My 2022 in Reading
my top 10 favorite books and some memorable firsts
📚 Every Tiny Thought is where I share book reviews, the never-ending struggle of finding time to read and write, tiny joyous things, and finding home in America. If you accidentally stumbled upon it, welcome!
2022 was the year that I read the most ever: 41 books. It is by no means a large number, but I am proud of myself for surpassing my 2021 self. The goal is not to reach any final number, but to incorporate reading into my daily life. I think I have done that in 2022.
Here are 40 of the 41 books I read. That one book is written in Chinese and GoodReads does not have it. For those who read Chinese and are curious, it is 寻找失落的菠萝油 by 梁家權, a fun collection of essays on Hong Kong’s food and eating culture.
My Top 10
Inspired by the New York Times’s 10 Best Books of 2022, I looked back on the books I read in 2022 and made my own list.
When considering my favorite books, no complicated methodology was involved. I simply asked myself these questions:
Do I keep thinking about the book, the characters, the plot, and the stories long after moving on, to the extent that I must tell the world about it?
Has this book made a pretty significant impact on or challenged my perspectives on life, the world, and people who are different from me, more than the other books I have read this year?
Do the language and writing in the book feel more beautiful, moving, and touching than the other books I have read this year?
Here they are.
five fiction and five non-fiction, in no particular order.
The School for Good Mothers (2022) by Jessamine Chan
A debut of Jessamine Chan, The School for Good Mothers, tells a dystopian and wildly disturbing sci-fi-ish story about Frida Liu, a Chinese American single mother who goes through a year-long government-run program that teaches "bad mothers" to "be good", after accidentally leaving her infant at home alone. Frida goes through a series of parenting courses with impossible standards of tests and brain scans that measure her level of fitness, such as tenderness and love, to reclaim custody of her child. The standards are so high that you can only fail. The school might be exaggerated, but the impossible societal and institutional standard of what it means to be a good mother runs deep in our reality. This book is so explosive that it blew me away.
Arrival, originally published as Story of Your Life and Others in 2002 by Ted Chiang
Ted Chiang creates a world after another that goes beyond our wildest imagination and touches the deepest human emotions: a Babylon tower that connects heaven and earth; a serum that makes superhuman with a meta brain possible; an alien language that allows those who learn it to remember their future; angelic visitations that bring disasters to the human world; and a world where beauty standards can be removed by noninvasive surgery. Ted Chiang's tender novellas brought me into the world of sci-fi, but his stories are so much more than that.
A Good Country (2017) by Laleh Khadivi
Written by my supervisor at work, an Associate Dean who is also an MFA faculty at the University of San Francisco (where I work), this is the first book that I read where I actually know the author in real life. The story follows the daily life of a southern California Iranian American boy, Reza, who just wants to be like everyone else in school until his search for belonging turns too extreme. Khadivi skillfully captures the subtle psychological transformation of a gradually radicalized American teenage boy by taking the readers inside his heart and mind. A series of unharmful decisions adds up to everything. You can read my full review here:
Beasts of a Little Land (2021) by Juhea Kim
Beasts of a Little Land is an epic story about love, friendship, war, and redemption that spans half a century across the Korean Peninsula from the Japanese occupation to the Korean Independence Movement. The concept of "inyeon" (因緣) - the human thread that connects people in a preordained way - ties the many strong and memorable characters together throughout this saga. This book is beautiful, heartbreaking, and exquisitely written. It almost seemed impossible to create more than a dozen well-developed characters that are both independently well-rounded and interconnected with one another under a chaotic historic backdrop. But somehow Juhea Kim did it and did it spectacularly.
Never Let Me Go (2006) by Kazuo Ishiguro
A dystopian science fiction that confronts the hard questions about love, coming of age, and friendship in the face of dooming mortality. It deeply touched my heart in many unexpected ways. Ishiguro has the magic to take you to unimaginable places, both beautiful and horrifying. I read three books by Ishiguro in 2022. The other two are Klara and the Sun and Remains of the Day (see my mini review here) and all of them are heartbreakingly delicate. You can read my full review here:
The Hard Road Out (2022) by Jihyun Park and Seh-lynn Chai
The Hard Road Out is one woman’s harrowing escape from North Korea, not once, but twice. This riveting memoir recounts Jihyun Park’s humanly impossible journey out of North Korea over several years, experiencing slavery, rape, sexual assault, betrayal, and finally finding peace and freedom in the UK. Park’s immense courage and bravery in her search for freedom, dignity, and safety eventually lead her to the other side of the world, as many have taken before her, and many will take after her. It is the book that shook my world in 2022. You can read my full review here.
I received this book as an advanced reader copy in exchange for my honest review.
Both/And: A Life in Many Worlds (2021) by Huma Abedin
Huma Abedin, Hilary Clinton's long-term aid and chief of staff, tells her story of growing up in Saudi Arabia to a Pakistani Mother and an Indian father, working alongside Hilary Clinton, falling in love, becoming a mother, dealing with betrayal, and finally finding her footing again in the world after the 2016 election.
As someone who grew up in one country and now living in another, I always seek out strong female role models through reading memoirs, especially those with an immigrant background and those of the Asian diaspora. Over the last couple of years, having experienced life's ups and downs and now pushing 30, I made an effort to read stories of how someone navigates life's darkest moments; how they deal with loss and grief; how they seek out help from others, and how they persist despite it all. And this is one of those books that I will treasure for many years to come.
Stay True (2022) by Hua Hsu
If you’ve read my latest book review, you already know how much I loved this book. Stay True is one friend's grief over his best friend's passing. It is that and so much more than that. It’s about being young, coming of age, searching for belonging, love for music, grief, and being Asian American. It's a bay area and a California story that hits close to home (for me). As long as you have experienced an intense friendship, have ached over the passing of a loved one, or have questioned where you belong in the world, this book will touch you deeply, break your heart into pieces, and put it back together. Read my full review here:
Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence and Grief (2021) by Victoria Chang
Dear Memory is a collection of letters addressed to Chang’s late parents, grandparents, childhood friends, fellow poets, teachers, and even enemies. Chang also wrote poems alongside the old family photographs, immigration documents, and hand-written notes that she found while sorting through her parents’ belongings after their passing. The remembrances are Chang’s poetic attempt, as a daughter to immigrant parents and as a poet, to piece together her family’s past (from mainland China to Taiwan, then to America), the never-spoken generational trauma, the forever outsider, her father’s silence, and her internalized racism growing up Asian American in the midwest. Chang introduced me to the term “postmemory”, first used by Marianne Hirsch, which encapsulates the experiences of so many children of immigrants and those who were displaced.
“Postmemory” describes the relationship that the “generation after” bears to the personal, collective, and cultural trauma of those who came before-to experiences they “remember” only by means of the stories, images, and behaviors among which they grew up.
Unapologetically Ambitious (2022) by Shellye Archambeau
This book delivers exactly what the title says: unapologetically ambitious. You don't have to take every single piece of advice that Archambeau writes in this book, but her ambitious goals in life and her proactive life planning are so admirable and have a lot for us to learn from. My internalized notion of "what a woman's career could look like" was challenged by her over and over again.
Here are a few pieces of life and professional advice I am taking away from this book:
You don't make sacrifices. You make choices.
You can get all your want in life, but just not all of them at the same time.
Every major leap forward in your professional journey will put you at the bottom of your next learning curve, and that's totally normal and it's a good thing.
How can you get what you want if you don't tell the world (and everyone around you) what you want?!
The Short List
Fiction
The School for Good Mothers (2022) by Jessamine Chan
Arrival, originally published as Story of Your Life and Others in 2002 by Ted Chiang
A Good Country (2017) by Laleh Khadivi
Beasts of a Little Land (2021) by Juhea Kim
Never Let Me Go (2006) by Kazuo Ishiguro
Non-fiction
The Hard Road Out: One Woman’s Escape From North Korea (2022) by Jihyun Park and Seh-Lynn Chai
Both/And: A Life in Many Worlds (2021) by Huma Abedin
Stay True (2022) by Hua Hsu
Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence and Grief (2021) by Victoria Chang
Unapologetically Ambitious: Take Risks, Break Barriers, and Create Success on Your Own Terms (2022) by Shellye Archambeau
Some Memorable Firsts in Reading
My first NetGalley advanced reader copy (ARC) was approved, after finally racking up my book reviews on Instagram and GoodReads.
I wrote my first long-term review on Substack. I am excited about what’s to come this year.
I started reading Kazuo Ishiguro for the first time this year, and all three books I read are impressively beautiful.
I am reading English books faster now. As someone who learned to read and write English later in life, I am pretty happy about that.
Finally
For me, 2022 is a year of reading and writing more than ever, discovering beautiful stories, using public libraries to get (free) books, finding more strong female role models through books, and learning more about the world and myself.
What are some of your favorite books of 2022?
Love these recommendations! I also read Ted Chiang's short story collection this year and was blown away. Now I'm on a short story kick and I can't stop. Also, A Good Country sounds fascinating -- planning to read it ASAP!
Waaaawww! You've done well. I'm so proud of you. I'll bookmark this list to add some of these books on my TBR list for 2023.