2022, in books

2022 has been a great year for reading - 80 books. 😃

2022 was also a busier year as compared to 2021. I started making and selling pots by Jan and sometime in April-May, we launched our brand, Vemu Ceramics. Apart from selling pots on per-order basis, I was also putting in time to develop my craft and create prototypes for new designs. It was both exciting and time-consuming, to be having a full-time job and investing ~20+ hrs per week on this hobby, both of which I loved doing. I had fun with all of it, so I guess it was okay that I put hiking, my other PNW interest, on a slight back burner in 2022 😊. Also, in late 2022, we moved back to India. As expected, an international move takes away quite some bandwidth for planning and executing, and that took some toll on our non-work lives. Maybe prompted by this upcoming move, I felt separation pangs that I wouldn't be able to checkout physical books from my local library (which is also one of my favorite places, ever 😊), I read in a frenzy for a few months in 2022, which helped me reach the final number of 80 😃

Now, here's the list of books that have stood out from my reading in 2022, sorted based on Date Read. As you will see, this is spread across genres - non-fiction, memoirs, fiction, history and geography based - this also reflects my reading in 2022 -

1. Revolutionary Ride by Lois Pryce - I was struck by the origin story for this book, at how romantic it was, and I was drawn to it by the subject - a woman riding her motorcycle across the world and writing about it and I stuck to it because it was Iran. It was also timely as I was reading this book as the current protests started in Iran.

2. Sweet Sweet Revenge Ltd by Jonas Jonasson - I always enjoy Jonasson's storytelling coz it cracks me up. This is my kind of humor, one level deep and yet dry. This book has it all - revenge, delightful coincidences, art history and humor. Must read for good laughs.

3. Under the Whispering Door by TJ Klune - I love Klune's books for how well he does representation and talks about his protagonists' feelings. This was an enjoyable read.

4. I will die in a foreign land by Kalani Pickhart - Another timely book I read as my heart was breaking at the atrocities committed in the war on Ukraine, this book was beautiful and evoked deep nostalgia for home.

5. Life after life by Kate Atkinson - This is my first Atkinson and I loved her storytelling and narration and premise of this book. I like this sub-genre in fiction, and when it is well-written, it can make one think on how to live the one life we have well and reflect on our mistakes, if any. This is a good & easy read.

6. The hidden history of Burma by Thant Myint-U - A few years ago, we canceled a trip to Bagan because of the Rohingya crisis and like the rest of the world, I'd been reading a lot about it. I needed to read any book based on Burma and this was it. I have my misgivings about this author's tone and narration in a few places, but he does a good job laying out the past and present of Burma, its colonial past, the military dictatorships, the effect of sanctions on the common man etc. I still don't have a good idea on how any of her neighbors can help Burma beyond financial aid, but I am still glad I read this book.

7. Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese - Although this is fiction, I learnt about the Ethiopian social structure from this book. Verghese's prose is glorious, and he made me feel strongly for all the protagonists in this book. Definitely a highlight of my reading in 2022.

8. The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz - For someone who grew up reading Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, this book was a treat. I felt like it was like the original and the book held true to the original Mr.Holmes and Watson.

9. Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez - One of my favorite authors, Kate Harris, recommended this book to me (yes, I slid into her DMs! 😃), and I obviously had to pick it up. And boy, am I glad I read this illuminating book - I had so much joy reading about Narwhals, Musk Oxen, Polar Bears and got to ruminate about the British whale hunting in the Nordic regions, extinction of animals in the Arctic circle, how distant the perception of time is at the Equator and at the Poles - and all in brilliant prose! This one is a must read.

10. Birds without wings by Louis de Bernieres - Fiction based on real world events is one of my favorite genres, and this book fit the bill. Bernieres's prose got me hooked from the first page and the account of transformation of the social fabric in a small village in Turkey against the backdrop of WW I and how the hatred among harmonious groups began kept me going.

11. This Place : 150 Years Retold - In a graphic novel format, this book tells the account of how indigenous lives were uprooted post Contact and how they survived. This is a must read for anyone interested in modern history, especially Canadian.

12. The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengestu - Another fiction based on historic events, this book induced deep nostalgia for home, gratefulness for the privilege to return home and a hauntingly lonely feeling. In his simple prose, Mengestu takes us through the events in Ethiopia two decades ago via Sepha, the protagonist. Stroking a very broad brush here, I felt this is a great introduction to someone who is interested in reading modern fiction based on countries in Africa.

13. Barefoot Gen by Keiji Nakazawa - This book is trigger warning on many issues, and the first A-bomb was dropped ~80 years ago, but I believe this story needs to be read because Nakazawa is a Hiroshima survivor and details how the society was, in Japan, back then. Though it is not news to anyone, man’s cruelty towards another man is appalling and that comes through in this series. I could only get to three books in this series before I gave up, but I'd still recommend this series, at least the first book.

14. Gravel Heart by Abdulrazak Gurnah - Through Salim, Gurnah tells a coming-of-age and into-adulthood story of a simple boy from Zanzibar to London. I loved how Gurnah casually slips the various facets of colonialism - at how the textbooks paint an English summer but those in the colonies don't really have the same summers, return-to-home-from-London stories of Salim's grandfathers or civil wars at the wake of independence - all of which I could relate to as an Indian. One of the few times I actually enjoyed fiction by a Nobel Prize winner.

15. Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi - I started the year with this series and it took me to deeper subject, 'what would I change if I went back in time', all while telling a simple set of interconnected stories. This book reiterates the fact that we must focus on The Now. This felt a lot like The Eternal Sunshine on the Spotless Mind.

As before, in 2022, I had a goal of reading books by authors from a non-English background, and I did good on this - 27 books. As it is reflected from the above list, there is a lot to be learnt about the language, geography, history and the social structure of the region by reading stories told originally not in English, and this held true in 2022 as well and so I'll carry this goal in 2023 as well.

I'd stopped buying books ever since we moved to Redmond because KCLS was awesome in its spread. I suspect this might change in India. But then, it is always a warm feeling being surrounded by books, and I've always wanted that, so I guess that's what I'll do - getting floor to ceiling bookshelves and filling them up 😊

At the moment, am reading multiple books - The Incarnations by Susan Barker, This is not Propaganda by Peter Pomerantsev, Product-led growth by Wes Bush and Lenin's Tomb by David Remnick (yes, I didn't finish this in 2022 coz I spend too much time reading up on all the names mentioned in this book). Then I'll move to the stacks of unread books across the house.