The Books of My Year

I really do not enjoy writing top ten lists — ranking art just runs against my nature, and people tend to misunderstand the point of lists anyhow, as if they’re designed to tell everyone else they’re wrong rather than give a window into one person’s taste, thoughts, and experiences. But it’s an occupational hazard, and I do my best with it, because I see the value (and I’m very happy with the movies list I published).

That said: if I don’t have to rank the art, I won’t. This year was pretty bruising and hard in the mental arena, and I also wasn’t teaching or writing a book, which means I read fewer overall than usual — about 30 in all, and mostly novels. So, instead of ranking them, I present them here, with small comments.

All Fours, Miranda July

Like every vaguely middle-aged woman who reads books, I also read this book this summer. I am generally interested in July’s work, even if I don’t always enjoy it. But this one felt more assured, and I plowed through my galley in a day. I did not always like it, but I admire it, and see why it became such a phenomenon.

Amanda Wakes Up, Alisyn Camerota

A very light read — I listened to it while painting the interiors of several closets in my apartment — that feels weirdly prescient about media moguls’ obsession with “bias meters” and the like, though not always in a good way.

Attention: A Personal History of Finding Focus, Casey Schwartz

Initially acquired in a big pile of books about the topic of attention, an ongoing research project as well as the theme of the class I’m teaching at NYU next semester. I really enjoyed this memoir, and only found out as I was finishing it that Casey was working on a piece in which my book is mentioned for the NYT Book Review. Serendipity!

The Coin, Yazmin Zuher

I picked this novel up off a book table at P&T Knitwear because I’d kept hearing about it. It’s exceptionally strange, capturing the strange feeling of those early pandemic days but in a voice that was unlike anything I’ve encountered.

Crush, Ada Calhoun

I loved Calhoun’s book Also a Poet, a beautifully complex and lyrical and deeply-researched memoir about her, her father (the late New Yorker critic Peter Schjeldahl), their complicated relationship, and also her father’s attempts to write a biography of Frank O’Hara. So I nabbed a galley of Crush and found it pretty wonderful. There are a lot of divorce / urban woman finding herself books floating around these days, but this one got something right about the dizzying emotional landscape we live in.

Didion and Babitz, Lili Anolik

I read this one for obvious reasons; there’s been a proliferation of Didion books lately, and of course my own is coming out soon. Happy to report this was different in virtually every way from my own book; you should buy both!

Disordered Attention: How We Look at Art and Performance Today, Claire Bishop

More research, but profoundly fascinating. It’s heady, it’s academic, but I love how Bishop is confronting and rethinking some of the things we take for granted about art, attention, and the digital landscape. Some of it has gone on my syllabus.

The Female Persuasion, Meg Wolitzer

Took me a while only because I bought it while in Toronto this fall and have only had time here and there to read it. But I really enjoyed it, in the end. An engaging story about women and feminism and activism, as they morph over generations, and also what it’s like to meet your heroes.

The Glow, Jessie Gaynor

I don’t even remember why I picked this up, but I found it light and enjoyable, especially since I read it while sitting at a sidewalk wine bar in Greenwich Village on a perfect late summer day. I mean.

Great Expectations, Vinson Cunningham

I know I’m not ranking, but if forced to pick this is my favorite book of the year. This is unfair to all, since Vinson is also a friend of mine and one of the most talented people on the planet. But I cannot, cannot, cannot recommend it enough: a novel about a young man hired somewhat haphazardly to work on the Obama campaign, and a very specific moment in American history.

Here in the Dark, Alexis Soloski

And if we are choosing the most purely pleasurable book I read, here it is — a murder mystery in which the narrator is a fairly bitter second-string critic at an alt-weekly, and her life is sort of falling apart. Suspense! Thrillers! Weird theater people! Alexis is also a friend (and colleague at the Times), but I would love this no matter what.

How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy, Jenny Odell

I had read piece of this before — it’s kind of a seminal text for a lot of people in my circles — but I read the whole things straight through and am assigning it. I have to say: it’s become only more convincing, and more vital, in the years since it was published.

I Have Some Questions for You, Rebecca Makkai

Listened to it on my runs this fall. I do love a good campus murder mystery novel; I think it felt a little too self-consciously topical, but it made for a good audiobook.

I’m Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself: One Woman’s Pursuit of Pleasures in Paris, Glynnis MacNicol

Light and delightful, a memoir of a month in Paris just post-pandemic and a search for everything delicious and sensual in life. I, of course, enjoyed it greatly.

Lo Fi, Liz Riggs

Liz (another friend! so many talented friends!) wrote one of my favorite types of novels — young woman, immersed in art, swirling life on the verge of something — and it’s so beautiful and fun and musical and rooted in her own Nashville life. Just a total blast.

Long Island Compromise, Taffy Brodesser-Akner

I mean, if you pay attention to books you already know this, but this is just such a terrific novel. It has been (correctly) compared to Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections, in structure and scope and, well, length, but Taffy (yet another friend) has done something wild and fantastic and it is so incredibly funny. And dark and hilarious and dirty and satirical and sincere and beautiful. She loves her characters. I love them too.

The Mother of All Things, Alexis Landau

Picked this up off a table at work. It’s engrossing, the story of a woman finding herself in the midst of real life and also maybe some supernatural mythical occurrences. I’m not sure it totally lands, but I liked reading it.

The Nickel Boys, Colson Whitehead

Read this ahead of seeing RaMell Ross’s adaptation (the best movie of the year, by my lights), and it is, in fact, a great novel. I’m also really glad I read it because it foregrounds how radical and wise the adaptation to cinema is.

The Paris Novel, Ruth Reichl

Obviously if Ruth Reichl, the great food writer and critic, writes a novel, then you read it. This felt surprisingly more like a midcentury novel than I expected — plotted, with little turns and musings — and it was a perfect bathtub read.

The Plot and The Sequel, Jean Hanff Korelitz

Downloaded The Plot audiobook on my way to a 10-mile race this fall, thanks to a recommendation on the NYT Book Review podcast I was listening to, and it was so engrossing and hilarious that I barely noticed the miles tick by. When I finished I immediately downloaded The Sequel, which came out this year. I don’t want to spoil any of it, but they’re suspense, they’re thrillers, and they’re also books about writers being annoyed with writers, which is totally my jam. I loved them both so much.

Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock, Jenny Odell

Another research read; I don’t love this one as much as How to Do Nothing, but it is worth reading regardless, especially if the title appeals to you.

Scenes of Attention: Essays on Mind, Time, and the Senses, D. Graham Burnett

More research; this one is an anthology, so the writing is kind of all over the place, but there’s a lot of good stuff in here.

Slow Art: The Experience of Looking, Sacred Images to James Turrell, Arden Reed

Picked this up on a trip to Dia:Beacon this summer and found it pretty remarkable, a well-informed and well-written look at a particular kind of art and the way we experience it.

Splinters, Leslie Jamison

Another buzzy book from this year. I often love Leslie’s writing but I hesitated over this one because the topics (motherhood, divorce, pandemic) didn’t appeal, life is short, etc. But actually: it’s great. I loved it. There’s so much compassion and honesty in it, and I felt seen, oddly enough.

The Talented Mr. Ripley, Patricia Highsmith

Read for research (for this piece), and I mean, it’s Highsmith. She never misses.

The Towers of Trebizond, Rose Macaulay

This one was chosen by my friend Lauren for us to read, and then call and chat about. What a weird little book. I liked it, for the most part, but it was not even a bit what I was expecting — and that is what you should want from a book, I think.

Two-Step Devil, Jamie Quatro

So this is just a banger of a novel, virtuosic, gorgeous, continually surprising. My friend Jamie weaves texture and language like nobody else, and the ending had me gasping on the subway. Read it read it read it.

The Uptown Local: Joy, Death, and Joan Didion: A Memoir, Cory Leadbetter

My first review for the NYT Book Review!

What Are You Going Through, Sigrid Nunez

So this is a funny one. I picked it up because I was reviewing Pedro Almodovar’s new film The Room Next Door, which is based on this novel (semi-loosely). Halfway through I realized I’d read it before but didn’t remember it at all. Does that mean it’s good? Or not good? I can’t say. It’s really moving, and I’m glad I (re-)read it.

I’m reading a few books right now — a novel by Dawn Powell, a Hollywood biography, and an audiobook of (of course) Sally Rooney’s Intermezzo, so there’s a good chance I’ll finish a few more before the end of the year. But looking back over this, I’ve had a pretty good reading year. I hope you have too.