In 2022 I read 17 books.

As usual I didn’t read much fiction at all. Toni Morrison’s A Mercy, though, turned out to be one of my favorite novels of all time. As soon as I finished it I began thinking about reading it again. I don’t feel like I did justice to Arthur’s Whims by Hervé Guibert and translated by Daniel Lupo because I read it so distractedly, but it’s a story I think about often. In some ways, I consider it a meditation on grief.

Another book (perhaps slightly more) explicitly on grief is Nick Blackburn’s The Reactor. Apart from that, I’m not sure I can better describe the kind of book it is. Thrilling, technical, sensitive, a balm—but mostly a book I’ll never quite get over. A nonpareil triumph of writing.

As for poetry, Miguel Murphy’s Shoreditch is a sumptuous feast. Everything he writes is both erudite and sexy. What even is poetry for if not to make you horny and smart?

Liz Prato’s Kids in America thankfully took Gen X to task in an interesting and thoughtful manner. It’s always refreshing to get a critical, insightful, and knowledgeable reflection on the generation that still too often gets overlooked if not simply ignored. My only slight criticism would be that I would’ve preferred more class consciousness, but maybe that book of Gen X essays will have to wait for me to write it.

And then there was all that philosophy (most of which this year came in the form of essays, articles, and book excerpts and not of books proper). It’s what I read mostly. Old habits blah blah blah. I won’t bore anyone by writing about that here. But if you’d like to study philosophy with me, then I’ll begin another session in March. This session’s topic: Michel Foucault.