I love to read, and to talk about the books I read. So I created a home for all of my thoughts, feelings, musings, and unsolicited opinions about all things books.

It’s called curled up, with a good book.

Below are my reviews of the top ten books i read in 2022.

1. Trust — Hernan Diaz

the New York gilded age story has everything a great story should have - glamour, fame, scandal, artists, writers, mansions, all of it. being on the precipice of this new American innovation and promise sets the stage for these rags to riches stories in a way that’s full of intrigue, making them so easy to just gobble right up. at least for me.

Trust is set in this era, in this particular slice of time in New York City history, and this book (or should i say books, plural) surpassed all expectations i had for a gilded age story. the writing was incredible, sucking you into this glitzy world, but i am most in awe of the structure of the book. it was broken into four separate “books”, all written by different authors, but circling the same characters. the author was masterful in his ability to present the truth to the reader, to then introduce another perspective, promptly unraveling that truth and presenting you with a brand new one.

the man at the center of it all is Benjamin Rask, a Carnegie / Rockefeller / JP Morgan type of fellow who is born into privilege, but also possesses an uncanny level of genius when it comes to money, making him richer and richer by the day, even throughout the Great Depression. he marries a complicated woman who is immersed in the literary and art worlds. they live in the biggest mansion in the city, giving us two examples of lives with all the excess and wealth that we want to read about in a gilded age tale. but of course there’s so much more beneath this surface. the first book is a biography of sorts, written about Rask, and as you move through the rest, your understanding of this man, and woman, behind the biography grows and shifts and morphs in a fascinating way.

loved this quote in the NYTBR review: “trust: both a moral quality and a financial arrangement, as though virtue and money were synonymous.” this book is a captivating commentary on wealth and capitalism and its impacts on the state of those who have it, those who don’t, and the society that they must coexist in.

2. Vladimir — Julia May Jonas

Vladimir follows an unnamed main character, a woman in her late 50’s. her and her husband work at a small college in the northeast, and her husband has recently been me too’d. while she’s navigating this scandal and her place in it, a new, hot, young, intellectual, brooding, married professor comes to town and makes her feel some type of way. in an era where her students won’t stand for her husband’s behavior and demand she do the same, our main character finds it tricky to traverse as her and her husband had an “understanding”, aka she didn’t care to know, or care at all, about his extracurricular activities. she’s afraid to make a wrong turn, but also is confidently nonchalant about it all. she’s more interested in the spark that this new professor has ignited in her… pun intended if you’ve read the book ;)

i loved how she’d step away from the plot to observe: her own feelings, her husband’s lawsuit unfolding, the systems at play, her daughter, how things have changed and how they’ve stayed the same. among the most interesting of the musings to me: the way she saw this new generation, “people said this crop of youth was weak, but we knew differently. we knew they were so strong – so much stronger than us, and equipped with better weapons, more effective tactics. they brought us to our knees with their softness, their consistent demand for the consideration of their feelings – the way they could change all we thought would stay the same for the rest of our lives … they had changed all that when we hadn’t been able to, and our only defense was to call them soft. they had God and their friends and the internet on their side. and perhaps they would make a better world for themselves. their aim was not to break taboos, the way people born ten to twenty years before me, and, in a small way, my generation, had done. no, they worked in a subtler and stricter way.”

the writing was precise, the observations were cutting, the story was enthralling. if you’re down for scandal, intrigue, exhilaration, wrapped in an astute, clever, sharp narrative, read this book!

3. Cleopatra and Frankenstein — Coco Mellors

in my oh-so-humble opinion, Cleopatra and Frankenstein is everything a novel should be. impeccable writing, delicious description, complicated characters, a plot that swiftly yet gently moves us through time and space. i loved this book.

Cleo (like Cleopatra) and Frank (like Frankenstein) meet one fateful new years eve and off we go on the journey of their hastened, impassioned, intricate, tender fever dream of a relationship. this book is very New York City. the city is a living, breathing backdrop, subtly impacting the entire feel and flow of the story. Cleo is British, she’s beautiful. she’s an artist just scraping by. Frank is an advertising exec, and speaking as someone who works in advertising, is accurately and perfectly portrayed. they get married a mere few months after meeting, altering the trajectories of both of their lives forever. Frank is two decades older than Cleo, and you see the author bring this age difference to life in ways that are artful, clever, piercing, never cliche or expected.

i love how Mellors developed every single character. they were all far from perfect, but they were so fully formed. not to spoil, but if, hypothetically, Frank were to be romantically interested in someone outside the marriage, even that character would be fully realized. and that character might even contribute some of the smartest, quickest, laugh-out-loud moments throughout the whole book. the eclectic cast of characters ranges from a completely lost soul to a grounded voice of reason. it doesn’t feel like these characters just came to be for the sake of this book, it feels like they’ve been alive and we’re just now getting a chance to meet them. from beginning to end, Cleo and Frank are continuously exposed for their flaws – they’re scared of them, but they face them anyway.

this was definitely one of top reads of the year so far. do yourself a favor – get this book and lounge by the pool, at the beach, on your couch, inhaling the sweet, thorny, addictive story that is Cleopatra and Frankenstein.

4. The Crime Without A Name — Barrett Holmes Pitner

this book was absolutely mindblowing. i was lucky enough to hear the author speak at an event in my city and was doubly mind-blown. there are some people that just viscerally humble you with their intelligence, and Barrett Holmes Pitner is one of them.

“America is a muted society with a plethora of words.”

the (very dumbed-down-by-me) thesis of this book is that there is a fundamental lack of language around the destruction of Black culture and the impact that has had on Black people and our society as a whole. that destruction is the concept the book is based around – ethnocide. as genocide is the destruction of the people themselves, ethnocide doesn’t kill the people, but it kills their culture – their traditions, their heritage, their ancestry. the people are still living and breathing, but everything outside of that that makes a life, is stripped from them. this obviously goes back to slavery and Jim Crow, but its impact is so much broader. “ethnocide is foundationally parasitic, so the final solution is not extermination, but perpetual oppression.”

this story is told through the larger lens of our lack and misunderstanding of words to describe this reality. “we do not have the language for our unique american hypocrisy. the concept of ethnocide provides the beginning of the necessary language.” how are we to experience the world in context of one another if we don’t have the words to do it accurately?

“the destruction of culture is far less noticeable than the destruction of people, as the tragic impact of its destruction presents itself over years and generations, not in seconds and minutes like the destruction of bodies. the slow burn of ethnocide can allow people to believe in the legitimacy of an essence, a white essence, as society ignorantly waits for and lives within the catastrophic ramifications of an ethnocidal essence that will destroy its existence.”

what’s wild is this is just scratching the surface of all the knowledge that the author drops in this book. if you want to feel your mind grow, and thus become more empathetic and aware to the injustices and hypocrisies around you (which you should, especially white ppl), read this book.

5. The Book of Goose — Yiyun Li

there is something so fascinating and unnerving and captivating about books centered around deeply intertwined, semi-toxic young girl friendships. partly because i’ve experienced it myself, but also because it makes you realize how nuanced and slight, yet intense and world-altering the actions and comments and situations that make up those relationships are.

The Book of Goose is about Agnès and Fabienne, two girls that live in a small town in France where their models for what life can become are pretty ghastly, and their diabolical plot to write and publish a book. Fabienne —the ingenious alpha — tells stories to Agnès — the dutiful beta — and makes her write them down and take credit for them. they coerce the local mailman to submit these stories to a publisher and lo and behold, they’re a hit. the literary world loves them for their raw, on-the-ground account of rural france. Agnès is swept away to a fancy boarding school to nurture her success, which as you recall, is not hers to own and therein lies her biggest secret. Fabienne and Agnès write letters back and forth, providing us with a live view of the morphing of their relationship once they’re at a distance.

the writing in this book had me absolutely hooked. i finished it in a day because i truly couldn’t put it down, which is surprising because it certainly doesn’t fit the bill of what you’d expect from a page-turner. it somehow feels intense and indifferent at the same time. Fabienne's casual confidence rubbed off on the pages, imbuing the novel with this nonchalant, unphased air. the alpha-beta nature of their relationship, and how it evolved and unraveled as time went on, was absolutely gripping.

long story short — hell hath no fury like a teenage girl.

6. Invisible Child — Andrea Elliot

i’m realizing that i’ve never fully grasped the true power and enormity of investigative journalism, of reporting, of ethnography, until this book. Invisible Child is an expanded version of a story that the author did for the New York Times on a family – specifically a girl named Dasani within it – living in poverty and experiencing homelessness in New York City.

Dasani's story was told over 8 years, from her teen years of navigating the role as eldest-child-and-basically-mother to her seven siblings, to her young adult years learning how to be a functioning member of society after growing up in a largely traumatic, unjust environment. the book taps into the stories of Chanel and Supreme, Dasani's parents, and even further up in the lineage (a Buffalo Soldier in WWII). it’s set mainly in Brooklyn and Staten Island, but moves all about NYC (and the northeast at large) as is the case for a lot of homeless families – Dasani attended 8 schools by the time she was in 8th grade.

this story is told with such care and grace. the feat of telling this story at all is astounding, and the fact that the author was able to do it in a way that didn’t interfere with the lives of Dasani’s family, but did give complete context is just so unbelievably impressive.

the power of this book isn’t in the writing though, obviously. it’s in the fact that it highlights the very real reality that families like Dasani's live day in and day out. how the systems are so rigged against them and how the basic structures of society as we know it exclude them. this story is a textbook example of how the racism of yesterday and the lingering biases of today directly, literally, financially, professionally, the list goes on – impact the lives of Black and Brown families.

tragedies like the homeless crisis are hard to make sense of. there are the facts and figures – that over half of NYC residents live below the poverty line, that over 100,000 children in NYC were homeless at some point last year. and then there are the stories – the familial bonds and the personal connections in and around families like Dasani's. this book is so important because it will open your eyes to both.

7. The Trees — Percival Everett

the plot description i’m about to give will not make you think this is a hilarious, enjoyable read, but it absolutely is.

this book is based around a topic that has been burned into our history and the american psyche – the lynching of Emmett Till. it’s a fictional retelling that reimagines not the event itself, but its aftermath throughout the small Southern town.

years later, white people who were in some way associated with the murder of Till are found dead, along with the corpse of a Black man. this happens three different times, with the exact same Black man’s corpse everytime, and obviously starts to spark attention because of its freaky, mystical, unbelievable nature. this attention, of course, is something the corrupt local police department fears and attempts to avoid with all their might, but nonetheless results in an investigation by the Mississippi Bureau of investigation, shepherded by two Black detectives, Jim and Ed.

now like i said, all of that might sound like a depressing thriller murder mystery drama, and it is, but it is also one of, if not the, funniest books i’ve ever read. it takes the sad reality of corrupt law enforcement and our nation’s horrifying past of discrimination and race relations and spins it on its head in a masterful way.

we’re brought in on the joke that is these useless, ignorant men in charge of the town’s “safety” from the POV of the Black detectives that are entering this town for the first time, without ever losing the gravity of the situation and its deep, sinister history.

the dialogue had me cackling and the characters were painted in a way that allowed them to deliver their punchlines with perfect comedic timing.

this book was so insanely smart – read it!

8. Filthy Animals — Brandon Taylor

Filthy Animals is a story collection by a brilliant writer named Brandon Taylor. it’s so human. the collection gives us glimpses into the lives of several different people who are loosely connected in a variety of ways, one of my favorite literary devices. it’s everything i think a collection of stories should be.

there’s tension everywhere – the tension of shiny, new possibilities, the tension of old, storied relationships, the tension of situations both in and out of their control. the characters are shown as their flawed selves, navigating life just like the rest of us.

it’s messy, in the very best way. intentionality and spontaneity coexist on every page.

while reading this book, i was struck by the clarity and creativity of the writing. it left me feeling in complete awe of his words and also with this inspiring feeling making me want to write my own stories just like him – magnificent and approachable at the same time. it reads like it’s written by someone who is a natural talent, but also respects and works hard at his craft. i can’t wait to read every single thing Brandon Taylor ever writes.

9. Atlas of the Heart — Brené Brown

Brené Brown never misses. i haven’t read all of her books yet, but i have found that the ones i have read have found me at perfect times in my life. god, the universe, whatever you want to call it places Brené in my lap at the right place at the right time, when my mind – and my heart and soul – are welcoming new information about how to understand the experience of being a human and how to be a better, more self-aware one.

this book – with the accompanying HBOMax special – hinges upon the fact that as a collective society, we are wildly inadequate when it comes to accurately describing our emotions. her research for this one started when she found that the only emotions people are able to identify are happy, sad, and angry. but language – language!!! – is how we can experience life more fully.

“the limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” this quote by Ludwig Wittgenstein that she references in the beginning of the book had me immediately hooked. “language is our portal to meaning-making, connection, healing, learning, and self-awareness … language shows us that naming an experience doesn’t give the experience more power, it gives us more power of understanding and meaning.” say no more.

she goes on to explain 87 emotions that make up this we call life – what they are, what they aren’t, their relationships with one another. like everything Brené puts out into the world, it’s easy to understand and actionable, but so mind-expanding and life-changing. this (all of her stuff, really) should be required reading for everyone on planet earth!!!

10. Pure Colour — Sheila Heti

“the probability of any person being around is one in a trillion, so it’s almost a zero percent chance of you being here. but you’re going to have, you know, eight billion people, and those eight billion people have won the lottery. and the worst part is that nobody realizes that! they don’t realize what a rare opportunity they have to observe this universe, because here’s this amazing universe, and if humans hadn’t evolved to this stage, they wouldn’t know they were living in this beautiful place.”

it’s so exciting to read a book that explores ideas in ways you have or would literally never consider in your whole life. by people whose brains just operate on another plane than yours. it opens your eyes in ways you didn’t even know possible, and it expands your brain times a million. that’s what this book did for me.

the book itself is about a girl named Mira and the death of her father. there’s only one other character than those two, and very little actual plot if i’m thinking about it, but even so, it explores loss and desire and the impossibility of human nature in ways that are so compelling. throughout the book, she threads this idea about a “next draft of existence” — we’re currently in the first draft, she posits. where some might find doom and gloom in the idea of future drafts riding our coattails and living better lives than ours, Mira finds hope.

this book had so much enthusiasm and weirdly positive energy??? it’s twisted and existential and heady, but i was somehow left feeling inspired. whether it’s in the character or in the way Heti delivers it, likely a stunning combination of both, this reading experience is extremely fulfilling.

“are you sad to be living in the first draft —shoddily made, rushed, exuberant, malformed? no, you are proud to be strong enough to be living here now, one of god’s expendable soldiers in the first draft of the world. there is some pride in having been created to make a better world come. there is some pride in being the one who were made to be thrown out.”

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