the best of 2022

or, things I enjoyed over the last twelve months

from goodreads

Today is the release of At Home Inside You! The first episode in an ongoing YA body horror romance. Wrote a bit more about it here. I sure would appreciate you checking it out.

Expect episode two in a few weeks and episode three a few weeks later. Writing it on the fly and letting the shape of the story guide me wherever it leads.

Anyway, onto the real essay.

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This is pretty self-explanatory, I imagine, so I’m just going to list the things I sure did like this year. Most of the media I consume are books so this is mostly going to be about books, but I’ll mention a few other things.

Books

For the first year in several years, I read almost no nonfiction. This is a bit of a surprise since I’ve primarily been reading nonfiction the last few years. But this year was all about fiction, baby.

• Cradle by Will Wight - I’ll have more to say about this later and probably at a different newsletter. The best way to describe it, I think, is to tell you that it’s basically the novelization of Dragonball Z. And while it’s an original world with original characters that have nothing to do with Toriyama’s influential anime, it also feels exactly like being 11 years old and watching that anime. Which is both good and bad. I read these primarily as research for something weirdly specific, but I also have to admit that the series becomes wildly good around the eighth or ninth book. Not that that’s a recommendation to read the earlier ones…

• A Song of Ice and Fire by George RR Martin - Those following along know that I reread this series this year. Returning to a favorite is sometimes fraught, so I’m glad I waited eleven years. I don’t often reread books, despite my inability to remember anything, but I found this series, in some ways, better than I did before. Maybe it’s being older, but probably it’s because I’ve read hundreds of bad fantasy books in between. And George Martin is simply one of the best.

• Patrimony by Philip Roth - Roth spent his career writing thinly veiled versions of himself. I read several of them in 2022, but this one, the memoir, is actually the best one. I found his fiction often overly tied in knots inside itself and inside of his internal monologuing, but this short memoir has him outside himself most of the time. What’s most remarkable about this shift is just how quickly Roth captures an entire lifetime of character. From the moment his father shows up on the page, he’s instantly knowable and familiar. This book is also beautiful in ways that Roth’s fiction rarely was.

• 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez - I spoke about this already but I really can’t emphasize enough how strange this book is. It feels like forty books shoved into the same skin, but rather than burst apart, it becomes an infinite library.

• The Neapolitan Novels by Elena Ferrante - I also spoke about these, but one thing I didn’t mention is how this is a masterclass in unlikeable characters. The mounting tensions between these two friends who are closer than lovers but separated by their own disgust of one another, of themselves, is a monument to disastrous friendships.

• Chilean Poet by Alejandro Zambra - Picked this up because I was reading a lot of Roberto Bolano (sadly missing from this list) and Zambra is seen as the face of the next generation of Chilean writers. This novel is just so comfortably and quietly brilliant. I wasn’t so convinced by it at first, but the ways it grew and the directions it branched held me enthralled. Read the whole book in one (long) day.

• Legend of the Condor Heroes by Jin Yong - So much fun. So hilarious. Seems like the foundational text to every anime anyone has ever seen. Though it’s also not as terrible as anime is. Despite this being a novel about legendary martial artists, the series is much more concerned with the moments between fighting. And this should teach you an important lesson about what people want from fiction.

• Monopolized by David Dayen - For the last several years, I’ve read far more nonfiction than fiction, but this year was an exception. Even so, this stands out as one of the best and most important books I’ve read recently. If you’re interested in monopoly (you should be, especially if you live in the US), this is indispensible and a good companion piece to Matt Stoller’s Goliath and Alec MacGillis’ Fulfillment.

• Dying World by J David Osborne - Wild and weird and so much fun. Everything you love about the zaniness of Neal Stephenson’s version of cyberpunk but somehow ratcheted still higher while still delivering the things you expect from cyberpunk: hypersexed up violence in a chaotic doomed world.

• Ghosts of East Baltimore by David Simmons - I love this book. One of the best surprises for me this year, since this is a debut. Simmons has it, though. Wild and frenetic and Lovecraftian while also managing to be so rooted in the physicality of Baltimore that you may actually learn something about the real world while you dance in this fever dream.

• Mercy by Kelby Losack - Haunting and beautiful and brutal. Losack has primarily written what I’ve described as Walmart Noir before this, but here he reaches out towards a lofi cyberpunk and rips your dang heart out.

• Black Gypsies by Grant Wamack - A work of love and beauty wrapped in noir and gang violence. Being on the run from violence never felt so hot.

• Monastery by Eduardo Halfon - Maddeningly episodic but intersecting and connecting back together in various ways, the book is addictive, hilarious, and will surprise you with the emotional resonance you’ll find in it.

• The Thief by Fuminori Nakamura - Pitch perfect neo-noir. Bleak and surreal. I don’t often read books like this anymore, but this really did bring me back to the early 2000s when neo-noir was all the rage inside me. Not sure any of what I read back then was better than this.

• Such Small Hands by Andres Barba - Brutal and cruel and hypnotic, this brief book is one of the most powerful novels I’ve read in years. If you’re a parent, this book will crush you.

• Winter in Sokcho by Elisa Shua Dusapin - reminds me of the best of Kawabata, which is really about the highest praise I can give anyone. But if you’re not the type who fell in love with Thousand Cranes or Snow Country, this might be a big miss for you. Maybe the only flat-affect (maybe I’ll write about this someday) book I can think of that I actually like.

• Happiness by Shuzo Oshimi - I don’t ever really read manga, but I stumbled across this weird little vampire series and found it haunting and beautiful. It reminded me in various ways of Let the Right One In but also of Interview with a Vampire.

Music

• Nectar by Joji - I have a lot to say about Joji and I might say it later, but I just love this album. Love the way Joji’s voice and sonic landscape has developed.

• Ghost with Skin by Corbin - music that makes your heart hurt.

• A Long Vacation by Eiichi Ohtaki - Reminds me of being seventeen but I only know about it because of a six-hour review of a game I’ve never even heard of.

• Absolutely by Dijon - Reminds me of being twenty.

• Dawn FM by The Weeknd - I have always loved The Weeknd’s darkness and this delves deep into that darkness.

• Inside by Bo Burnham - I’ve been a fan of Bo Burnham since he was sixteen, which is weird. We both grew up on the internet around the same time and so I’ve always felt a certain kind of closeness to him and his work, even when it was gratingly and deliberately provocative. But seeing how his career has matured and developed over time is honestly fascinating. Fascinating enough that you should expect me to write quite a bit about this later.

TV Shows

• Seinfeld - This is basically the only show I watch anymore. What is there to say about Seinfeld that hasn’t been said a thousand times in a thousand ways by every other person who lived through the 90s?

• Survivor - We got two great seasons this year. I do have an issue with the editing of these post-covid seasons, though. By trying so hard to keep the audience from predicting who the winner will be, they actually make the season’s narrative feel sometimes random. This has always been a problem when a woman wins the season, which owes no small part to the sexism behind the camera (if anyone wants to really see me write about Survivor, I can go into real detail!), but I think the bigger problem is that they’re trying to be too clever. Show us the winner’s moves from the very start. Don’t essentially introduce them in episode six or eight.

• House of the Dragon - I wrote probably 20,000 words about this show already. I like it a whole lot! It shows tons of potential, too, especially now that I’ve read the source material.

• Avenue 5 - Hugh Laurie and the people behind Veep in space! What’s not to love? Just bonkersly weird levels of hilarity. We haven’t watched the second season that recently came out, but the first season was a delight.

• The Last Kingdom - Sad to say goodbye to this show. It wasn’t always perfect, but I enjoyed it so much so often. I keep looking for another show to scratch the same itch but I keep coming up empty. I think the show wraps up well and gives a satisfying conclusion to just about everyone.

Games

• Root - I’ve been loving this game, which was the hottest game of 2016. Only finally got into it in 2022 though, and there is a lot to chew on. Will also be talking more about this.

• Obsession - This Donton Abbey/Jane Austen/Regency themed deckbuilder is one of the absolute best games I’ve played in years. So much depth and fun and a game where the theme is so essentialized into the design that I can’t imagine this playing any other way.

• Citizen Sleeper - I rarely play games when they’re new, but this was great. A novel look at cyberpunk. I even wrote about it already.

• Super Mario World - I played every 2D Mario game this year with my son, but this one from my own childhood remains the best of the bunch.

• Final Fantasy Tactics - expect more on this later, but it’s often a delight in returning to something from your childhood that remains world class.

Movies

Honestly don’t even remember any movies I watched in 2022. I know I saw some good ones, but I don’t have a way to look up the movies I watched over the last year so I’m just going to put nothing here. I do remember that I watched The Matrix 4.

I hated it.

Maybe I’ll tell you why in more detail soon.