Someone once told me, “Well, I don’t think you’re going to find anyone who reads as much as you do.” From the mouth of someone who continually asks me for book recommendations based solely on their own likes! (Also, there are people clocking 150-200 books a year on Goodreads. My 50-60 books is nothing compared to that.) Disinterest is the story of my life, why the hell do you think I make these lists for strangers on the internet to stumble across? I never thought my reading habits would make certain people feel so inferior, but to be honest. . . I have no sympathy for those who feel that way, because there’s not a whole lot stopping you from picking up a book. Why don’t you start with one you find on this list that’s in no particular order. . .
1. Wild at Heart by Barry Gifford: You’re probably more familiar with Wild at Heart as the 1990 David Lynch film that took home the Palme d’Or at Cannes the same year. It’s the first in a series that follows the adventures of two young Southern American star-crossed lovers, Sailor & Lula. They’re on the lam (Lula running from her controlling mother, and Sailor from parole after a two year stint in the pen for manslaughter), and eventually find themselves in Big Tuna, a place that isn’t exactly on anyone’s itinerary. (Before you ask, yes. This novel was written after Jaston Williams introduced us all to Greater Tuna in his quartet of plays, but I searched to no avail to try and find out if Gifford had named Big Tuna in reference to Williams’ initial creation.) There they find a cast of troublemakers who encourage Sailor to roll the dice with the law once more, while Lula’s mother sends a PI after them. It’s a short read, but emotionally epic in that the two main characters are wise to their hearts, but not necessarily to the ways of the world. I enjoyed this so much, I might actually read the rest of the series. I wouldn’t mind taking another romp cross country with these two.
2. Did Ye Hear Mammy Died? by Seamas O’Reilly: Seamas O’Reilly is notorious for his Twitter recount of the time he took ketamine (dyed green in celebration of St. Patrick’s Day) and was unfortunately called into a catering job where he served the Irish president. In his first memoir, he deals with much more tender subjects, but with the same level of hilarity and gallows humor we’ve come to expect from the Irish. O’Reilly is the third youngest of eleven children (only 5-years-old when he lost his mother), who all had a childhood backdrop filled with subtle violence and bomb scares as they grew up at the tail end of The Troubles. Conditioned by this social upheaval, it still couldn’t prepare them for the loss of their mother to cancer. O’Reilly not only touches on how his grief felt false in comparison to his older siblings since he was so young when his mother died, but also on how children tend to view death, how the idea of heaven is confusing no matter how comforting adults might think it is, how those that have not experienced grief don’t understand what minuscule things can sting the most, and how untrustworthy and treacherous memories can be. If you think this might be too sad of a read for you, consider this. . . the title was taken from the author’s family’s repeated account of an incident at his mother’s funeral. In a desire to fit in, or perhaps in an attempt to make more sense of the passing of his mother, young Seamas traipses around the house during his mother’s wake, mimicking what he’s heard and asking any adult who will listen, “Did ye hear mammy died?”, and leaving them partially horrified at the casualness of his inquiry, and shocked at what mannerisms/sayings a child will pick up from the adults around them.
3. City of Refuge by Tom Piazza: I was only 13 when Katrina hit land. I remember watching Anderson Cooper giving live coverage of the devastation after the waters began to subside while in the background the corpse of a man on the hood of a car laid rotting in the August sun. I remember a few kids enrolling in my middle school for a week or two, and then being pulled out again when either their own house or the house of a relative made it through the natural disaster unscathed and they could move back home. I remember certain adults in my small South Central Texas hometown (Because you know the rule: The farther you are geographically from something, the stronger the opinion you have on it) saying behind closed doors that they wished these Lousianians would just go home. I remember not a word being said about this past behavior when Hurricane Harvey hit Houston and Southeast Texas, and some Katrina survivors once again crossed state lines, but this time to lend a hand. I also remember Barbara Bush’s unsavory remarks about the unnatural hospitality that made the evacuees want to stay in Texas. I found aspects of all of these memories and so much more in City of Refuge. While this is a work of fiction, the stories in it are very real and very personal. We follow two families, one white and one black. Piazza gives us familial snapshots of them before Katrina, during the storm, and of course the aftermath. One family is spared, while the other barely makes it out alive while still somehow managing to muster up some resilience. (I assume my readers are smart, so I’ll leave it up to you to decide which of the families fares worse than the other). Above all though, Piazza paints us a portrait of a city that could’ve been completely lost. A whole history and culture gone with the flood waters, and that is a level of gravity I couldn’t grasp at 13.
4. A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders: I’d be lying if I said that going back to school hasn’t crossed my mind during the past year. Then I come back to reality and remember I never learned anything in college, and if I hadn’t had an iron fist around my love of literature from the beginning the professors would’ve completely destroyed it. Besides, I’ve learned far more from what I choose to pick up on my own to read instead of whatever was assigned in the classroom. I remember when I first read Saunders, and I found out he taught creative writing at Syracuse. I was jealous of those kids who got first hand access to his wisdom. This book is as close as I’ll get to sitting in his classroom. There’s humanity here in these pages as Saunders takes us through some important short works of Russian literature. As a writer himself, he certainly doesn’t have to try very hard to convince us about his own love of literature, or that every human being is worthy of attention. Readers are even given their own praise for their understanding of how books make their lives just a little more expansive, generous, and interesting. Definitely a book for those who love to read, even if you’re not that interested in Russian lit.
George, where the hell were you in my early twenties? I could’ve used your particular brand of guidance.
5. In the Weeds by Tom Vitale: I will forever be grieving the loss of Anthony Bourdain. As long as they keep writing books about this son of a bitch, I’ll most likely keep reading them. I wish this one in particular had been available before the release of Roadrunner, and the Woolever oral biography. Although, neither of them are bad and I recommend them to fellow Bourdain fans. Just don’t get me started on the Leerhsen unauthorized biography. Man, you could’ve followed in Tony’s footsteps anywhere in the world, and you chose to go to the same hotel room he hanged himself in? Please. . . I’d much rather read what a member of Bourdain’s crew has to say about the years following him across the world than anyone else. I think we often forget that Tony was part of a team. He didn’t dream up and pick episodes out of thin air without the help of a group of close confidants. As a director, Tom Vitale was right in the middle of the action. This memoir has everything you want. Travel, drugs, drink, exotic meats (one of which just so happened to be an endangered species. It was an accident!), camaraderie, controlled chaos, and above all what I find to be an honest portrait of the man who showed us the world through our TV screens. To be honest. . . if Vitale wrote another memoir without Bourdain as a primary focus, I’d eat that up too.
6. The Godfather by Mario Puzo: Can you believe I’m 30-years-old and have never seen one of the greatest films ever made all the way through? Well, I remedied that this past year by not only watching all 3 Godfather films, but reading the novel as well. It’s not hard to understand why Puzo’s creation made a great film trilogy (or rather one film, and a prequel if we wanna be honest here). A saga full of love, terror, grief, brotherhood, ambition, and quiet revenge in a powerful family of organized crime. Puzo tears the sheep’s wool off the Italian mafia, laying bare the humanity (or frank lack of it) underneath, which made this 500 pager a breeze to get through. I highly recommend reading it even if you’ve seen the films already. I’m sure many of you won’t protest in having a little revisit with Michael Corleone.
7. How to Live: Or a Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer by Sarah Bakewell: “Shelby, why would you want to read a book about a less than well known French Renaissance writer if you’ve never read him before?” Listen. . . anyone is free to read Montaigne’s essays, but that is a 1,000+ page feat I am not willing to even begin. Enter Sarah Bakewell, who’s written a rather enjoyable biography on Michel Eyquem de Montaigne that Anthony Bourdain loved, and you’ve got me sold. Bakewell takes Montaigne and slices him up into bite sized pieces, all the while providing the reader with some history on the man and the world he inhabited, giving a unique 21st century view on how he contributed to the world. Montaigne was a nobleman who laid himself bare on the page, and is attributed as the first person to write in a stream of consciousness, and create a collection of essays. His writing touches on dealing with people, violence, grief, children, pets, aliments, religion. . .everything that comes with living a life. Being so open with his thoughts on his own life has made Montaigne a man of the ages for centuries, which is why you still find people reading his essays even today.
Let me share one of my favorite quotes with you. . .Montaigne on the subject of lovemaking:
“Sometimes they go to it with only one buttock. What if she eats your bread with the sauce of a more agreeable imagination?”
Ah, if only Montaigne were alive today! I’d show him TikTok then turn him loose with it in a matter of minutes. People might not write as much as they used to, but they sure do like to share aspects of their life and humanity (no matter how false it might be at times) to the masses with short form content. He’d probably froth at the mouth, then have a heart attack before he could even press record.
8. A Certain Hunger by Chelsea G. Summers: Dorothy Daniels is a food writer with a taste for human flesh and internal organs, she stumbles on a cannibalistic opportunity, and in her middle-age she’s shameless about finally embracing her female superiority and well tended psychopathy. She’s writing her memoirs from a jail cell in Bedford Hills Prison. Admittedly, this fictional account of a female serial killer is a little heavy handed with the purple prose at times, but understandably necessary in terms of showcasing the loss and heightened desire of life, blood, and food while locked in a cell. I’m here for fictional women behaving badly. Not only are they a delight on the surface, but I enjoy subtly identifying with these femme fatales, and simultaneously feeling morally superior. That’s the power of literature!
“Life erupts with contradictions, and we contain multitudes – in my case quite literally, as I’ve eaten them.”
Check out 2021’s “Best of” list by clicking here.
Want to know what else I read in 2022 that didn’t make this list?
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You’ll notice that I’ve stopped linking to Amazon pages for the books listed above. Instead, you will find links to bookshop.org pages (when I could find them). This is an e-commerce start up that has made it their mission to give independent bookstores a fighting chance in this ever increasing online world of bookshopping that Amazon has dominated for so long. I am not sponsored by them. I don’t get any money for writing this silly little book blog, but I am a girl who loves her independent bookstores. So, if you’re looking to buy a new book via the interwebs, please check them out. You can even search for an indie store to support, and they will receive the full profit off of your order!
Like Wild Onions 