Book of the Year 2022

 I set out to read 15 specific books this year…I read a couple of extra ones and didn’t finish two that were on my list.  I don’t like giving up on books, but these were tough to get through.  I was determined to finish Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth, but (spoiler alert) after a bomb went off in a main character’s house and we learned about a ring of organized crime selling body parts for profit…and I was still bored, I finally gave up.  I think if you truly understand Nigerian politics and culture, there is some clever parody happening here, but I don’t.  Wole Soyinka has one more Nobel Prize than I do, so I guess he isn’t too upset about me giving up.  I also gave up on Sinclair Lewis’ It Can’t Happen Here.  Very clever, lots of parallels to the modern world, and just really hard to make it through.  I could only make it through about 3 pages at any one sitting.  I would totally watch a movie adaptation, so let me know if that comes out.

 

On to the good…

 

Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata is in the #10 spot.  Prior to this, most of my exposure to Japanese fiction was a couple of books by Haruki Murakami, who I really like, but is weird as hell.  This was also a little weird, but there weren’t any omnipotent talking sheep.  Our heroine has worked in a Tokyo convenience store forever, but is getting more pressure from friends and family to either get married or get a prestigious job…but the convenience store is the only place she has ever fit in.  I liked this a lot, quick read and an interesting scenario to explore conformity.

 

Prior to this year, I hadn’t read any Jonathan Lethem.  This year, two of his books make the list.  If you are judging books on their ambition and execution, Fortress of Solitude was probably the better of the two books and should be considered a really impressive accomplishment.  I, however, judge books on my experience and I liked this book, but I didn’t love it.  We follow Dylan through his upbringing in Brooklyn and watch how he and his friend Mingus deal with race, gentrification, absent mothers (hmm…that will be interesting later), weird fathers - who are both artistic in their own way, but only one of them snorts a mountain of coke throughout the book.  Mingus and Dylan are obsessed with comic books and graffiti and may or may not have superpowers at different points in the book.  There are some things about the modern literary fiction that I don’t like…I can’t really explain it well, but these books with dense text and super-specific digressions and references that explore disaffected young adults in our era kind of drive me crazy…and the last third of the book is about Dylan as a disaffected young…you see where I’m going with this.  Glad I read it, but I was also glad when I got to the last page.

 

Number 8 is Watchmen, the graphic novel.  I don’t read graphic novels.  It took me a little while to figure out some of the subtleties (like a different color scheme meant a flashback), but I had heard this was a great example of the anti-hero or unwanted hero and it didn’t disappoint.  Cool story, interesting characters, and a good read.  This book didn’t convert me on the genre, but I really enjoyed it.

 

The Spy and the Traitor grabbed the 7 spot.  This is the story about a Russian double agent who was working for the Brits and how he got sold out by a CIA agent who was working for the Russians.  Wild, wild true story from the cold war era.  The only non-fiction on the list.

 

Who Killed Palomino Molero is number 6.  We’ve got a murder in Peru, some corruption, questions about who is above the law, military vs. civilians, and most interestingly, super-flawed characters.  Our protagonist is a police office who isn’t very good at his job, but we still sympathize with him.  His boss is competent but also super creepy.  Super, super creepy.  I mean really, really, super creepy.  But he really cares about police work and solving this crime that no one else want to solve.  I found myself rooting for him on one page and cringing on the next. 

 

Colson Whitehead’s Harlem Shuffle is number 5.  I’ve read several of his books – I think my favorite is The Intuitionist, but this is probably second.  In this book, Ray just wants to run his successful furniture store…and maybe fence a couple of stolen items, but they just keep dragging him back in…I really enjoyed this one.  I can’t believe it is only #5.

 

Number 4 is In the Time of the Butterflies.  The Mirabel sisters opposed Trujillo in the Dominican Republic in the 1960s – their story is told as historical fiction.  Another spoiler alert…it doesn’t work out well.  Trujillo was an asshole beyond other dictators of the time, no easy feat.  His reign of terror is captured in this well-executed book.

 

Half of a Yellow Sun is number 3.  By the way, I’m planning to read happier books in 2023.  Number 4 was a downer and number 3 is too (and it isn’t like number 1 is fun and games either).  Here we have the story of Biafra, the short-lived country that arose during the Nigerian civil war.  I didn’t know a lot of this history (like a good ‘Merican I mind my own business and don’t pay attention to the rest of the world), but the premise here is that the Brits colonized Nigeria and put three groups of people together in one country and made sure they didn’t get along so they wouldn’t conspire to rise up against them.  The Brits leave and…surprise…everybody still doesn’t get along.  The Igbo group secede and form Biafra, which would be cool, except they have a bunch of oil, so the Nigerians aren’t OK with secession.  Sort of like if Texas was going to secede…except that you would probably let us go.  We follow a few characters as their lives go further and further downhill as they are forced to retreat into smaller and smaller territories and live on less and less.  Powerful book.  Not fun, though.

 

What is fun is Motherless Brooklyn.  We’re back to Jonathan Lethem in a book with some fundamentally flawed plot points, but a character who made me laugh out loud.  Lionel and his three friends are low-level criminals who work for their mentor Frank, until he is killed.  Lionel has Tourette’s which doesn’t help when you are trying to figure out who killed your boss, stay alive, and deal with the police who are also investigating.  Lionel’s tics lead to some comedic moments – and to be clear, I never felt like we were laughing at Lionel or feeling sorry for him – but when he is fixating on a joke about a string going into a bar, and shouting “I’m a frayed knot” at everyone in the hospital, or when he tries in vain to pronounce the symbol for Prince, it was some good comedy.  Loved this book.  The movie is good too, but for entirely different reasons…it fixes the plot problems and tells a better story, but Edward Norton is too busy trying to out-Keyser Soze Kevin Spacy (or really out-Verbal him) and doesn’t give us the Lionel that I really wanted.  But the book is awesome.  And that is why it is number 1.  Thanks for reading this list.  See you next year.

 

Wait…that’s only nine…

 

Unfortunately, Motherless Brooklyn cannot be number 1.  Not when there is a story about a single day surviving in a Russian prison in Siberia.  One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was way, way, way better than I expected.  I want to read some Russian literature, but I don’t want to commit to 954 pages…and so I picked this book.  Here’s what’s weird…in general, I just want a book to take me on a ride.  Tell me a story, make some things happen.  Like blow up a bomb in someone’s house.  I don’t want to be captivated by how much you value a piece of bread and all the steps you go through to hide it to save it for later.  But what the hell do I know about myself.  I loved this book.  Our hero has a great day in prison…he woke up feeling crappy and was punished for being late, but then he got to use his favorite trowel for manual labor, tricked the guards at lunch into giving his crew an extra portion, and sewed a small chunk of bread into his mattress for safe keeping.  Our hero is like Jason Bateman in Ozark, he just compartmentalizes, reframes, and keeps moving along while telling a compelling story about this one day of many in captivity.  I know…I was as surprised as you that this takes the top spot.

 

There you have it…One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is officially The Book of The Year