my year in books

read/goal:50/50

top 10:

1. How Much of These Hills is Gold, C. Pam Zhang: In my opinion, a contemporary classic. Weaves Chinese myth with stories of the American Gold Rush. Beautiful prose and valuable takeaways re: family, truth, and gender.
2. A Little Devil in America: Notes on Black Performance, Hanif Abdurraqib: Essay upon essay of mind-plowing poetics and storytelling. Hanif’s version of Baldwin’s Devil Finds Work. A wide swath of topics from blackface to spades to magic.
3. Writers & Lovers, Lily King: Came to me at the exact right (or wrong?) time, just when my father passed away. A keenly-observed novel about grief and persona that is something like if SweetbittermetNormal People.
4. How to Write an Autobiographical Novel, Alexander Chee: Inspired me to get over myself and just start writing again. The essay on roses absolutely floored me.
5. Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route, Saidiya Hartman: Hard to stomach, but necessary. Foundational for the way I am thinking about neo-slave narratives and speculative historical fiction.
6. Seek You: A Journey Through American Loneliness, Kristen Radtke: The minute I read this, I added it to the syllabus for my class on women in isolation. Part graphic novel, part longform essay, part research paper, and wholly extraordinary.
7. The Sonic Color Line: Race and the Cultural Politics of Listening, Jennifer Lynn Stoever: This one’s just for me. The burning core at the center of my reading list and the inspiration and model for my scholarship.
8. The Street, Ann Petry: Read it because of the book above, but an absolute banger of a book. Devastating ending. Would be extraordinary taught alongside Native Son.
9. The Fifth Season, N.K. Jemisin: This book has everything. Polyamory. Earth-bending. An alien creature frozen inside a giant piece of rock in the middle of the ocean. Love this woman, love seeing Blackness-as-default in sci-fi novels.
10. Fun Home, Alison Bechdel: You read it in high school for a good reason. A true exemplar of the genre and a fascinating way to teach non-chronological storytelling.

rest below the cut

1. Camera Lucida, Roland Barthes
2. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, V.E. Schwab
3. Brothers & Keepers, John Edgar Wideman
4. Bunk: The True Story of Hoaxes, Hucksters, Humbug, Plagiarists, Forgeries, and Phonies, Kevin Young
5. Ninth House, Leigh Bardugo
6. House of Earth and Blood, Sarah J. Maas
7. Children of Virtue and Vengeance, Tomi Adeyemi
8. Emergence of Cinematic Time: Modernity, Contingency, the Archive, Mary Ann Doane
9. An American Sunrise, Joy Harjo
10. Nabokov’s Favorite Word is Mauve: What the Numbers Reveal About the Classics, Bestsellers, and Our Own Writing, Ben Blatt
11. Rule of Wolves, Leigh Bardugo
12. The Lightning Thief, Rick Riordan
13. Savage Preservation: The Ethnographic Origins of Modern Media Technology, Brian Hochman
14. The Obelisk Gate, N.K. Jemisin
15. The Stone Sky, N.K. Jemisin
16. People We Meet on Vacation, Emily Henry
17. The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice & Virtue, Mackenzi Lee
18. The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman
19. Legendborn, Tracy Deonn
20. Josh & Hazel’s Guide to Not Dating, Christina Lauren
21. In Cold Blood, Truman Capote
22. The Race of Sound: Listening, Timbre, and Vocality in African American Music, Nina Sun Eidsheim
23. One Last Stop, Casey McQuiston
24. One to Watch, Kate Stayman-London
25. Time Binds: Queer Temporalities, Queer Histories, Elizabeth Freeman
26. Gideon the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir
27. Echo and Narcissus: Women’s Voices in Classical Hollywood Cinema, Amy Lawrence
28. An Extraordinary Union, Alyssa Cole
29. It Ends With Us, Colleen Hoover
30. Harrow the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir
31. Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism, Safiya Noble
32. Listening in: Radio and the American Imagination, Susan J. Douglass
33. How to Fail at Flirting, Denise Williams
34. The Flat-Share, Beth O'Leary
35. Radio Voices: American Broadcasting, 1922-1952, Michele Hilmes
36. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, Scott McCloud
37. The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. Du Bois
38. The Love Hypothesis, Ali Hazelwood
39. The Road Trip, Beth O'Leary
40. We Ride Upon Sticks, Quan Barry

I feel so frightened of being hurt — not of the suffering, which I know I can handle, but the indignity of the suffering, the indignity of being open to it.

—Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You.

And by now you can only look at me with pity - not with love or friendship but just pity, like I’m something half-dead lying on the roadside and the kindest thing would be to put me out of my misery.

—Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You.

the beginning of my great tumblr comeback of 2022 as i’m finally officially starting grad school full time without also having a full time job is listing all the 55 books i read in 2021! i’m also going to repost that “ask me about my 2020” reads post i made last year as that was super fun and a lot of you seemed to like it as well.

the goal for 2022 is to read 60 books, we shall see if i actually manage to do that, as 55 already felt lie a stretch this year.

as usual, if i post more regularly about my reading on instagramand all the books i read can be found on storygraph which i’m using instead of goodreads.

1. Sorcery of Thorns by Margaret Rogerson
2. The Duke and I by Julia Quinn
3. Broken Harbour by Tana French
4. Vengeful by V.E. Schwab
5. Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado
6. The Secret Place by Tana French
7. Bats of the Republic: An Illuminated Novel by Zachary Thomas Dodson
8. Ruinsong by Julia Ember
9. Tender Is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica
10. The Trespasser by Tana French
11. Jalat ilmassa by Antti Rönkä
12. The Sirens of Mars by Sarah Stewart Johnson
13. Good omens by Terry Pratchett with Neil Gaiman
14. The Titan’s Curse by Rick Riordan
15. The Near Witch by V. E. Schwab
16. Watch Over Me by Nina LaCour
17. Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo
18. Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan
19. The Battle of the Labyrinth by Rick Riordan
20. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
21. No One Is Talking about This by Patricia Lockwood
22. These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong
23. There but for the by Ali Smith
24. The Raven Cycle books 1–4 by Maggie Stiefvater
25. Summer of Salt by Katrina Leno
26. The Last Olympian by Rick Riordan
27. Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey
28. Wild Beauty by Anna-Marie McLemore
29. Cleanness by Garth Greenwell
30. Milk Fed by Melissa Broder
31. The Lost Hero by Rick Riordan
32. Nocturno 21:07 by Antti Rönkä
33. The Dangers of Smoking in Bed: Stories by Mariana Enríquez
34. Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney
35. Dune by Frank Herbert
36. The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
37. What Comes After by JoAnne Tompkins
38. Bechi by Koko Hubar
39. Childhood by Tove Ditlevsen
40. Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss
41. Weather by Jenny Offill
42. Tee työtä ja rakasta by Tuula Karjalainen
43. Supper Club by Lara Williams
44. One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston
45. Ace of Spades by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé
46. Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid
47. The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin
48. Lakewood by Megan Giddings
49. Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor
50. Slay by Brittney Morris
51. Everyone Knows Your Mother is a Witch by Rivka Galchen