Top 10 Books Read in 2022

For 2022, I had the goal of reading 75 books. I only managed 60, mainly because I moved country. The following are my top 10 of those read this year.

10. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Published in 2001, this is thought to be one of the best-selling books of all time. It is a romantic Gothic novel in the truest sense, holding dark secrets, stories-within-stories, star-crossed lovers, and tragic fates. Above all, though, it is a coming-of-age tale. Daniel, son of a bookseller in 1940s Barcelona, is brought by his father to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, a vast, maze-like place where rare and prohibited volumes go to hide. On these shelves he finds “The Shadow of the Wind” by Julian Carax, a mysterious author whose works were largely incinerated in a warehouse fire years before. Daniel loves the book, and becomes intrigued by this elusive Carax, especially when he learns that a faceless man has been seeking out and destroying the remaining copies of the writer’s output. As Daniel begins to investigate, he is drawn into a saga of betrayal, love, and hatred that stretches back many years. He learns many secrets about the history of Barcelona, but more importantly, he learns some painful truths about what it means to be devoted, to a person or an idea. Zafón’s novel is a gripping mystery, that powerfully depicts the dramatic moment of transition between late adolescence and early adulthood, when every personal choice feels like an existential challenge. It is not a mere melodrama, however: it also captures a sense of Franco’s Spain, in the bleak postwar years when local tyrants, such as police inspector Fumero, wielded brutal and unchecked power. Admittedly, if you’re someone who dislikes colourful, heightened prose, you might not enjoy this book: “I felt myself surrounded by millions of abandoned pages, by worlds and souls without an owner sinking in an ocean of darkness, while the world that throbbed outside the library seemed to be losing its memory, day after day, unknowingly, feeling all the wiser the more it forgot.” But if you don’t mind some theatre, The Shadow of the Wind is an emotional and memorable experience.

9. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values by Robert Pirsig

The word “unique” is not actually quantifiable — something is either unique or it isn’t — and yet I feel it is fair to say that this is one of the more unique books that I’ve read. Like most interesting books, it defies description: one-part philosophical treatise, one-part road movie, one-part psychological analysis, and one-part personal confession. Published in 1974, it has been on the bestseller lists for decades. It is the story of a man who goes on a motorcycle ride with two friends and his young son. Along this journey, our narrator engages in extensive philosophical ruminations on a wide range of topics, while continually referring to a mysterious figure known as Phaedrus. The core question that preoccupies both our narrator and Phaedrus is that of quality: what is good, what is true? I have done little reading of philosophy, and don’t have the background to assess the validity of the many grand claims presented in the book. There’s no doubt, however, that it is fascinating to follow the narrator as he confronts the darkness in his own past, through a meandering philosophical exposition. It is difficult to say more without giving spoilers, but suffice to say that Pirsig’s book — not exactly a novel, but not exactly a memoir either — is a frank exploration of how an intelligent mind might tear itself apart.

8. The Candy House by Jennifer Egan

Long-time readers may recall that Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad was my second-favourite book in 2020. The Candy House, released this year, is the followup, and uses the same structure: short stories, all within the same universe, told by interconnected characters scattered across time and space. Goon Squad’s focus was on connection and consequence, centring its ecosystem on Bennie Salazar, record producer, and Sasha, his onetime assistant, and depicting the effects these two had on the networks of people around them. Candy House, by contrast, is more concerned with disconnection and distance, centring not on a character but a piece of technology: Mandala, which allows users to upload their memories and make them accessible to others. As a way to comment on social media, this is highly effective: far enough removed from our current technological paradigm to seem quite different, but close enough that its effects on the world are recognisable. Some characters from Goon Squad recur, usually in surprising ways, and Egan continues to conduct her remarkable experiments in form, this time with a chapter told in something like a series of tweets. This is not, and likely could not, exceed the achievement of Goon Squad, and the characters are somewhat less memorable. Nonetheless, it is a fine sequel that carries on the original ideas while expanding in new directions. (And it’s worth mentioning that I met Egan this year and now have signed copies of Goon Squad and Candy House both.)

7. Permanent Record: A Memoir of a Reluctant Whistleblower by Edward Snowden

In my opinion, the central drama to Edward Snowden’s revelations about the NSA was not the news that the US government is spying on everyone, but rather the process through which a successful analyst within the intelligence community decided to sacrifice a comfortable life and career, in order to tell the world of these secret invasions of privacy. Luckily, his 2019 memoir focusses on this very storyline, tracing Snowden’s journey from a young man keen to serve his country after 9/11, to a committed whistleblower plotting a disclosure of classified information on a vast scale. There’s no question that there is some element of self-mythologising in this narrative, and yet, how could it be any other way? While some may question Snowden’s political orientation, or his grandiose claims about certain aspects of the US surveillance apparatus, none can deny the extent either of his leaks or of his personal commitment to ensuring they were seen. Perhaps the finest achievement of this book is that it explains, quite clearly, technical aspects of the tale, so even a reader with no understanding of software engineering can have a sense of what Snowden actually did. As a historical document, the book is somewhat undermined by the obvious reinterpretation of Snowden’s past through the lens of his critical decision, but nonetheless, this is an engaging and informative work.

6. Notes to Self by Emilie Pine

This book of essays was published in 2019 by an English professor from my alma mater, University College Dublin, and was something of a phenomenon in Ireland that year. As I have a temperamental disinclination to follow trends, I didn’t read it until this year. As it turns out, it is a remarkably honest and clear expression of one woman’s pain. She tells stories about such topics as her father’s alcoholism, her struggles to conceive, and her years as a wild child. In this dry summary, it may sound like something of a tawdry catalogue, a gratuitous confession of personal matters that are best kept private. In fact, however, the book feels more like a heartfelt conversation with a friend. Each topic is explored in a genuine way, not generating any personal mythology, but presenting positive and negative traits in a balanced fashion. Pine’s acute self-perception stands out on every page, such as when she remarks that “[p]erhaps the most corrosive aspect of a lonely life is not the time spent alone, but the time spent in a crowd, feeling left out.” As someone well-acquainted with loneliness, I can attest to the truth of this. It is not a revolutionary book, or a hugely artistic one, but it is truthful in a way that perhaps only the personal essay can be.

5. Just Send Me Word: A True Story of Love and Survival in the Gulag by Orlando Figes

Again, people acquainted with my reading habits will not be surprised to find a title relating to the Soviet Gulags on this list. Still, in the canon of Gulag literature, this is an unusual entry, because it is a story of hope. Figes follows Lev and Svetlana, who met as students at Moscow University in the 1930s. They fell in love, but had little time to be together before Lev was caught up in the machine of the Eastern Front. He was taken captive by the Germans, and used his skills to survive however he could. Like so many other Soviet POWs, upon returning to his home country after the war, he was convicted for “collaborating” with the enemy, and sent to the Gulag for 10 years. Svetlana had not given up on him, however, and managed to make contact, commencing an exchange of letters that would eventually number over 1200. The main part of Figes’s book traces this correspondence, through all the small and large struggles of this pair as they tried to survive what would be the final decade of Stalin’s rule. This book is particularly gripping for anyone who has some familiarity with the fickle nature of life in the Soviet work camps: death could come upon a prisoner at any moment, through starvation, accident, or random cruelty. Lev and Svetlana’s relationship, surviving from moment to moment, was an incredible expression of hope and love even amidst this horror.

4. Sculpting in Time: Reflections on the Cinema by Andrei Tarkovsky

A large portion of my year was spent on making a short film about a couple having an overlapping dream. One of the main inspirations for this was Russian film director Tarkovsky’s movie Mirror, which relates the memories of a man in a fragmented, dreamlike fashion. Making a film in this style is a bit of a gamble, to say the least, and I wanted to have a clearly-defined approach. Tarkovsky’s own book on the craft of filmmaking was very helpful to this, for despite his fluid handling of form and content, his conception of method and technique was quite rigid. In contrast to the Western idea of cinema as essentially concerned with dramatic narration or character development, Tarkovsky proposed that cinema is essentially concerned with rhythm and time: “The cinema image, then, is basically observation of life’s facts within time, organised according to the pattern of life itself, and observing its time laws.” Juxtaposition — that is, the combination of two different or contrasting images to create a third effect in the mind of the viewer — has been considered essential by many filmmakers since Eisenstein in the 1920s, yet Tarkovsky also rejected this too, considering it a self-conscious artistic effect. Indeed, Tarkovsky presents an artistic philosophy characterised by rigid discipline, even while reaching always for poetry. I cannot claim to have adhered unfailingly to his approach in my project, but his clarity of vision would be most instructive to any developing filmmaker.

3. Ubik by Philip K Dick

Despite being a student of literature and history, I don’t have a good memory for details. Names, dates, facts, even storylines often escape me completely. What I retain most are emotional impressions: the unquantifiable atmosphere of a work, or a place, or a person. Ubik is a fine example of this. Before writing this, I had to read the plot synopsis of the book on Wikipedia to remember what happened; yet in terms of its emotional impression, this is one of the most unforgettable books that I’ve read in recent years. Set in some ambiguous future time when psychic powers are prevalent in industrial espionage, and cryogenics has advanced to the point that people can remain suspended in half-life even when seriously unwell, Ubik follows Joe Chip, a technician for Runciter Associates. This company employs “inertials”, people with a certain kind of psychic ability that blocks the invasive attacks of other psychic individuals. When Joe joins a team charged with securing a businessman’s lunar facilities from psychic attack, he finds himself caught up in a dangerous situation that threatens not only his company, but the very fabric of his reality. Ubik is a high-concept sci-fi thriller of the finest sort, perfectly precise in its technical detail and completely gripping in its events. It is a work of such cinematic potential that it is astonishing that even a bad adaptation has not yet been produced. Beyond this, however, it is also an existential tale: as Joe Chip and colleagues find their reality dissolving around them, the boundary between waking life and dreams becomes ever more permeable, and the final chapters have the desolate formlessness of the almost-nightmare that grips you in those dawn hours when the night is dying and the new day is not yet born. If you are the right sort of reader for it, Ubik will never quite leave your mind.

2. White Teeth by Zadie Smith

I’m getting to an age where I can have genuine appreciation for those artists who produced creative masterpieces before the age of 30. To have good ideas by this age is one thing; but to have the control of craft necessary to execute those ideas is another thing entirely. It was absolutely astonishing, then, to learn that Zadie Smith completed White Teeth by the age of 25, while still finishing university. It is not merely that the book, which follows the everyday lives of a few inhabitants of Willesden over some years, beginning in 1975, presents a broad and complex view of late-20th century British society, capturing insights on everything from the struggles of young men and women to define themselves against their families to the insistent residues of Britain’s disappeared empire. It is also that White Teeth presents a literary style so magisterial in tone and execution that I found myself reminded more than once of Dickens himself. In its sharp and assertive evocation of character, and its interwoven web of storylines and themes, the book feels more like the work of a veteran 50-something author than the first novel of a university student. The only indication of Smith’s inexperience are the occasional philosophical asides which break out in the prose from time to time, yet even this is such a Dickensian trait that perhaps her only error was being excessively influenced by the old master. One way or the other, as an aspiring writer, it is impossible to read White Teeth without feeling a considerable amount of envy.

1. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez

Upon starting university, I might have said that the most important book of the 20th century was Nineteen Eighty-Four; by the time I graduated, I probably would have picked Ulysses. These days, I’m a devotee of Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, such that one of my goals in life is to achieve a sufficient level of Spanish to be able to read it untranslated. The final image of the novel is something that will stay with me for the rest of my life. Love in the Time of Cholera is not on the same level, but this is rather like saying Love Me Do is not quite as good as Sergeant Pepper. A much smaller story than Solitude, Love nonetheless captures some of the deepest human emotions. As a young man, Florentino Ariza falls in love with Fermina Daza, and a secret correspondence develops between them, aided by Fermina’s aunt. However, in the typical fashion of tyrannical fathers in Spanish-language novels, Fermina’s father learns of the courtship and takes efforts to destroy it, sending Fermina far away for some time. Though they manage to stay in touch, Fermina returns a changed woman, decides that her love for Florentino was just a dream, and breaks off their secret engagement. A celebrated doctor, Urbino, later weds Fermina, despite her initial dislike of him, and in time they settle into a life as one of the most celebrated and admired couples in their city. Florentino, however, never gives up. His love for Florentino remains as strong as it was on the first day that he saw her, and even while sating his sexual desires in an endless string of affairs, his heart never strays from her. The novel begins at the moment of Urbino’s death, when Fermina becomes a widow, and Florentino seizes the chance to approach her, for the first time in some decades. to once more profess his love. Márquez unfolds the five or so decades of these characters’ lives with characteristic grandeur and humanity, giving such grace and grime to their sins and virtues that it is difficult to believe that it is anything other than a true chronicle of genuine events. If the novelist can be said to have a default task, it is to exalt the legendary quality of the inane everyday, and Márquez does this like nobody else. He was a writer who understood that at any moment a life can change forever: it doesn’t happen often, but it is always just one second away. Perhaps this is why he wrote that of a man who “allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to him, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.”Ten Books from 2022