Happy New Year!
I hope that this year brings you ideas, ethereal sights, great hair days, incredible meals, moments that are so stupid you laugh out loud, many instances of a small animal falling asleep on your lap, and of course - good books!
As I started looking back, I initially thought I didn’t read that much this year but it’s always difficult for me to be satisfied with how I spent time. I did read a lot of books - some were not good (I’ll never tell - jk, literally just ask unfortunately I love to gossip even about books) and some were so stunning, I was quite literally in awe. If you’ve been subscribing to this newsletter (thank you!), you’ll see some repeats. When I first started this, I thought it would be structured more as a round up of what I had just read. However, as it’s progressed it’s moved more into themes. So! Here are my best reads of 2022. I hope you find something you love.
Fiction:
The Town of Babylon - Alejandro Varela
This book is about a gay Latinx man who goes back to his hometown to help his parents and impulsively decides to go back to his high school reunion which leads to a reckoning with his past self, past desires and how they push up against the current. It’s also about class and assimilation and family systems - both bio and chosen. This book is extraordinarily intelligent and also very funny and goes very deep. If you like Elif Batuman (Elif hive rise), I bet you’d like this. Very gay, very very smart, very propulsive. Loved.
Aeshetica just came out and I feel like it’s deservedly everywhere. It follows a 35-year-old former Instagram influencer, Anna Wrey, who is about to undergo a new, life-threatening procedure called AESTHETICA that will reverse all plastic surgery. It’s told in alternating perspectives between 19 year old Anna and about-to-go-under-the-knife 35 year old Anna. It’s extremely absorbing - I finished it in a day. Read if you regularly think about the impacts of social media, the performativity of self, or beauty as capital. It’s also about Anna’s relationship with her mother and how friendships between young girls evolve - or don’t. The book launch apparently had “Young and Beautiful” by Lana Del Rey playing on a loop and Botox injections on site. I believe this is the first “influencer” book and it was very eerie!!
Also! This essay, Last of the Long Hot Days, by Allie Rowbottom was probably my favorite essay I read this year - I could not stop thinking about it. I really love her writing.
Our Wives Under the Sea - Julia Armfield
Oof, this book! When I finished this, I think I stared at a wall in silence for like an hour to recover. Julia Armfield’s writing is beautiful - lyrical and sharp and twisting. This novel is about a submarine trip gone wrong (or did it?). Told in alternating perspectives between the wife sitting at the bottom of the ocean in a submarine and the wife on land who has no idea what happened, this book is about longing, nostalgia and love with a haunting speculative element. Everyone I’ve gotten to read this book has loved it. I was emotionally destroyed. 11/10.
I also loved this essay, Guts, by Julia Armfield! Another favorite essay from this year.
Post-Traumatic - Chantal V. Johnson
Post-Traumatic centers on Vivian: an incredibly hyper-observant, funny, and smart narrator who is navigating the fallouts of a traumatic childhood and also the daily trauma of being a Black Latinx woman in New York. This book has such a pulsing energy and weaves in and out of darkness with a candidness and a lit joint. While this book (obviously) addresses trauma, it blends humor in a way I found really unique and compelling and I wanted to stay in Vivian’s head even when I was cringing at some of her behavior. Chantal V. Johnson’s writing feels like she’s multiple steps ahead of you the entire time but I’d follow it anywhere. If you liked Luster, or Town of Babylon, you’ll definitely enjoy this.
What Are You Going Through - Sigrid Nunez
I adore Sigrid Nunez. I’m currently reading Mitz which I’m loving - it’s the biography of Virginia and Leonard Woolf’s pet marmoset. (Mitz was also what I wanted to name my new dog who looks alarmingly like a marmoset but I didn’t win and now he’s George after Georgia O’Keefe. But anyway.) What Are You Going Through explores human connection, what we owe each other and the desire to be seen and heard. The novel culminates in the narrator’s terminally ill friend asking the narrator to help her die. This allows Nunez to ponder mortality, grief, aging, friendship and empathy. I think about this quote from it all the time:
"There are two kinds of people in the world: those who, upon seeing someone else suffering, think, That could happen to me, and those who think That will never happen to me. The first kind of people help us to endure; the second kind make life hell."
I don’t know why it took me so long to read this book, but it’s incredible. Nevada is very much queer canon, as it should be!! It follows Maria Griffiths, a trans woman living in Brooklyn post break up, post firing on a road trip out West with her now ex-girlfriend’s car that she… stole. It’s messy and funny and voice-y and incredibly smart. Torrey Peters, author of Detransition, Baby said this was extremely influential in her writing of Detransition, Baby (as well as Elena Ferrante.) It captures a particular kind of queer Brooklyn, what can be learned by transient moments all against the backdrop of a solo road trip.
This is a very eclectic novel that caused me to research the PhD program that Barbara Browning teaches at, lol. This was my first read of 2022 and it set the bar high. Barbara, the narrator, is interested in exploring art, performance, what it means to give a gift, intimacy, motherhood, the body, chronic illness… It also does this while maintaining a sense of sincerity and kindness. If you like Maggie Nelson or Chris Kraus, I’d recommend this very bisexual book which is confessional, bizarre, funny and fundamentally curious.
Nonfiction:
The Women’s House of Detention: Hugh Ryan
The Women’s House of Detention or “House of D” documents a “women’s” prison in Greenwich Village that’s largely forgotten from queer history. If you want to learn more about the history of New York City or the intersection of queerness and criminality, all told from an abolitionist lens, you need to read this. It’s rigorously researched and Hugh Ryan really brings the people who were impacted by this prison to life. It’s really remarkable and you’ll feel - and be - so much smarter after having read it.
Without Apology: The Abortion Struggle Now - Jenny Brown
Chaotically, I read most of this book aloud to my partner when we were driving home from a wedding in Savannah. Although it’s written from an extremely cis lens, it’s incredibly researched and taught me so much about the history of the fight for abortion, particularly in the United States. I have always been pro-abortion, but this book made me deepen my commitment to and understanding of why it’s so necessary. Somewhat relatedly, I also really recommend this essay The Right to Not Be Pregnant by Charlotte Shane and the podcast episode in which she discusses it. Charlotte Shane is a writer and thinker whose work I really admire and her essay and this podcast episode are both brilliant.
Having and Being Had - Eula Biss
I love Eula Biss - really recommend On Immunity: An Inoculation which goes into the history of vaccines which jump started my foray into learning … a LOT about vaccines, lol. My friends make fun of me for my new passion for immunology. Anyway!!! Having and Being Had reckons with life under capitalism, home ownership, making money and creating art simultaneously. Eula Biss is a poet - I love when poets write in other forms. Her writing is precise, curious, smart and palpably principled. I gave this to my aunt, an 83 year old lesbian who is also frequently thinking about capitalism (who isn’t?) and she loved it.
Poetry:
I didn’t read enough poetry this year! More poetry 2023! I did read this in one sitting, despite my mom’s Great Dane whom I was babysitting desperately wanting me to stop reading and pet him. I ended up reading this with one hand and petting him with the other. Limón’s poetry is spell-bindingly beautiful and true. My favorite poem in this collection is “Open Water” which makes me cry everytime.
Lastly, I also listened to and loved Fleishman is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner and Heavy: An American Memoir by Kiese Laymon on long walks and long drives and doing dishes. More audiobooks this year, too.
Self promotion feels weird but I published two essays this year - Sugar Coated about my queen Britney Spears’ sweet tooth and What Comes in the Night about a bat coming into my apartment.
In the very early morning hours of 2023 after a beautiful dinner (with a truly shockingly wonderful amount of dessert), the friends I was with went around and said what we wanted to leave behind in 2022 and bring into 2023. I want to leave doubt in 2022. I want to experience more art in 2023. An astrologer recently asked me what I was devoted to and I thought it was such a good question so I’ll bring it to you. What are you devoted to? What do you want to bring into the new year and leave behind in 2022?
I’ll leave you with this poem - one of my favorites, by Lucille Clifton
‘Til next time - happy reading!
Xo,
Ariél
essay pairings! lucky us