Eight months ago, I made a resolution to read at least fifty books this year. I wrote the resolution down on a piece of paper, and I put the paper up on the fridge. Whatever else the paper might or might not say about what I may or may not do this year—I couldn’t say. For reasons not difficult to imagine, I avoid looking at it.
But as of a week ago, I can claim at least this: I met my fifty-book goal, thanks to an assist from my local library’s Libby app. Much of this reading happened over the summer, and I expect I’ll round out 2022 somewhere in the ballpark of seventy to seventy-five books. So in celebration of this momentous follow-through in at least one area of my life—and also because the internet tells me that people like listicles—I have prepared just such a listicle below. In it are some of the books I read this year, ranked mostly according to how much I would recommend them. Also, however, they are ranked according to other factors, like whether I have something to say about them, or whether I found them a little bit interesting, or whether I felt otherwise compelled to include them here.
Basically what I’m saying is good luck finding a consistent set of criteria. However, in that respect at least, I imagine the experience will be rather like reading a ranked listicle on Buzzfeed or The A. V. Club.
Top 5:
1. Gideon the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir (2019)
It’s an exercise in restraint that sci-fi and fantasy (SFF) don’t dominate this list. Still, among the SFF novels I read this year, only Gideon the Ninth, Muir’s debut novel, made me desperately wish I were teaching the university fantasy course this coming semester. Blending necromancy and space travel, a goofy-weird aesthetic and a healthy dose of sapphic romance, Gideon the Ninth and its sequel, Harrow the Ninth, are bonkers fun. 10/10, would read again.
2. There There, Tommy Orange (2018)
I remember the hype when this one, another debut, came out four years ago. It wasn’t until this June, however, that I finally got around to reading it. It doesn’t disappoint. In fact, I can probably count on a single hand the number of books that have made me audibly gasp and then, just a few pages later, cry. Orange’s novel, about the runup to a powwow in Oakland, California, more than earns its digit in that respect.
3. Everything and Less: The Novel in the Age of Amazon, Mark McGurl (2021)
I go through phases in my reading. In the present case, McGurl’s literary history about contemporary fiction touched off a rather abrupt interest in Amazon. The history is plenty interesting in its own right, not least because it theorizes the ways Amazon’s massive market share has warped book-buying and book-writing. But what really takes the cake is the serious attention McGurl reserves for a writer whose name I haven’t heard since the so-called PuppyGate of the 2016 Hugo Awards, Chuck Tingle.
Mark my words: literary criticism would enjoy a far wider audience if scholars spent more time discussing the merits of such esteemed “Tinglers” as Space Raptor Butt Invasion and Slammed in the Butt by the Prehistoric Megalodon Shark amid Accusations of Jumping over Him.
4. Salvage the Bones, Jesmyn Ward (2011)
It’s tempting to state the obvious and leave it that: Ward’s novel about a Black family in southern Mississippi during the days leading up to Hurricane Katrina is superb. It’s moving. It’s lyrical. But when I reread it this April, I did so coming fresh from Madeline Miller’s brilliant retellings of Homeric stories as well as from an abiding obsession with the video game Hades. Both of these only increased my appreciation of Ward’s creative engagement with Greek mythology.
5. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, Robin Wall Kimmerer (2013)
Except as a sort of occupational hazard, I don’t usually go for collections of essays. Braiding Sweetgrass is an exception. Moving between memoir, science, and Indigenous epistemologies in its panoramic account of the world in its profound and sacred interconnectivity, Kimmerer’s book is—I should stop myself. It’s one of those books that’s easy to lapse into cliché when describing.
Honorable Mentions:
1. The Dragon Republic, R. F. Kuang (2019). Great fantasy novel, sequel to 2018’s The Poppy War. How is it fair that the author is only 26?
2. The 1619 Project: A New American Origin Story, ed. Nikole Hannah-Jones (2021). Worth reading on its own merits, definitely worth reading because it scares conservatives.
3. Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?, Mark Fisher (2009). Not so oldie but definitely a goodie. Traveled like lightning in the wake of the 2008 recession and is seeing fresh life again these days. Can’t figure out why.
4. Harrow, Joy Williams (2021). Man, what a weird book. 6/10.
5. State of Fear, Michael Crichton (2004). As the young people say: I can’t even with this book. Whatever your opinion of Crichton’s more famous stuff, can we all agree that a novel about well-funded ecoterrorist cells trying to dupe the US public into taking action on climate change is… huh. Well, maybe the problem is that we don’t all agree that this book is absurd. In any case, the fact that Jim Inhofe, a US senator from Oklahoma and GOP member, cited this novel extensively to his colleagues back in 2005, as proof of the climate-change hoax, tells you all you really need to know about it.

Ben DeVries (’15) graduated with degrees in literature and writing. He and his wife Jes, a fellow Calvin grad, live in Champaign, Illinois, where Ben is looking to add some letters behind his name. On the academic off-seasons, he reads fantasy and works as a glorified “go-fer” at the Champaign Park District. He’s been known to make a mean deep-dish pizza.
Glad to see Gideon taking her rightful place at the top of your list! I re-read Gideon the Ninth and Harrow the Ninth earlier this summer, in preparation for the third book coming out in September….and as soon as I finished Harrow, I started Gideon again. Obsessed.
I’ve also been recommending Braiding Sweetgrass to everyone I know, and also haven’t come up with a great pitch other than, “It’s gorgeous. Just read it.”
Becky Chambers’ Wayfarers series is also one of my go-to recommendations for SFF. They’re space operas on an intimate and deeply caring scale — human, compassionate, and as cozy as you can get when telling stories set among the stars.
I haven’t read Wayfarers, but I’ll definitely add it to the list. lol maybe Libby can help me out here too . . .