I know you've been waiting in desperate agony for this list to come out. You stopped buying books since December, awaiting guidance.
I thought a lot about this list. Unlike previous years, I did not read a book in 2022 that transformed my life. In past years, there had been a book -- that book -- that drove me to write this blog post. This year's post seemed to be under threat but for the wonderful gift of procrastination I have in no small measure.
So let's get on with it. The best books I read last year, along with some thoughts on discovering new authors, thanks to the generous recommendations of my friends.
1. The Gene by Siddhartha Mukherjee
This is the second SM book to find a place on my annual lists, and it's really not hard to see why. I wrote a long blog post on the book almost exactly a year ago. While The Emperor of Maladies was a one of a kind book oozing with style and substance but also a striking sense of humanity, The Gene is one of many excellent books -- this space is relatively crowded -- talking about how the gene encodes the stuff of life and its infinite expressions, and the fascinating cast of contributors who got us here. It's essential reading especially in a post-covid world where the use of technologies like PCR tests and m-RNA vaccines is ubiquitous, the latter if you are privileged to be in a developed country. Mukherjee's latest book, The Song of the Cell is out and sounds like a sequel but I don't think I'll be reading it for another couple of years at least.
2. Lost History by Michael Hamilton Morgan
The trope narrative goes like this -- there were the brilliant Greeks followed by the pugnacious and practical Romans. And then, darkness. The world went through The Dark Ages when there was no science, no progress, and no development. After this long period of nothingness came the Renaissance. One thing led to the next -- we had the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution and so on to the magnificent days of multiple OTTs.
Except that is not true and conveniently omits at least 5 to 6 centuries of advancements in science, engineering, medicine, philosophy, literature in the lands from Spain and northwestern Africa all the way to Central Asia, from Seville to Samarkand. Lost History is a fantastic book that offers an engrossing introduction to the intellectual richness of this world. I wrote a review of the book here.
3. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
This is the best JRRT book, no question about it. An eternal classic and a constant source of joy and amusement. I doubt I'll be re-reading LOTR or The Silmarillion any time soon, if ever, but I can't help myself whenever my eyes catch the brilliant opening to the book,
“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.”4. When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamín Labatut
A strange book. Labatut writes without sentiment and emotion. His meditations involve real individuals from science and mathematics and then he weaves in threads of fiction over a back bone of actual facts. The result is an austere and disturbing incursion into the madness of great scientific discovery. Friends and family are routinely thrown by the curb-side and people's lives are threatened and taken in this pursuit. The end aim isn't as clear as fame or fortune. Many times it's neither. The closest analogue I can think of is the eponymous Hill House in Shirley Jackson's famous novel -- the house chooses who it wants to absorb. Once it does, there is no reason. The allure is irresistible. Resistance is futile.
5. A Burning by Megha Majumdar
Megha Majumdar's debut novel is fast-paced and packed with wry commentary on India. Naturally then, many Indians do not like the novel. I call it The White Tiger problem. If you exoticise India that's cool. We love orientalism. What we cannot stand is incisive dark comedy that pushes us out from our comfort zones. Jivan, a young woman, is but another victim of a larger change in Indian society that seeks aggression and vengeance. Displaced from her village, growing up in a slum, she is liked as long as she conforms. Till she conforms, she is an example of all that is right in the country. But she becomes a deviant -- out of sheer bad luck -- and then...well, then she has to face the consequences. The book isn't a classic but it's a pretty good read.
So these were the best books I read last year. I also got introduced to some new names, partly out of my desire to read more books by U.S. authors. The books have a different cadence and many of them are at least partly based in New York so it's nice to see familiar and not so familiar reflections on the great city. I read Lore Segal's Her First American which tackles the Jewish immigrant's experience in the 1950s and her romance with a Black journalist of some renown. It was a good book. Lore Segal lives in Upper West Side and I am pretty sure I have seen her a couple of times in parties, a smiling diminutive figure, with a walker (she's over 90), that somehow helps me imagine Ilka Weissnix, the protagonist in the novel. I also read The Topeka School by Ben Lerner and I have no idea why he's rated so highly. I haven't read his poetry -- he's a well-regarded poet -- but on the basis of this novel, I was not impressed.
Finally, a shout-out to Anirudh Kanisetti's absorbing history, Lords of the Deccan, that was a vivid account of the great Chalukyas, Rashtrakutas, and the Cholas; and Rukmini S.'s Whole Numbers and Half-Truths, a recommended read if you need good data to talk about India's problems, both real and under-discussed, and false and over-blown.
