Club Special Editions 361
Anne Bogel [00:00:17] Hey, readers, I'm Anne Bogel and this is What Should I Read Next. Welcome to the show that's dedicated to answering the question that plagues every reader, What Should I Read Next? We have a special episode for you today. I'm sharing the books I loved most in 2022, with a little help from my most frequent reading companion, my husband, and What Should I Read Next executive producer Will Bogel.
Club Special Editions 361
Today I'm talking about my favorite books of 2022. But if you're a member of our Modern Mrs. Darcy book club, you recently got to hear from the entire What Should I Read Next team about their top reads of the year. Our December best books gathering was a blast. But if you missed out, don't despair. Over in our book club community, we have big book bashes like this all the time and we record all our events so you can watch them on your schedule. Our Spring Book Preview, in which I share 42 noteworthy titles coming out from January to April, is just a week away. Now is a great time to become a book club member to enjoy community, classes and conversation with people who love to read as much as you do. Find out more and sign up at Members,modernmrsdarcy.com. Of course, I shared a few of my favorites and our team best books events, but in today's episode we're talking about the wide ranging variety of titles I loved most in 2022. Will is sitting in the host chair today, which means I get to share what my reading life was like, what themes hold up most often, and what titles really stood out and why.
Will Bogel [00:08:04] The very best. Yeah. So you're talking about one star on that that page where you highlight them. I keep track of mine and put a star rating on what I read. And it is funny when you get to the end of the year and you're like, okay, well that was weird. I said that was four stars and I don't even remember what it was about. It clearly was a great reading experience at the time, but maybe not the best book I read if I don't remember that much about it. So I did get to talk about my best books of the year during the 10 best books event in the book club. And you shared a couple, but how many did you bring today?
Anne Bogel [00:15:07] Definitely. These are in the Lucy Barton books and now Elizabeth Strout has written four of them and I don't think you need to go all the way back to My Name is Lucy Barton, but the events of Oh William! and Lucy By The Sea are so intimately tied and they're both so short too. It does feel like volume one and two of the same edition. I don't know if Elizabeth Strout agrees, but that's definitely my experience as a reader and my recommendation. Oh, gosh, actually I have three books here that are very long and totally worth it, although they're not even in that category. They're in the family novel category. I really enjoyed rereading The Arsonist City this Year by Hala Alyan and I just read this again recently. We hosted her in Modern Mrs. Darcy book club, which is the reason I picked it back up again because I hadn't read this novel since it first came out in early 2021. I listened the first time, I read it in print the second time, and I think I enjoyed it even more the second time through. I just loved the multi-generational story so much. This one is also very much about complex sibling dynamics, which I really enjoyed. Will, you and I talked about how a really fun pairing that was completely inadvertent that I enjoyed right here at the end of the year was my two books in a row that just both happened to revolve around Irish-owned family bars.
Anne Bogel [00:25:17] Another book that I feel like was cooked up just for me is Also A Poet by Ada Calhoun. This one kind of jumped out at me because I really loved Why We Can't Sleep was about Gen Xers, especially Gen X women, and why it feels so stinking hard sometimes. So this was a book we featured in a Winter Spring Book Preview a couple of years back. So I remember reading that and enjoying it. But then when I started reading the publicity on this book, I was so intrigued and I think read it the next day. I discovered because of that prerelease publicity, that Calhoun is the daughter of art critic Peter Schjeldahl. And I've been quoting him for years, especially at modern Mrs. Darcy book club, because he has a certain approach he takes to [Inaudible] what he calls immediately hospitable. And this is another book that is just completely genre bending in a way I really enjoyed. So it is a memoirish look at Ada Calhoun's complex relationship with her father, who she makes look like a fascinating man and a completely terrible parent, except they are still very much in relationship. And, will, you know that I am fascinated by that dynamic, by people who have just what can be at times really horrible relationships, but who still maintain that bond. So it's all those things, but it's also a profile of sorts about the poet Frank O'Hara, who I knew nothing about. But I just devoured this book. I wrote in my journal, or I wouldn't remember. But I finished this in 36 hours and immediately was like, oh, yeah, this is definitely going to be one of the best things I read this year. Top 5%. Easy. And I don't say that very often.
Anne Bogel [00:27:13] I did. And after I finished this, I really wanted to read more from Calhoun. So I hopped on Libby and saw That Wedding Toasts I'll Never Give was available. I'm trying to think if she referenced it in the pages of Also A Poet or if I just thought, you have an interesting perspective on relationships; tell me more. But I just flew through her essay collection on marriage, relationships, infidelity, divorce, and also personal growth. And I didn't realize that this book was inspired by, based upon her viral Modern Love column that has that same title. But I highlighted this so much. I really think this is an example of a book that I was prime to read right then. And to anyone who's intrigued by reading about relationships, especially marriage, I just have to tell you that, like, Will, you and I have now been married 22 years. That's kind of a long time, but not exactly according to some of the people in the pages of this book. But if I had read this 20 years ago, I would have been completely horrified. But, instead, I was just so intrigued and nodded along. And sometimes I thought, oh my goodness, I wouldn't want to live like that. Or I just can't understand quite that perspective, but I still really enjoyed her walking me through these topics. I loved it so much. Actually, I think that is true of all my nonfiction. It's very much story driven. These are just really fascinating stories. This is not like let me learn about an important topic through a nonfiction book. This is like, oh, tell me something riveting.
Anne Bogel [00:30:44] Yeah. And it's really about finding community and connection in your three dimensional life, but also in unexpected places like in this case, Twitter. And it covers the heavy and the light. It made me teary. It made me laugh out loud on my walks. I loved it so much. Actually, I loved it so much that we're reading this in February in Modern Mrs. Darcy book club, we're pairing it with Platonic by Marissa G. Franco, which is very much about friendships and relationships. It's going to make such a good pairing, and I'm really excited to keep spreading the word about this book and find myself some more friends I can talk about it with. Can I share one more nonfiction title?
Anne Bogel [00:36:02] Well, I was really glad that you enjoyed it as much as you did. I was really glad you gave it a try. And also I was really glad you enjoyed it as much as you did, especially because I did really urge you to read this one. I thought you'd really enjoy it. Like sometimes you heard me talking about We Are The Brennans and the Half Moon and say, "Oh, I think this might be right for you if aliens appeal to you." But with Demon Copperhead, I think I was basically like read this next.
Anne Bogel [00:44:27] Yes, I can. So I loved and inhaled these books. I just read them so fast. The first was the Violin Conspiracy by Brendan Slocumb. And I listen to this on audio. When I think of reading this book, I picture myself in our upstairs laundry room just folding clothes. Because when I'm doing like a lot of dishes or cleaning the baseboards or folding clothes, it's because I have something good to listen to. There is no other reason that I want to do that work. It's narrated by J.T. Jackson, who is phenomenal. I'll listen to him read anything. And this story, it's a fine arts thriller, is just unlike anything I've ever read. And I didn't know this at the time, but Brendan Slocumb and I get to do an event together. You've heard him on the podcast in our book club favorites episode from Bookmarks and Z, and she's our Modern Mrs. Darcy book club selection author in January. So we get to talk to him. And I loved it so much. Funny You Should Ask by Elissa Sussman is, I think, maybe the only romance novel among my favorites. This was just the right book at the right time for me. I picked this up at an indie bookstore. That's Birmingham's little professor on vacation this summer. We were on our way to the beach, and it was just the perfect, smart and sexy beach read. The main character is a writer. This is a celebrity-normal person romance, which seems to be a trend now. It's one I really enjoy and I read the story so fast. Just really strong writing, the format was interesting, strong narrative drive. It was just tons of fun.
Fahrenheit 451 is set in an unspecified city in the year 2049 (according to Ray Bradbury's Coda), though it is written as if set in a distant future.[note 1][26] The earliest editions make clear that it takes place no earlier than the year 1960.[note 2][27]
The drifters are all former intellectuals. They have each memorized books should the day arrive that society comes to an end and is forced to rebuild itself anew, with the survivors learning to embrace the literature of the past. Granger asks Montag what he has to contribute to the group and Montag finds that he had partially memorized the Book of Ecclesiastes, discovering that the group has a special way of unlocking photographic memory. While learning the philosophy of the exiles, Montag and the group watch helplessly as bombers fly overhead and annihilate the city with nuclear weapons: the imminent war has begun and ended in the same night. While Faber would have left on the early bus, everyone else (possibly including Mildred) is immediately killed. Montag and the group are injured and dirtied, but manage to survive the shockwave. 041b061a72