Once again, here is my book roundup for 2022 (this is 2021’s list).
I finished my Goodreads challenge, 100 books of romance novels and nonfiction books (no other genres), and here are some of my favorites.
From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers by Marina Warner: I’m a big fairy tale aficionado (it comes with the “being raised like a princess” territory) so I really liked this book. It actually kind of inspired this piece I wrote about “Bluebeard” a few months ago, and I have a lot of thoughts about fairy tales, and gossip of course, being tools of the marginalized in carving out space in the narrative of the privileged.
Tyrant: Shakespeare in Politics by Stephen Greenblatt: This is a very @ Trump quote, isn’t it? “When an autocratic, paranoid, narcissistic ruler sits down with a civil servant and asks for his loyalty, the state is in danger.” I’m a huge King Lear stan, and I really find it fascinating how Lear, like Othello, like Titus Andronicus, is brought down by his own hubris and his adherence to social constructs of masculinity, and his daughter, Cordelia, ends up offering him salvation. Then again, I’ve wanted to name my firstborn daughter Cordelia since I was like 8, so I guess I’m biased.
The Heroine with 1001 Faces by Maria Tatar: I think that there’s a real disdain for women seeking out information that is being hidden from them, so I naturally loved this part. My brand of rational skepticism is apparently male-coded, who’d have ever thought?
Political Fictions by Joan Didion: The thing about Joan Didion is that she’s emminently practical and down-to-earth despite her ostensible ethereality, which I respect as someone who’s the same way. In this book, there’s an essay called “Clinton Agonistes,” in which Didion writes, “Nothing that is now known about the forty-second president of the United States, in other words, was not known before the New Hampshire primary in 1992,” which I happen to think is 100% true, not that a lot of this country is willing to admit it.
The Perils of Privilege by Phoebe Maltz-Bovy: Phoebe and I are Twitter mutuals and I really like her work. She’s a very precise writer, and I by and large agree with her statements on various sociocultural issues. This part about white women (and this companion piece featuring a picture of Hillary Clinton) is very salient to this day!
Mantel Pieces by Hilary Mantel: I am really bummed out Hilary Mantel died this year, may she rest forever in peace. She’s one of the few Catholics I unequivocally like, and she compared the British royal family to panda bears, which is always an amusing metaphor. And, “When death is dealt out so randomly, the notion of cause and effect is lost,” will live rent free in my head forever.
12 Bytes: How We Got Here. Where We Might Go Next by Jeanette Winterson: I’m a big proponent of the relationship between technology and sociology and as we all know, “Would you choose that? What if dying is a choice?” is a question that lives rent free in my head.
The Soul of America by Jon Meacham: Meacham is really good, there’s no real way around saying it. He wrote Nancy Pelosi’s final speech as Speaker of the House, and I profoundly respect his optimism in the face of so much opposition. This is truly beautiful prose.
One wishes for a better outcome, for wiser heads, for a more compassionate public. Yet one wishes in vain. The only comfort, if we can call it that, is that a knowledge of our past failings may equip us to confront evil without delay when evil comes again. For it will.