nyctanthes

in alphabetical order by author, my favorite reads of 2022:

(A list is better than nothing?)

(Not sure about that, but...)


* Sprawl, Danielle Dutton (2010) - Link to Wave Books, which republished Sprawl in 2018. I've also read Dutton's Margaret the First and really enjoyed it.

* “My Mother Photographs Me In A Bed of Dead Squid,” Lars Horn. Granta 159 (2022) - Link to the essay, which you can read a bit of if you’re not a subscriber.

* Transparent Things, Vladimir Nabokov (1972) - Link to a 1972 NYT review by Mavis Gallant.

* Akira, Katsuhiro Otomo (1982-1990) - You don't need a link to this, do you?

* Kick the Latch, Kathryn Scanlan (2022) - Link to a New Yorker review, which is how I found Scanlan.

* frank: sonnets, Diane Seuss (2021) - Link to Greywolf Press. They publish good shit.

* Blackacre, Monica Youn (2016) - Link, again, to Greywolf Press. I've got several of their books in my currently reading/TBR pile.


One mega-sized, mega-classic manga. Two volumes of poetry. Two short, experimental novels. One essay about parent-child relations and art and embodiment. And one novella by an asshole but good lord, can he write.

Also, I read lots of short stories, individually and in collections. Three standouts:

* There Are Little Kingdoms: Stories, Kevin Barry (2007)
* Bezoar: And Other Unsettling Stories, Guadalupe Nettel (2008)
* The Dominant Animal: Stories, Kathryn Scanlan (2020)

With the exception of Georgi Gospodinov, who I'd characterize as literary fiction more than sci-fi, one Patrick Ness, and one early Francis Hardinge, I read no sci-fi/fantasy novels, novellas, etc. this year. Alas, I did not miss them.


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Also! This year, in my media log I've decided to add a reading category I'll call (for now), "browsing." The idea is that I don't finish plenty of books I pick up, but I do get something out of quite a few of them. Browsing isn't for "oh I picked it up and read fifteen pages and hated it." But rather, for books I've read twenty-five, fifty-five, eighty-five percent of and...that's enough. I'm not into completeness for the sake of it; life's too short. This is a way to keep track of the hundreds (thousands?) of pages I read that in the past don't typically get logged unless I remember to add them to DNF. And let's face it, most of the time if books are added to DNF it's because they irked me. It's baked into the title.