The 12 Best Books of 2022

This year, there was a lot of chaos. Will Smith slapped Chris Rock at the Oscars, mass shootings continued in the United States, civil rights protests swept Iran, and Bolsanaro got the boot in Brazil.

Maybe because of this tumult, turmoil, and general chaos, I gravitate towards complicated, tricky stories this year. The result of one person's disorganized reading schedule is this list. These are the books that stood out to me. It is hoped that it will help you find your next good read.

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There is a school for good mothers.

byJessamine Chan

Jessamine Chan's debut novel is not a domestic manual on keeping house, nor is it the sort of slog that would make tidying look appealing. As I read it over the course of one snowy evening, I put it down to complete household chores. The dishes looked good. The pillows got wet. A single mom is forced into a re- education center filled with robot children after making a parenting mistake in the film The School for Good Mothers. Frida does everything she can to get her daughter back, but her behavior is always seen in a different way. This book is so frightening that even the most careful parent will find it hard to sleep. It is gripping and devastating.

There is a sea of tranquility.

John Mandel.

Sea of Tranquility is a follow-up to Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel, and is a tale that loops around its predecessors. Mandel would make an album from earlier songs. The past is just the beginning of the plot, as it follows a time-traveler who is trying to figure out if the universe is a simulation. Sea of Tranquility is set in the future, but it raises old questions about how we can make meaning. The book is pretty.

It's called Lambda and it's a subclass of the Linux operating system.

by David.

A police officer assigned to watch over a group of refugees is trying to figure out if the refugees have been framed for terrorism. This is a good description of the plot of the novel. It sounds like a simple potboiler. From the first page of the book, it's clear that it's up to something weirder and more unwieldy, instead of a linear narrative and setting the story in an alternate universe where you can get in trouble with the cops for damaging a toothbrush. The police are testing out an artificial intelligence system that will implicate someone of a crime and then kill them. It sounds like a Philip K. Dick pastiche, but it is more ambitious than that.

The stories that make us are called strangers to ourselves.

byRachel Aviv

She stopped eating when she was six. She was admitted to the hospital with an eating disorder. Her doctors weren't sure what to think. They hadn't seen a child so young develop an eating disorder. Aviv developed a lifelong interest in the borderlands after recovering from illness. Aviv wonders if the episode was too hastily pathologized or if she actually had an eating disorder. Aviv looked at her own experience as well as four other people with mental health issues. It doesn't give easy answers, but it does give interesting questions.

There is a value to a whale.

There is a person by the name of Aristide Buller.

The question of how much a whale is worth is absurd. Economists are trying to convince governments and corporations to value wildlife. The value of a whale is a book written by Adrienne Buller. Corporate interests are using the trappings of climate activism to reinforce their power, according to the book. It isn't the most uplifting book in the world. Buller doesn't think market-based corporate "green" initiatives are a good idea. It is a tough book that asks us to not accept improvements for the sake of them.

The best young woman job book.

Emma Healey is a person.

The best account of life in the gig economy was written by a Canadian Poet. Emma Healey has a funny, rueful memoir that documents her peripatetic employment history, including a stint at anseo farm operated out of a middle aged man's bedroom and a remarkably unsexy time technical writing at one of the world's largest porn companies. Money plays a central role in a creative life. She uses the work she had to do in order to do the work she wanted as the basis of her art. The Best Young Woman Job Book has only been released in Canada so far, but it is hoped that it will find a larger audience.

A novel about a workplace in the 21st century.

There is a person by the name of Olgaravn.

The English translation of The Employees was published in the United States in 2022. The story of a journey to an alien land gone wrong reminded me of Annihilation. The Six Thousand ship is a space shuttle on a vague corporate mission staffed by a mix of humans and humanoids. Some are running for pages while others stop after a few words. After collecting a variety of objects on a distant planet called New Discovery, these workers find themselves increasingly at odds as they begin to obsess over objects, which do not speak but can emit noises, smells, and vibrate. The human workers want to be more than what they are programmed to be.

The bunny was cursed.

There is a person named "Borat Chung."

There is a collection of short stories called Cursed Bunny. I read a lot of books by Chuck Palahniuk. A tale about a woman who gets confronted by a creature made of her poop and various viscera, insists it is her child, is in the first English publication by a Korean writer. It is difficult to destroy a toilet creature. A farmer stumbles upon a fox who bleeds gold and exploits this unexpected source of wealth until he's both rich and disconcertingly comfortable with evils ranging from incest to cannibalism. Anyone with low tolerance for gross and gory should avoid the show. If you want a collection of stories that will haunt you for the rest of your life, Chung's collection is the place to go. These are urban legends that have been put to paper and have a folkloric quality to them.

There were convulsions in the blood.

There is a person by the name of Amitkatwala.

I had to include this story on my year-end list because it is so good. There is a person who works at WIRED. This list is already on the record, so why would I ban my colleague's work? It follows ambitious Berkeley, California, police chief August Vollmer as he first encourages his employee to create the polygraph and then ignores his concerns that the machine is getting adopted recklessly. Vollmer wants police departments across the country to use the machine. If you are waiting for David Grann's next book to come out, you should pick up this one.

Eating to extinction is about the world's rarest foods and why we need to save them.

The author is Dan Saladino.

Do you rely on the same dinner again and again? Eating to Extinction is a book that will make someone try a new meal. The book makes a passionate argument for increased biodiversity through a series of case studies from across the world. It feels urgent instead.

Dr.

There is a person by the name of EVEREST PAIN.

The world needs another James Bond spoof. I assumed the answer was no after seeing the final Austin Powers movie. After reading Dr. No, I changed my mind. The book follows a mathematics professor named Wala Kitu who uses a tie as a belt and is obsessed with feeding his dog. John Sil is a self-styled "supervillain" who plans to destroy the world by using the power of nothingness. Sill suspects that the Army keeps a box full of nothing in its safe and that's why he's trying to break it up. The heir to Kurt Vonnegut has a sense of humor that makes it easy to read hundreds of pages about nothing.

A life in ten sea creatures is how far the light reaches.

There is a person by the name of Imbler.

When I read a story about the world's greatest headline in The New York Times, I became a fan of the author. I was happy when they moved to Defector. When I picked up How Far the Light Reaches, I was expecting lively prose about marine biology with a few puns thrown in. I got a lot of writing about marine biology and a memoir. Imbler draws connections between their struggles to adapt to and grow beyond life in California's suburbs with the stories of creatures they love in How Far the Light Reaches.