I read 43 books last year, mostly literature. Many of them were recommended by Booktok. Top picks are below, and you can find the full list over at the index.

Literature

All Fours by Miranda July

Unhinged. Couldn’t put it down. The First Bad Man, an earlier novel by the same author was even wilder.

At five o’clock I have to consciously dial myself down before reentering the house, like astronaut Buzz Aldrin preparing to unload the dishwasher immediately after returning from the moon. Don’t talk about the moon, I remind myself. Ask everyone how their day was.

Western Lane by Chetna Maroo

Beautiful short book that says lot with very little. Follows a Gujarati family after the death of their mother, with protagonist 11 year-old Gopi training for a squash tournament and being raised by her father.

It was an awful evening, everyone on edge, and I didn’t know why and maybe no one else did either.

Saint Sebastian’s Abyss

Short satire about two art critics devoting their lives to a single work from an otherwise unknown painter. Funny and fresh.

The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

Incredibly written farce about a midwestern mother trying to get her family together for one last Christmas. Some brilliant long scenes (the “revenge dinner” stands out) and pitch-perfect characters.

Rejection by Tony Tulathimutte

An obscene, disgusting, squirming book that I cannot in good conscience recommend to anyone but was nevertheless brilliant.

Here finally Kant perceives the true rift between them: Julian doesn’t know the difference between embarrassment and shame. How shame soaks, stains, leaves a skidmark on everything and, when it has nothing to stick to, spreads until it does. Embarrassment is contained by incidents, gets funny and small over time; shame runs gangrene through the entire past, makes the future impossible. You can’t own it or laugh it off, only try to bail it out in sloshing bucketfuls, drenching yourself in the process. Embarrassment is an event, shame a condition, one that Julian has somehow either mastered or never experienced, which explains why he’s so easygoing, and why, to him, the world is so tractable, why all seems fixable with talk.

Fantasy

The Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson

I re-read the first three (originally read in 2018), then read the newest two Rhythm of War and Wind and Truth. Fantastic epic story-telling. Still five more books planned(!)

The Library At Mount Char by Scott Hawkins

Everything about this book is weird. I’m not sure it’s fantasy, but I don’t know what it is. It’s tough to orient in and I’m not even sure I want to read another like it, but it was so thoroughly different that I couldn’t put it down.

The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson

Smash two fantasy tropes together and add a fresh take on narrative, you get this book. Fun plot and dialogue.

Non-fiction

I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy

Wild autobiography, consumed it over two days. I didn’t know who this person was. Among other things, speaks frankly about her struggles with eating disorder.

Among The Thugs by Bill Buford

An American Journalist embeds himself in the Red Army (Manchester United supporters) to explore football violence and ends up right in the thick of it. Horrifying but also insightful, particularly on the nature of crowds.

Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino

A lot of my reading this year was recommended by her, so thought I’d read her own book too. Collection of essays on internet culture, feminism, religion and drugs. All strong.

In the seventies, researchers believed that MDMA treatment would be discrete and limited—that once you got the message, as they put it, you could hang up the phone. You would be better for having listened. You would be changed. They don’t say this about religion, but they should.