed writing about the nostalgia of the 1980s. (Hello, lace and Madonna and legwarmers and Lee Press-On nails!) Allison was harder because she wasn’t as brazen of a person, so her personality was harder for me to tease out. Once I started to understand her fascination with the weather, though, and where that interest stemmed from, I started to “get” her more, which made her easier to write.

Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s road to publication.

The book’s path to publication was pretty straightforward, actually. I had no real pitfalls in writing the draft, finding an agent, and selling the book. That’s still kind of a shocking surprise to me. But the worst thing that’s ever happened to me happened right in the middle of this process--my mother died. She died three weeks before I got an offer on my book, actually, and so I never got to tell her that news. I’m saddened every day that she’s not here to share in the news and wild ride of this book because she would’ve loved every minute of it.

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

Keep pushing through the draft, even if it’s thin. You can fix thin, but you can’t fix nothing.

My favorite writing advice is “write until something surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?

About halfway through the draft, I realized that who I thought was the killer was not actually the killer.

How did you find the title of your book?

I’ve had two story collections published before this book, and I’ve never been challenged before about the title. The working title for this book was The Off Season, and I really really loved that title. But the sales team at Graydon House didn’t think it really fit with the style and mood of other domestic suspense titles out there, so we had to change it.

I came up with literally like 70 other possible titles for this book. Some were TERRIBLE, and some I also really liked. We whittled it down to about seven that I didn’t hate, and my editor presented those to her team. They chose One Night Gone as their favorite, and so here we are.

After stomping around crankily for a few weeks and mourning the loss of my original title, I recognize that they were right. But it taught me not to become too wedded to, well, really anything in your manuscript. For my next book, my working title is simply “magic,” and I’m not going to get too excited about any title possibility that goes running through my head until I see it on a cover design, should I be so fortunate!

Inquiring foodies and hungry book clubs want to know: Any food/s associated with your book?

A coffee shop features pretty prominently in the book, and Allison drinks her mochas with a dollop of vanilla ice cream on top. I have yet to try this, so I have no idea if it’s any good or not, but she seems to really like it.

*****

READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR:  www.taralaskowski.com

READ MORE ABOUT THIS PUBLISHER: https://www.graydonhousebooks.com/

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR PILE: https://www.amazon.com/One-Night-Gone-Tara-Laskowski/dp/1525832190