2022: Year in Review

Another year where I'm pleased with my reading! I completed 36 books, though I didn't write about most of them. In the fall, I began a self-directed "independent study" on Kentucky writers. I've taught in the state for over a a decade, and yet I know little about the area's literature or history. Since my students live close to Cincinnati, they're in many ways Cincinnati suburbanites, but there are still many historically "Kentucky" elements that shape their identities, whether its the preponderance of fishermen and hunters or a rural conservatism. I suppose my entre into Kentucky writing is meant to probe the area and my students' lives, coming to some sort of better understanding of both. I'm also hoping, eventually, to translate my readings into some sort of unit for my students. 

Fortunately I began my Kentucky exploration with Wendall Berry's fantastic The World-Ending Fire, much of which I listened to via Nick Offerman's appropriately plainspoken audiobook narration. I followed with novels, short stories, essays, and poems. Some day I'll put it all together. I did mark the Kentucky authors below (eight altogether). 

I found Cloud Cuckoo Land immensely enjoyable. I also really liked Nightbitch, which captures a mother's identity after the birth of a child (though I could empathize with the narrator, I was also able to feel a bit smug now that I'm past the intensity of the baby/toddler years). Other good contenders: The Right to Sex (I need to read more essay collections), Groundskeeping (another KY writer!), Lost Daughter (love the film).

1. Afterparties by Anthony Veasna So
2. Problems by Jade Sharma
3. The Natural Man by Ed McClanahan [KY]
4. The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
5. The Right to Sex by Amia Srinivasan
6. Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr
7. Intimacies by Katie Kitamura
8. Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
9. Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger
10. Mouth to Mouth by Antoine Wilson
11. Passing by Nella Larsen
12. Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
13. Love and Other Thought Experiments by Sophie Ward
14. The Life of the Mind by Christine Smallwood
15. Groundskeeping by Lee Cole [KY]
16. The Candy House by Jennifer Egan
17. The Idiot by Elif Batuman
18. In Persuasion Nation by George Saunders
19. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
20. Lost Daughter by Elena Ferrante
21. The Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead
22. All My Rage by Sabaa Tahir
23. The Copenhagen Trilogy by Tove Ditlevsen
24. Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder
25. Matrix by Lauren Groff
26. World-Ending Fire by Wendell Berry [KY]
27. Midnight Magic by Bobbie Ann Mason [KY]
28. Think Like a Freak by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner
29. The Birds of Opulence by Crystal Wilkinson [KY]
30. Kentucky Straight by Chris Offut [KY]
31. Liberation Day by George Saunders
32. The Hurting Kind by Ada Limon [KY]
33. The Truth about White Lies by Olivia A. Cole [KY]
34. Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout
35. Constructing a Nervous System by Margo Jefferson
36. Bad Blood by John Carreyrou

Other stats: fifteen male writers, twenty-one female; ten books by writers of color. Five short story collections, five nonfiction. Six books published before 2000. Welcome 2023.