The (Slightly Late) January 2022 Reading List
Four weeks, four books
Last December, I told you all about my favorite books, movies, documentaries, and podcasts of 2021. The general response was that I should do more posts of the kind in 2022. And here we are.
My good friend Dan read 100 books in 2020, is reading 101 in 2022, and inspired me to push myself this year with a reading challenge. I can’t read like him (he’s a machine) but I think, with some luck, I can pull off 52 books—one per week.1
Most of you are experts at finding good movies, podcasts, and shows to stream, so I won’t clutter your inbox with my favorites in those realms. Instead, I’ll stick to the books I read on this 52 week mental marathon.
Anyway, on to this month’s recommendations.
All The Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
Back in college, I read The Road which is a post-apocalyptic novel and McCarthy’s most famous book. It was adapted for a film starring Viggo Mortensen who played Aragorn in Lord of the Rings. The Road novel won the Pulitzer in 2007 for fiction but—hot take—it’s just Okay. You may also have seen No Country For Old Men, based on a McCarthy novel of the same name. To summarize, Cormac McCarthy writes classics and is a top five novelist of his generation.
Coming back to McCarthy years later has shown me three things:
For one, you can come back to something (or someone) sometime later and have a completely different perspective
Great writers don’t avoid tropes, they use (or deny) them tactically
(You’ve never read a cowboy story like this one…)
Commas are overused in fiction2
This book has a misleading name. It’s a cowboy adventure story about pain, hardship, and love. The lead character’s virtuosity ranks at the top of any book I’ve read, and it makes for an interesting narrative given the darkness in his every confrontation. If you appreciate vivid, visceral descriptions of natural western scenery, laced with drama that grinds down to the bone—put on your hiking boots. You will love Cormac McCarthy.3
Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
I probably haven’t read as much Toni Morrison as I should. She is widely considered to be—and I agree—one of the best female African American novelists of all time. And I think you could argue she’s one of the best female novelists, full stop. Sans racial qualifier. Some people feel uncomfortable reading work like hers, work with subtle racial undertones, but they shouldn’t. The best novelists—she and James Baldwin4 for example—write about anyone, for anyone. Yes, Song of Solomon is about a black family in Detroit in the sixties. Yes, there is racial dialogue. Yes, Toni Morrison believed in social equality. But this book isn’t a diatribe. It’s a hero’s journey. The journey of a young man (named Milkman) whose high-class family and complicated social circumstances have entrapped and embittered him in a cycle of internecine self-destruction. And it’s all woven into a narrative about a hunt for hidden gold.
The Post Office by Charles Bukowski
When I was talking to Dan about short books to help ease the book-a-week hustle, he recommended I check out Charles Bukowski. I’d read Bukowski’s poetry before, but never his prose. Dan described Bukowski as “raunchy, disrespectful, and would have been canceled 5000 times today but hilarious and incredible.” Bukowski spent ten years working in the US Postal System and the ultimate result was this book. The Post Office, an autobiographical memoir with enough negligence to fill a sandbox, will be the most unruly read of your year. I’ll tell you what, I will never again look at our nice postman with the milkbones and short shorts and floppy bucket hat the same way.
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
Where to begin. George Saunders is one of the most decorated short story writers alive. People call him a contemporary Kurt Vonnegut, and I don’t think it’s too far off. He didn’t write a novel until 2017 and when Lincoln in the Bardo released, he won the Man Booker Prize. Really, who wins the Booker Prize on their first novel? The book was so good, so original, that it recruited the likes of Nick Offerman, David Sedaris, and Lena Dunham to read the Audiobook—which won the award for best Audiobook of 2018. Read or listen to it and you’ll see what I mean.
The story takes place two days after 11-year-old Willie Lincoln is laid to rest in a Georgetown cemetery. While his father (the president) paces the darkness of the graveyard, Willie is trapped in a state of limbo between the dead and the living, existing in a ghostly world populated by the recently passed and the long dead who refuse to die.
A long time ago
I came to realize that I even if I read non-stop from birth until death I would still not come close to reading all the greatest books ever written. Surprisingly, it took the pressure off trying to read only the greats. Now I read whatever interests me at a given time. And this relationship has led me to view reading as a privilege and a practice.
I’ll leave the January letter here. To you non-fiction readers, I apologize that this month was all novels (though Bardo has quite a bit of non-fiction elements.) In the future, I’ll have a better mix of fiction, science, philosophy, and practical learnings to share with you. I hope at least one of these books has intrigued you enough to pick up a copy or have a listen on Audible. To me, it doesn’t matter if you take the physical copy or download it on audible. What matters is that you are reading!
As always, I appreciate you supporting this newsletter, and my writing at large. I’m going to keep testing different types of content here and always love to hear your feedback. You’re also encouraged to email me questions or raise issues for discussion and i’ll try to tackle them here or in another medium.
Even better, i’d love for you to pass along any books you might recommend in a related area.
I hope you enjoy your time in the book-world. It’s a hell of a lot less confusing than the real one. And always keep that learning helmet on. Your mind is all you have, and education is a lifelong journey.
—As my friend Debbie Millman says: “Peak late. Play the long game.”
As always, reach out if there is anything you need
Take care,
Jeremy
He and I started a podcast discussing many of these books. Stay tuned.
McCarthy is famous for “run on” sentences. Except, they’re not run-ons. They’re style. And they make for a faster read.
Born in Providence, RI <3
February will include James Baldwin’s Another Country
Make sure you read “The Midnight Library” by Matt Haig. Number one New York Times fiction bestseller for more than a year, it clearly has struck a chord with a lot of people. Quantum physics suggests that we could be living multiple lives at once; what if you could drop in to a number of those lives and see if one is a better fit for you? But you have to be very close to dying at the time.
101 was a stretch goal between us :) still shooting for 100