A year in reading

the bits that have stuck

There’s a lot of lists bandied about at the end of the year, and I’m as susceptible to them as the next person: best thing I ate, saw, and so on; if you write it I will probably click on it, because I enjoy them both when I agree and disagree with the opinions they tout. This week, I’ve been mulling over what I read during 2022. Honestly, it’s been less than usual this year; an acceptable figure but about half the amount I’ve gotten through in my biggest reading years, which are a ways behind me now. It was a year of quality, not quantity, and I really enjoyed my reading this year. Here, in no particular order, are a few of the greatest hits—favorites is not the right word for all of these exactly, but they are the books that will stay with me.

Let’s begin with The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, by Shehan Karunatilaka; it’s understandable that this one is fresh in my mind, as I just read it at the beginning of the month. Overall, the Booker Prize winners I’ve read have been hit and miss, but I was fascinated by the excerpt of this one that I read on their site, and lucky enough to track down a copy at a local bookstore. Interestingly, this is the only book on my list actually published this year, and that’s of everything I read, not just those noted here. This book picked me up and swept me along it its wake: the metaphors, the descriptions, and especially, the character of Maali. There was such a realness to the way he was written, I cared so much about him, it made me totally overlook the few struggles I had with the way the book was structured, and the discrepancies that an editor really should have caught: it’s testament to the author’s genius that these flaws didn’t keep me from finishing or loving the book. It was also educational in that while I knew some about the Sri Lankan conflict, I should have known more. Yes, it’s brutal in parts, but not gratuitous—and sometimes we do need to know more about difficult things.

Gourmet Hound by Leehama (a pseudonym), isn’t a book: it’s a webtoon (free to read here). But it would more than fill a book if printed out, and has everything good literature has: heart, fun, loss and grief, zany characters who grow and change, the best protagonist. It gets you in the feels without being corny or manipulative. Also: food. Lots of great food. I wish I remembered where I heard about this one so I could give them a shout out in thanks.

So I’d never read Zola, and I saw a copy of Thérèse Raquin at the Alliance Francaise library here that a friend of mine was helping set up and thought, let me give this a go. This is not a nice story; I’m not sure if there’s a single sympathetic character in sight. A book filled with terrible people doing truly terrible things and yet, not a terrible book. Good writers. How do they do this?

Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata: I’m late to the party on this one, I know. This strange little book, about a life that couldn’t be more different from mine, resonated completely. I guess the repercussions or rather the reactions of others to one choosing to live one’s life against the grain—especially as a woman—are somehow universal and unlikely to change anytime soon. But we can live our way anyway.

I also discovered the Japanese writer Seishi Yokomizo this year and read two of his books with a third on my pile: classic Agatha Christie-style mysteries in a fresh (to me) setting; I’m glad to have found this author.

**

After I wrote the above, I went to consult my books-read-in-2022 list to see what I’d missed. (Yes, I keep a list...) It was interesting to see that I hadn’t forgotten many of the highlights, and that Thérèse Raquin is still so front and forward in my mind, considering I read it in April.

There were a lot of fluffy audiobooks—Youtube is a gold mine for this—by a smattering of authors, mostly Agatha Christie and M.C. Beaton/Marion Chesney, both of which are light comfort reads for me, particularly in audio form; the latter’s Poor Relation Series, for example, is a delight.

The other three worth a mention are In the Cut by Susanna Moore, The Third Man by Graham Greene, and Cakes and Ale by W Somerset Maugham; all random used bookshop finds. In the Cut makes the cut because it is up there with some of the most disturbing stuff I’ve ever read. It’s not often that you show up to your regular quiz night to have someone ask if something is wrong because you just finished a book that will haunt you for life and it shows on your face.

The Third Man had a vague familiarity for me; perhaps I read it or saw the movie years ago, but it really is a perfect little gem of a book, succinct. Sometimes a novella, not a tome, is what hits the spot, and as a writer, the taut way this is structured is kind of a small wonder to me.

In my notes, I wrote only three words about Cakes and Ale: mindblowing and fabulous. This is funny to me because I wasn’t 100% sure that I’d even finished this book at first, and had to think to recall the plot, so perhaps it’s too high praise for a book that has mostly faded. But it has left an impression, primarily because all of it—the writing, as well as the characters and their nuances—felt contemporary, and the fact that it was published in 1930 is still hard to wrap my head around.

And finally, re: The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, I just read the following on Wikipedia…

Karunatilaka struggled to find an international publisher for the novel because most deemed Sri Lankan politics "esoteric and confusing" and many felt "the mythology and worldbuilding was impenetrable, and difficult for Western readers." The independent British publishing house Sort of Books agreed to publish the novel after editing to "make it familiar to Western readers.”

…and suddenly I understand why there were discrepancies and continuity disconnects, why some things felt jarring. I really, really want to read his original version, which was published in the subcontinent under a different title. I still love this book and know that I for one may not have heard of it any other way. But editing it for the Western reader being a condition of publication just feels wrong to me on so many levels. It’s possible, of course, that I’m completely misreading (quite literally) the situation. But never mind: it was absolutely one of the books I enjoyed most this year.

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Comment prompts are really not my thing, but like I said I’m a sucker both for lists and anything bookish. So if you want to tell me what’s stuck in your head most from your reading in 2022, I’d love to hear it; if you happened to write about it, please drop the link here, too!

I’ll see you here in 2023.