Finding connection in 2022 reading
When 2022 began I didn't know if I'd finish my two reading challenges - Book Riot's Read Harder and The Unread Shelf. At the start, 2022 looked like a year that was going to kick my butt. And, frankly, it kind of did! '22 was a year of doubles. Two jobs each. Two homes. Two moves. Two truck purchases. Two foster dogs. Two household goods deliveries. You get the picture. But, despite everything, I did finish my TWO reading challenges. I already wrote a blog post about Read Harder but wanted to do one more for the year.
I read 48 books in 2022. In keeping with the trends of the past few years the majority of the books were written by women: 33. And the majority were nonfiction: 30. I continue to read books recommended by Elizabeth Gilbert as part of her Onward Book Club. Reading four this year: Hood Feminism, An American Spy, An American Marriage, and An Awakened Woman.
Here are the 12 books from my own shelves that I read for The Unread Shelf Challenge. Five of them also took care of Read Harder challenges.
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| Unread Shelf Challenge 2022 |
While the bulk of my reading in 2022 was for the challenges, I did do some reading just for me.
In 2021 I read Sebastian Junger's book War about his nearly yearlong media embed with the 173d Airborne Brigade in Afghanistan. In 2022 I read his book Tribe. Tribe explores the idea that one of the reasons veterans have a hard time coming back from war is that the concept of community has eroded in our society.
Junger has given two really good TED Talks about his media embed experience and the challenges veterans face coming home from war. I'm including links below.
Our lonely society makes it hard to come home from war
Here are some of the quotes from the book that I wrote in my book journal:
"Modern society has perfected the art of making people not feel necessary. It's time for that to end." (xvii)
"...human beings need three basic things in order to be content: they need to feel competent at what they do; they need to feel authentic in their lives, and they need to feel connected to others." (22)
"As affluence and urbanization rise in a society, rates of depression and suicide tend to go up rather than down." (19)
"As modern society reduced the role of community, it simultaneously elevated the role of authority." (25)
After a nearly year long hiatus from Three Pines and the world created by Louise Penny, I read my next book in the Inspector Gamache series - The Long Way Home. It's book 10 in the series that is now 18 books.
I've listened to several of Penny's book talks. Here is a link to one of my favorites. She usually gets asked if she writes the poetry in the book attributed to the fictional poet Ruth. She does not. The poetry is by two poets, Marylyn Plessner and the Margaret Atwood. The Atwood poetry comes from a book called Morning in the Burned House. My local library has the book of poetry so I decided to read it too.
One of the poems - and unfortunately I don't know which one - asks this question: "Now here's a good one: you're lying on your deathbed. You have one hour to live. Who is it, exactly, you have needed all these years to forgive?"
With the start of a new year, it's perhaps a good question for all of us to ask ourselves. What we should forgive and leave behind as we start a new year?
In addition to finding Louise Penny through the Read Harder challenge, I also found another Canada-based police detective series. This one follows Esa Khattak and his partner Rachel Getty. The first two books of the series, written by Ausma Zehanat Khan, are The Unquiet Dead and The Language of Secrets. I read them both in 2018. I can't believe it'd been four years but I finally revisited the series reading the next book in the series, Among the Ruins, as my last book of 2022.
Among the Ruins takes place in Canada and Iran. I don't know that I've ever read a book that is set in Iran so I found that really interesting. Khan is a Muslim and was an international human rights lawyer before writing so there are a lot of contemporary themes in her books with historical connections too. I really like her writing and her stories are well plotted. I also enjoy the exposure to different cultures and religions.
The final book I want to write about for 2022 is Terry Tempest Williams' - Erosion: Essays of Undoing. I first learned of who Williams is in an article in Experience Life. It's the only magazine subscription I have retained while slowly ending others. A few years ago I watched a book talk she gave at Politics and Prose about Erosion and put it on my reading wish list. I found her talk very powerful. You can watch it here. It was one of the last books I read in 2022.
The timing of when I read this book ended up having a meaningful connection. My Uncle Paul died in December just days before his birthday. He'd not been in great health and had further complications following a major surgery. The day I thought he might be getting cremated was the day I read Terry's essay - A Beautiful, Rugged Place: Erosion of the Body. It's an essay about Terry's brother Dan's death by suicide. She and her last surviving brother Hank go to the funeral home and witness the cremation of Dan's body. She is the second person I've heard share that they watched the cremation process. The other one is Elizabeth Gilbert and watching her partner Rayya's cremation.
While Williams' brother had lived a rather tormented life, dealing with addiction and depression, he also was a creative person and lover of nature. There is a beautiful scene at the end of the essay where Terry and Hank take Dan's ashes to a place where he used to help tag raptors for conservation efforts.
I think in our society there can be a lot of shame surrounding the deaths of loved ones by suicide. I think it helps lift the stigma to have people talk and share openly about it. To say, 'my loved one died by suicide' or to include it in the obituary. I really appreciate Terry writing about her brother so beautifully and honestly. The essay is a touching tribute to Dan. All the essays in the book are good but this one resonated and connected with me in a very special way.
Did you read a book in 2022 that made a special connection to you? If so, please leave a comment and let me know which one.
2023 reading is off to a bit of a slow start but I've read two books so far - one for each challenge. If you want to join, here are the links to Read Harder 2023 and Unread Shelf Challenge.
Keep Reading!
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