Reading about 2022 in Review

Somehow, I haven’t done a reading review since 2019 but I’m trying to motivate out of the pandemic induced malaise and post more on TWBE; so here you go.

In 2022 I read 67 books and about 20,000 pages. That’s up from the 62 I read and posted about in 2019, and down from the 81 and 84 I read in 2020 and 2021, respectively. I don’t know if I’m reading faster or more or reading smaller books. I definitely am staying home more since the pandemic, so that’s probably the biggest factor. The lockdown period definitely had an effect! And while this year’s list is only padded with one graphic novel, there are definitely some shorter prose and poetry works in the list.

This being a fine press blog, I’ll cover that first in case some of you are only interested in that. Reading fine press has definitely slowed down since life and earnings dictated that I reduce the number of books I purchase. But still fine and private press books made up 9% of my reading. The gem of the bunch was Mad Parrot Press edition of The Wind in the Willows. I love that book so much, mostly due to childhood nostalgia. Then there was the Prototype Press Consider the Oyster, the Arion Press Animal Farm, the Salvage Press The Works of Master Poldy, the No Reply Press Enuma Elis, and the Larkspur Press A Rainbow. Most of them have been reviewed in detail here and the links provided where applicable.

Those who read my blog or know me are aware I’m on the road to correct a life-long reading bias towards white male writers. My fine press reading of Kenneth Grahame, George Orwell, James Joyce, and Wendell Berry didn’t do anything for that goal but at least there was a woman in there with M. F. K. Fisher. And I expect the author of Enuma Elis, if you can consider a work like that to have an author, would be a person of color. So there’s that. I even tried to correct the overwhelming and statistically ridiculous number of fine/private press books published in the White Male Canon by being a member of the newly formed Consensus Press. It didn’t work. The works submitted by membership were primarily white men and indeed the first book to be published will be by, well, you guessed it. Don’t get me wrong. I love a lot of those editions and some of those writers. I’ve got yet another edition of Ulysses coming hopefully this year from Thornwillow Press. I just want more balance in the world (where I have little power) and in my reading (where I have a lot of power).

So let’s look at the rest of my reading!

It was a banner year for what I refer to as “Read Wide Firsts,” which are when I read a first book from a new original language, culture, community, or group. There were 13 of these making up 19% of my reading. That included 8 new original languages, mostly from the near east: Akkadian, Dari, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Urdu, and Welsh. Other firsts were reading Lipan Apache, Blackfoot, Samoan, and Kirgistani writers, the first three writing in English as a Second Language and the last in Russian as a Second Language.

And speaking of language, 52% of my reading were works translated into English, while another 13% were written in English by writers for whom English was not their first or primary language. Leaving just 34% of my reading by native English speakers/writers.

Here are a couple of  charts showing the breakdown of languages for the books in translation and for all the books read:

White male writers made up only 25% of my reading this year, including those fine press titles mentioned above, of course. For the other books, women writers made up 36% and LGBQTIA+ writers 7%.

As far as reading as widely throughout the world as I can when only really being able to read books in English, I’m doing quite well. Here’s a map of my reading with pins identifying the author’s origin or place of residence, whichever seemed to make the most sense. Green pins are books I’ve read and pink pins are on my TBR pile. Note that this includes books from previous years as well, ever since I started using this particular mapping app.

The five standout books I read, in no particular order, were The House of Rust by Khadija Abdalla Bajaber, Congo Inc.: Bismarck’s Testament by In Koli Jean Bofane, The Doctor and the Saint by Arundhati Roy, The Radiance of the King by Camara Laye, and The Day Lasts More than a Hundred Years by Chingiz Aitmatov. The House of Rust is a wonderful debut novel of magical realism by a female Hadrami writer from Mombasa. Congolese writer Bofane’s novel follows a tech savvy Ekonda (known often pejoratively as Pygmies) protagonist from the jungle of his village to the jungle of Kinshasa and the ravages of globalization and exploitation. The Arundhati Roy book was the only non-fiction book in the top five and introduced me to the “untouchable” Ambedkar and really lowered my opinion of Gandhi. I’ve loved all I’ve read of Roy’s novels and other works. In The Radiance of the King, Guinean writer Laye turns the tables in a way that exploits the dim-witted white protagonist who thought he would make his fortune in Africa. Finally, the Aitmatov book blended a look at the life of an endearing man (and camel) on the Central Asian steppes of the (then) U.S.S.R. with some science fiction about our first contact with extra-terrestrials, as well as insight into how the U.S. was perceived from the Soviet perspective.

And for those interested, my complete reading list is below. There is a lot of comfort reads and re-reads in there because, well, you know, it’s been a tough start to the infectious ’20s.

Title	Author
A Place in Time: Twenty Stories of the Port William Membership	Berry, Wendell
The Wind in the Willows	Grahame, Kenneth
Not One Day	Garréta, Anne
The Memory of Old Jack	Berry, Wendell
Almanac of the Dead	Silko, Leslie Marmon
The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Confession	Tolstoy, Leo
The Journey to the West, Revised Edition, Volume 3	Yu, Anthony C.
The Yoga Sutras of Patañjali	al-Bīrūnī, Abū Rayḥān
Not without laughter	Hughes, Langston
SFSX, Volume 2: Terms of Service	Horn, Tina
Elatsoe	Little Badger, Darcie
The Last Nomad: Coming of Age in the Somali Desert	Salh, Shugri Said
The Sailor on the Seas of Fate	Moorcock, Michael
The Sleeping Sorceress	Moorcock, Michael
Hawkmoon	Moorcock, Michael
The Blue Book of Nebo	Ros, Manon Steffan
The Day Lasts More than a Hundred Years	Aitmatov, Chingiz
Where We Once Belonged	Figiel, Sia
The Works of Master Poldy	Joyce, James
Sphinx	Garréta, Anne
The Journey to the West, Revised Edition, Volume 4	Yu, Anthony C.
Count Brass	Moorcock, Michael
Requiem for a Lost Empire	Makine, Andreï
Animal Farm	Orwell, George
Ursula K. Le Guin: The Hainish Novels and Stories	Guin, Ursula K. Le
Brief Loves That Live Forever: A Novel	Makine, Andreï
Ploughshares into Swords	Vančura, Vladislav
All About Love: New Visions	hooks, bell
Azadi: Freedom. Fascism. Fiction.	Roy, Arundhati
The Adventures and Misadventures of the Extraordinary and Admirable Joan Orpí, Conquistador and Founder of New Catalonia	Besora, Max
The Radiance of the King	Laye, Camara
Tower of Dawn	Maas, Sarah J.
A System So Magnificent It Is Blinding	Svensson, Amanda
The Poor Christ of Bomba	Beti, Mongo
Ghachar Ghochar: A Novel	Shanbhag, Vivek
Silence of the Chagos: A Novel	Patel, Shenaz
The Dog of Tithwal	Manto, Sadaat Hasan
The Tears of a Man Flow Inward: Growing Up in the Civil War in Burundi	Irankunda, Pacifique
My Soul Twin	Haratischvili, Nino
The Doctor and the Saint: Caste, Race, and Annihilation of Caste, the Debate Between B.R. Ambedkar and M.K. Gandhi	Roy, Arundhati
The Miraculous True History of Nomi Ali	Khan, Uzma Aslam
Beyond the Rice Fields	Naivo
Anandi Gopal	Joshi, S. J.
Kingdom of Ash	Maas, Sarah J.
Hangwoman	Meera, K. R.
Earth and Ashes	Rahimi, Atiq
The Missing Piece Meets the Big O	Silverstein, Shel
A Thousand Rooms of Dream and Fear: A Novel	Rahimi, Atiq
The Missing Piece	Silverstein, Shel
My Three Dads: Patriarchy on the Great Plains	Crispin, Jessa
The Tale of the Missing Man: A Novel	Ahtesham, Manzoor
Thank You for Not Reading	Ugresic, Dubravka
The Satanic Verses	Rushdie, Salman
Winter in the Blood	Welch, James
A Rainbow	Berry, Wendell
Seven Serpents and Seven Moons	Aguilera-Malta, Demetrio
The Book of Rumi: 105 Stories and Fables that Illumine, Delight, and Inform	Rumi
…y no se lo tragó la tierra / …And the Earth Did Not Devour Him	Rivera, Tomás
Congo Inc.: Bismarck’s Testament	Bofane, In Koli Jean
Mothers Don’t (Spanish Literature Series)	Agirre, Katixa
A Passage to India	Forster, E. M.
Leg Over Leg, Vol. 1	al-Shidyaq, Ahmad Faris
Leg Over Leg, Vol. 2	al-Shidyaq, Ahmad Faris
The House of Rust: A Novel	Bajaber, Khadija Abdalla
The Liquid Land	Edelbauer, Raphaela
Enūma Eliš	Anonymous
Consider the Oyster	Fisher, M.F.K.
Total Books:	67