Happy January!
Like the good Capricorn I am, January is my time to shine. One of my favorite parts is looking back on all the books I read over the previous year and setting goals for my next 12 months of reading.
In 2022 I read 43 books. Today, I’ll be wrapping that up by sharing my top 6 reads of the year. This list contains only books I read for the first time in 2022 and gave five stars. As my roommate will promise, I’m pretty picky about which titles I give five stars, so I feel confident in recommending each of these.
In no particular order and free of any spoilers, here they are:
Call Me By Your Name, André Aciman
I picked this up while I was in an independent bookstore in Washington D.C. and read it on the plane ride home. I’ve watched the movie countless times– it’s one of my favorites– and I’m glad I finally gave the book a chance. Beautiful prose, beautiful characters, and a beautiful story.
Invitation to a Beheading, Vladimir Nabokov
I took a class on Nabokov this past semester, and while I’d already read and loved Lolita, Invitation to a Beheading was by far my favorite (new) book I read for the class. It’s speculative fiction, set in a world where everyone is transparent, and the main character is under arrest for not being see-through.
Anxious People, Fredrik Backman
A lot of people praise this book and for good reason. I was given it as a 20th birthday gift last year, and I read it over the summer. It manages to be both light-hearted and fun while deeply introspective and hollowing.
The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt
Tartt’s novel The Secret History gets a lot of love from the internet, but The Goldfinch is her real masterpiece (See: Pulitzer Prize). It’s witty and intellectual and has that pretentious element that Tartt does so well, but I found the story to be just so much more enticing than History. If you’re not to scared of an 800-page book, please give this a read. It’ll stick with you forever.
Symposium, Plato
Another book that was assigned for class, Symposium surprised me. I read it for one of my classical humanities courses (Sex and Power in Ancient Greece and Rome) and it quickly got five stars from me. If you’re familiar with Aristophanes’ theory of love (see graphic) than you’re familiar with some of the contents of this book.
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, Suzanne Collins
The last book of this list but the first book I read in 2022, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes was a surprise five-star read. I wasn’t the biggest fan of The Hunger Games Trilogy when I was younger, so I wasn’t as jazzed about this release as some other might have been. In fact, it sat in my TBR for quite some time before I decided to crack it open. Once I did, though, I was shocked by how thought-provoking and entertaining it was. It’s definitely an intense book, and its use of an anti-hero as the protagonist is at times difficult to grapple with as the reader (you’re pushed to sympathize with him at times). It’s a psychologically thrilling and horrifying read.
