Expectation: A gory, nature-themed horror/fantasy centered around a fictional upstate New York urban legend.
Reality: An incredibly boring mishmash of genre tropes that overshadowed the few thrilling scenes and a likable main character.
Movies (And Other Things) – Shea Serrano with Arturo Torres
Packed with laugh out loud funny observations and hypothetical questions no one thought to ask about some of cinema’s most beloved (and obscure) movies from the past 40 years, “Movies” is the perfect coffee table book for the Millennial movie lover in your life.
Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands – Kate Beaton
Beaton is a phenomenal storyteller, and I was captivated by this memoir and its images from the first page. While she covers heavy topics - gendered violence, rape, drug abuse and death - she also infuses warmth and humor into the pages, which help the reader understand how she survived the ordeal.
A Conversation About “Spare” by Prince Harry
By now the scandalous details and big reveals of Price Harry’s memoir have been well-publicized. Instead of rehashing elements that a quick Google search can provide to you, I invited my friend Heather - my go to source for info on the royals - to discuss the good, the bad and the interesting revealed in “Spare.” The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
The South Side: A Portrait of Chicago and American Segregation – Natalie Y. Moore
While there’s a lot to unpack, Moore keeps things focused and entertaining - insomuch topics like this can be - with well-placed curse words and anecdotes. Often nonfiction books of this nature bog the reader down with deep history and details that detract from the broader message, but that’s not the case here.
The Office of Historical Corrections – Danielle Evans
Expectation: A collection of stories exploring different facets of American history that were misrepresented.
Reality: A top-to-bottom solid collection that takes you on several intriguing and understated journeys that force the reader to question “what would you do?”
Boys Come First – Aaron Foley
Expectation: A story about three middle-aged friends heading on a vacation to reconnect and lick wounds from failed relationships.
Reality: There’s no vacation, but there is a lot of humor and heart in this lighter read about reconnecting, re-envisioning and reclaiming one's future.
Nightcrawling – Leila Mottley
Expectation: A modern take on the world’s oldest profession.
Reality: Depressing and somber, the story went places I didn’t expect, but outside of the main character, I didn’t care much for what was happening.
Heavy: An American Memoir – Kiese Laymon
These raw and unfiltered memories from Kiese Laymon’s early life in Jackson, Mississippi - roughly pre-teen to mid-20s - left me uncomfortable, frustrated and sad. It’s no wonder this biography is titled “Heavy,” because there is so much weight - metaphorically and physically - that the author has had to carry throughout this life.
Letters to My White Male Friends – Dax-Devlon Ross
Told in three parts — harm, heal and act — Ross uses personal experiences paired with historical context to explain how and why racial progress stalls, and why white men have such a difficult time accepting the fact we have privileges the Black community doesn’t.
Two Boys Kissing – David Levithan
Expectation: A heartwarming coming of age story about overcoming adversity and supporting one another.
Reality: Darker and more poignant than expected, but a tad uneven and overstuffed even for its slim length. However, when the story soars, it’s transformative.
The Complete Maus – Art Spiegelman
You can disagree or dislike decisions Spiegelman made, but you cannot deny that this is a powerful series that needs - no, it demands - to be read, taught and discussed.
Evvie Drake Starts Over – Linda Holmes
Expectation: An inter-generational friendship between two unlikely people.
Reality: Age-appropriate romance versus friendship. The whole thing was predictable, but the darker edges made it feel unique. As someone who doesn’t usually read this genre, I liked it more than expected.
The Sentence – Louise Erdrich
Expectation: An engrossing retrospective of the not-too-distant past with an Indigenous perspective.
Reality: Meandering plots, ancillary characters and terrible narration by the author all overshadowed the strongest parts of the story.
Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland – Patrick Radden Keefe
While he gave it his best effort, “Say Nothing” came up short for me – and that’s more on me than it is on Keefe. He did the work, distilling thousands of interviews, analyzing watershed events and piecing together elements of an intricate puzzle while battling cagey subjects and still fresh wounds on both sides.
Most of my tepidness towards the novel is because I thought it was focused solely on “The Disappeared,” the 18 individuals abducted by loyalists and republicans during the Northern Ireland conflict.
The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying – Nina Riggs
It goes without saying this is a heavy read, and I wasn’t in the right head space for it. You can’t give a book like this a negative review, because it’s going to hit you differently depending on where you are in life and what you’re dealing with.
2022: My Year In Reading - The Stats
My 2022 reading goal was to have 45 percent of books read be written by authors not like me, defined by being a white, cis-gendered male who identifies as gay. Factoring in all diversity markers (and multiple books by the same authors), 53% of books read qualified under the “not like me” umbrella.
2022: The Worst Books I Read
Ultimately, for the amount of books I read in 2022, there were only a few that I actively disliked. While there were many that felt incredibly average, I was able to find redeeming qualities in most reads - even the 22 titles reflected here that account for the lower 20 percent of my total reading.
2022: The Best Books I Read
I read a lot of great books this year, so I forced myself to narrow down the list to 10 favorites and 10 honorable mentions. These two lists comprise less than 20 percent of my overall reads, so they really were the cream of the crop.
2022: The Best and Worst Audiobook Narrations I Heard
After listening to more than 70 audiobooks in 2022, I can definitively state these are the 10 best and seven worst audiobook narrations I heard.