This list isn't comprehensive because I wasn't writing things down as I went and I'm pretty sure I forgot a few but here's the books I remember reading. It's 34 in total if I count each manga/comic series as only one book because otherwise it would be totally unwieldy. This year I've really gotten back into reading again in a way that's made me very happy and satisfied and which I attribute entirely to quitting Twitter this year. Also this isn't in any particular order. If I've posted about them elsewhere already I've linked to that. Edit: I just remembered another book and added it.
Fiction
Defekt — LitenVerse #2
Nino Cipri
The sequel to Finna about neurodiversity and being trans I didn't know I needed. So good.
A Girl Like Her — Ravenswood #1
Talia Hibbert
Escapist fluff for autistic girls like me. Fun to read, but I don't feel compelled to read the others in the series that aren't about autistic girls getting everything they could want in life. I've placed a hold on "Act Your Age, Eve Brown" by the same author though.
Axiom's End — Noumena #1
Lindsay Ellis
Damn, she did it, she wrote a fucked up paranormal romance novel about the xenomorph
Truth of the Divine — Noumena #2
Lindsay Ellis
Damn, she did it, she wrote a sexy fucked up paranormal romance novel about the xenomorph and PTSD driving people into toxic codependent relationships.
A Psalm for the Wild-Built — Monk & Robot #1
Becky Chambers
One of my new favorite books ever. Philosophical and beautiful and healing.
A Prayer for the Crown-Shy — Monk & Robot #2
Becky Chambers
This was also beautiful but can we agree to give Becky Chambers a really nice vacation because she clearly needs it given the contents oof.
The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet — Wayfarers #1
Becky Chambers
This is what NewTrek should have been. I want seven seasons of this.
A Closed and Common Orbit — Wayfarers #2
Becky Chambers
Wow this book speaks extremely well to my extremely specific trauma in a way that made me cry like twenty times and healed like twelve scars.
Record of a Spaceborn Few — Wayfarers #3
Becky Chambers
So extremely beautiful. I cried and cried. Oh, the world building. I love it.
The Galaxy, and the Ground Within — Wayfarers #4
Becky Chambers
This is a novel about the early COVID-19 pandemic that was clearly written before we realized it wasn't going to end after only a couple months. I think it might age better when it all feels less recent and lived in. People who weren't classified as essential workers might have enjoyed this one more. I still liked a lot of moments, especially the world-building, but I didn't find it as compelling as the others.
A Good Heretic — A Wayfarers Story
Becky Chambers
OoooOOOOOohhhh my heart. This was worth hunting down in an obscure anthology book.
To Be Taught, If Fortunate
Becky Chambers
Can you believe it? I cried. It's beautiful. Love this novella.
A Memory Called Empire — Teixcalaan #1
Arkady Martine
Lesbian, court intrigue, plurality, politics, it's really got everything. I loved everything about this book.
A Desolation Called Peace — Teixcalaan #2
Arkady Martine
Oh, I loved this one even more. Wow. More lesbians. Philosophical explorations of personhood and collectivity. Arkady Martine is a genius and I want more.
Light from Uncommon Stars
Ryka Aoki
I really enjoyed this book though it's very fluffy and reminds me a lot of those force-feminization stories where the strong older woman basically just helps you transition because you're too insecure to do it on your own and need to have the agency taken out of your hands to get what you actually wanted all along. Lacking in complexity of plot but makes up for it in depth of character and a satisfying level of whimsy and found family narratives.
Bitter — PET #0.5
Akwaeke Emezi
The prequel to PET we didn't need. PET is a book I'd recommend to any age demographic. Bitter is solidly a YA Novel and answers a lot of questions from PET we didn't need answers to. There were some really good satisfying well-written scenes, and I really liked how the relationships were written, but I think PET is a stronger book without this addition. Not Emezi's best work, and I say that as someone who has deeply loved everything Akwaeke Emezi has ever written, that I've read.
The Thirty Names of Night
Zeyn Joukhadar
I read this for a book club with my coworkers. I think it's perhaps one of the Great American Novels and I don't put that lightly. I want to reread it again with more time to stew in it and absorb every word instead of rushing to finish it on time for a book club. I don't reread books often so that' saying something.
Gideon the Ninth — The Locked Tomb #1
Tamsyn Muir
I understand why the lesbians love it. I get the appeal. It didn't hook me like I thought it would and I'm probably not going to read the rest in the series. It might be that the audiobook was just difficult to process and I'd enjoy it more if I tried again with the text. I had trouble keeping all the names straight and following what was happening.
The Midnight Library
Matt Haig
Thoughts: I love a good "don't kill yourself" book.
The Ten Thousand Doors of January
Alix E. Harrow
I couldn't stop noticing this particular writing quirk the author has where she decribes things as [noun]-[adjective]. Sand-dry. Rain-wet. Knife-sharp. Fire-hot. These aren't real examples but it's the main thing I remember is this construction happening a lot.
Non-Fiction
Unmasking Autism: Discovering the New Faces of Neurodiversity
Devon Price
Everyone should read this book. Just, absolutely everyone I know needs to read this book. Life changing. Amazing. Incredible. Fucking read it holy crap I could say so much about it.
This Is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared: The Days of Awe as a Journey of Transformation
Alan Lew
This was sweet and enjoyable. I liked it. Had a couple moments that made me suck air in through my teeth, either because it hit hard or because it missed hard.
We Will Not Cancel Us: And Other Dreams of Transformative Justice — Emergent Strategy #3
adrienne maree brown
I loved it, though maybe it didn't need half of the book to be a preface to the book itself? Like without having seen the original version that had been revised the preface didn't make sense to and I'd have preferred those pages were just used for more of brown's incredible writing on this topic. It felt defensive in a way brown doesn't need to be.
Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism
Amanda Montell
This is a really good modern book about cults by someone who fucking gets it. Highly recommended, especially the chapter on Jonestown. The author is very snarky but the person reading the audiobook completely misses that and reads jokes with the wrong tone sometimes.
On Repentance and Repair: Making Amends in an Unapologetic World
Danya Ruttenberg
Disappointing but I still got a lot out of it. Twitter did a number on this one.
Conflict Is Not Abuse: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility, and the Duty of Repair
Sarah Schulman
I wrote a review of this somewhere on cohost but I didn't tag it so I can't find it. Basically, when this book is good, it's really fucking good, and when it's bad? It's really fucking bad. It's hard to recommend without major caveats. Schulman needs to take a statistics class.
Comics, Manga, & Graphic Novels
Are You My Mother? A Comic Drama
Alison Bechdel
An... interesting read? Very different from Fun Home. I think I enjoyed it?
A Silent Voice
Yoshitoki Oima
Very sweet and touching story about some messy people. Flawed, but still made me cry. The manga is better than the movie.
I Think Our Son Is Gay
Okura
Adorable.
Kaguya-Sama: Love Is War
Aka Akasaka
I was reading this because it's funny and by the end I was crying and crying and that's just not fair? How did Aka Akasaka make me care about these dipshits so much.
To Your Eternity
Yoshitoki Oima
It's shocking that this is by the same author as A Silent Voice as the genre and plot are completely different. This manga is a masterpiece up there with Osamu Tezuka's Phoenix. I had no idea what I was getting into. Excited to see where it goes.
A Sign of Affection
suu Morishita
Fluff for girls who want to feel weak and small and have a big strong guy like her a lot for no reason. I mean, I enjoyed it.
The Backstagers
Walter Baiamonte, James Tynion IV, Rian Sygh
A coworker insisted I read this. I did enjoy it but I wonder how appealing it is to actual teenagers or if it's just the kind of fluff that adults read and feel happy because we like to imagine that teenagers these days are reading stuff like this and absorbing better messages than we got as kids. When the same coworker did an analysis on what teens are actually reading, she was pretty despondent to report that everything popular among the teens involves scandal and murder. So, not this. I think I'd have liked this as a teen though, so I do like to imagine that there are queer teens reading this and feeling seen.
Komi Can't Communicate
Tomohito Oda
Have you noticed a pattern in what kind of literature I read when I want something light and fluffy? Why, it's another touching story about a girl with a social disability/communication-related disorder being loved unconditionally by a guy who helps advocate for her. Gee, I wonder why Shel, an autistic girl who uses sign-language part-time to communicate, would be reading all these stories about Deaf girls and neurodivergent girls falling in love with strong but gentle men. Takano is hardly strong, though, but I completely buy his romance with Komi and that's what makes this series work despite the insanely large cast of incredibly shallow side characters.
Books I started in 2022 and am still reading in 2023
The Incredible Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
Michael Chabon
I started reading this because a guy I was going on a few dates with recommended it to me and I was really into it but then he was kinda shitty to me so I lost my motivation to keep reading this but then a different guy who I was hooking up with was like "no no that book is so good you gotta read it" so then I continued reading it and like it is a really good book I've been enjoying but then that second guy did something to leave a bad taste in my mouth (hush) so I again have lost motivation to keep reading this incredibly long book and yet I do still want to finish it because it's still a good book and if I finish it then at least I'll have gotten something worthwhile out of those two encounters.
Scattered All Over the Earth
Yoko Tawada
This book is a delight to read simply because it is so incredibly bizarre at all times. I really hate that the translator has decided to use he/him pronouns at all times to refer to one of the main characters who is a trans woman given that Japanese doesn't have gendered pronouns so there's no reason to have done this. I'm trying to blame that on the translator and enjoy the book regardless. Also ignoring the part where the trans woman says that instead of HRT she is using "meditation and saying the sutras" to transition her body. Besides this one character it's a very strange and fun book about linguistics and cultural exchange and translation.
That's it! that's every book I read in 2022 that I can remember at time of writing. Hopefully in 2023 I'll keep better track as I go. In theory I should write full book reviews for every book I read in order to put it on the library catalog and reference for reader's advisory. But also, it's easier to motivate myself to read when I treat it as a fun thing I can do impulsively and not something I need to over-quantify and track aggressively. Given that I'm getting GRS in February, we'll see if I'll read more or less in 2023. Hopefully more! I love reading!
