2022 Book Recommendations
I read 126 books so far this year. Below are my favorites. Happy reading, friends. Would love to hear if you pick these books up in 2023!
Nonfiction
How the Other Half Eats: The Untold Story of Food and Inequality in America by Dr. Priya Fielding-Singh —This book does a fantastic job of looking past the common narratives about food justice and digging deeper into the research and realities of nutrition inequality. The author weaves together storytelling and her deep real-world research to help readers make sense of the role that food plays in all American households.
Outlaw Ocean: Journeys Across the Last Untamed Frontier by Ian Urbina — This was was fascinating and eye-opening. Outlaw Ocean delves into the human, ecological, and economic costs of fishing, including the enslavement of workers. It also investigates other oceanic topics, like offshore abortions and pirates. It does feel a little disjointed from chapter to chapter, each of which delves into a different aspect of life on the oceans, but on the flip side, each one also stands alone, almost like a magazine article. This is a must-read for anyone interested in the real-world impacts of what we choose to put on the dinner table.
Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick — This book is another amazing work of journalism from Demick. She follows the lives of six North Korean defectors from one small town in the north of the country as they live their lives in South Korea. Suspenseful, tragic, and also, as the title says — ordinary. It’s easy to imagine that the few who successfully make it from North Korea to the south live happily ever after. But this book does a masterful job of examining the ways that North Koreans continue to be oppressed in South Korea.
As a bonus, I also recommend Eat the Buddha: Life and Death in a Tibetan Town by Barbara Demick, about a frontier town on the Tibet/China border. This one details the joy and agony of those living heavily-surveilled lives in eastern Tibet, with a focus on resistance by self-immolation.
Memoir and Biography
Solito by Javier Zamora — My favorite book of the year, recommended to me by a dear friend. Solito is Zamora’s recounting of his seven-week migrant journey from El Salvador to “La USA,” which he took solo at the age of nine. He writes the book in the present tense, so you are transported into the experience as a child would see it, in all of its confusing, scary, hopeful, and heartbreaking reality.
Carry: A Memoir of Survival on Stolen Land by Toni Jensen — “It’s okay, I’ve learned, to love the things that make you, even if they also are the things that unmake you.” Phew, this book. Dive into this gorgeously-crafted memoir that touches on the American erasure of indigenous culture, sexual assault, school shootings, fracking, and more.
The Chancellor: The Remarkable Odyssey of Angela Merkel by Kati Marton — My fellow political geeks will appreciate this deep dive into the life of the famously private Angela Merkel. The books covers her life from her childhood in a divided Germany to her time as the defacto leader of the EU and the free world during the Trump administration. This biography does a fantastic job diving into her lifelong outsider status and her motivations to stay in the political fight as long as she did.
438 Days: An Extraordinary True Story of Survival at Sea by Jonathan Franklin — I got really into survival stories this year, and this was by far the best I’ve read. It provides very well-researched coverage of the story of a man who spent 14 months adrift on the Pacific Ocean in a small fishing boat — the longest-known such survival. It’s an unbelievable true story, and you’ll be thinking about his experiences long after you put it down.
Fiction
Violeta by Isabel Allende — My second-favorite book of the year! Two years ago I recommended Allende’s The Long Petal of the Sea, which if you haven’t read it, please do. Typical of Allende’s books, this one covers an epic century and follows the main character as she lives from the Spanish flu through COVID. You will absolutely be moved and inspired by this one, which is set in an unnamed South American country (*cough* Chile).
The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murphy — Follow the life of Belle da Costa Greene, a Black woman who passed as white and served as the powerful personal librarian of J.P. Morgan. At a time when the primary professions open to women were teaching or nursing, Greene became a luminary in the New York (and European) art and rare books scene, acquiring pieces for the Morgan library. Like with all good historical fiction books, I finished this one and went down a deep rabbit hole to learn more about Greene and her family.
Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson — This book follows a pair of siblings whose mother dies and leaves them a long audio recording and a black cake (Caribbean rum cake) to share “when the time is right.” One Goodreads reviewer said it better than I ever could: “Family issues, resentments, cultural diaspora, regrets, resentments, sexuality, freedom, child abandonment, secrets, lies, sibling bonds, motherhood, racism, interracial marriage, identity theft, climate change, environmental protection, islander life, secret recipe of black cake… Wow! I feel so dizzy!”
Auē by Becky Manawatu — Manawatu is Ngāi Tahu, the principal Māori iwi (tribe) of New Zealand’s south island, and she brings her experiences growing up into this dark first-person narrative following Taukiri, a boy whose world is both torn apart and mended by the community that surrounds him.
One Italian Summer by Rebecca Serle — As someone who is very close with my mother, this one really hit home. A woman loses her mother but continues solo on the mother-daughter trip to Italy they had planned. Magical realism alert — the main character runs into a woman who appears to be her own mother at age 30, and they strike up a friendship. I loved the description of Italy, of travel and discovery, and the investigation of who our parents were, before they were our parents.
Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel — This one was a weird one, and so imaginative. This book, by the author of Station Eleven, takes place on Vancouver Island in 1920, and on a moon colony in 2203. It dives into metaphysics, art, and writing, and features a time-traveling detective.
Wish You Were Here by Jodi Picoult — A woman and her boyfriend, a surgical resident, had a long-planned trip to the Galápagos, which he could no longer go on when the COVID outbreak started in New York City. The woman decided to take the nonrefundable trip anyway and, shocker, gets stuck on a small island as the pandemic plays out. This book is part romance and part investigation of tourism and its impacts on communities, It also delves into the meaning of belonging and has an impeccable plot twist that I definitely did not see coming. I’m not usually a huge fan of Picoult, but this one was stellar.
Bonus Recommendations!
Here are a few others that I really enjoyed this year, and one sentence on why you may want to read them, too.
Beautiful Country by Qian Julie Wang — A beautiful debut memoir that shares the story of Wang’s childhood as a Chinese immigrant in Brooklyn.
Part of Your World by Abby Jimenez and Book Lovers by Emily Henry— These are both basically adorable country mouse/city mouse rom-coms that go deeper than many in this same genre.
The Last White Man by Mohsin Hamid —The first line of this book is: “One morning Anders, a white man, woke up to find he had turned a deep and undeniable brown.”
Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson — Learn more about WWI history through shifting perspectives of the hunted (the Lusitania’s crew and passengers) and the hunters (a German U-boat).
