What I read in 2022 & What I plan to read in 2023

Reading is much more than a hobby for many of us, right? It's the equivalent of a runner's pre-marathon workouts. It's breathing (essential) and also eating chocolate (indulgent). Reading is such an important part of the work I do -- and the way I want to live my life -- that I have long kept lists of what I read each year.

So I suppose it's natural that I've now evolved into the kind of reader who plans what she's going to read each year.

Not that I always fulfill my reading campaign promises (you can see here what I planned to read in last year's reading roundup) but having a plan helps me map out the genres I want to immerse myself in.

I always know I will read books in Italian (mainly 20th century fiction by emerging or overlooked Italian women authors). I also know that I will do a fair amount of reading connected to my translation work, in particular this year books about the Holocaust since I have an NEA grant in literature to translate the short stories of Edith Bruck, a transnational Italian writer whose work is often inspired by her deportation at age 12 to Auschwitz. 

Lastly, I write memoir so I read memoir or works with aspects of memoir. And this year I read Bonnie Tsui's Why We Swim, and Italian Ways: On and Off the Rails by Tim Parks, as well as my first Emmanuel Carrere: Lives Other than My Own, plus I re-read Il sistema periodico (=The Periodic Table) by Primo Levi.

Reading is tied to obsessions, right? So I've become obsessed with dual-language editions but not actually in Italian and English (though I spent a lot of time reading English translations of Italian works, with the original in one hand and the translation in the other). Instead, I have come to love French-Italian dual language books (all because I bought one by Erri de Luca on a whim in Montreal a few years ago), and hunted them down in Florence this past summer by visiting the French bookstore in Piazza Ognissanti.

I also returned to an author who mesmerizes me: Patrick Modiano. (To be clear, I read his work in English, not French -- let there be no mistake!). New books of his that I read in 2022:

Invisible Ink

The Black Notebook

Dora Bruder

This year, I did tackle a whole new genre for me: Graphic novels. And that includes the best of the best: Maus (which, of course, is also connected to my reading on the Shoah).

You'll see below if I read the books I set out to read -- in some cases, yes, in others no. But the most important thing is that I set out to read "any book my father owned or recommended (including perhaps Alan Turing: The Enigma)" and I did just that (including the Turing biography). I wanted to immerse myself in the Michael F. Bonner book collection in the year following his death, and I DID.

Also, a note about the numbers: I read about 40 books, though that doesn't account totally for all of the books I re-read but only in part. I would like to read 50 books one year, which I believe is the annual total for my Uncle Larry (and for my father? Who knows how many books he put away each year?).

The year ahead could be daunting as I feel I need to get serious about reading works that will help me with my translation work. I also feel the press of classics I haven't gotten around to.

Without further ado, here is a partial log of what I read in 2022 ...

(If I list it, you can consider it an endorsement, in the event you're looking for suggestions)

What I actually read (English):

*Forty-one False Starts (essays) by Janet Malcolm (Nonfiction)

*Alan Turing: The Enigma (biography)

*Italian Ways: On and Off the Rails by Tim Parks

*Why We Swim by Bonnie Tsui

*Occupation Journal by Jean Giono

*Lives Other than My Own by Emmanuel Carrere

*The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat (Sacks)

*The Secret History by Donna Tartt (about Bennington!) (Fiction)

*The Torqued Man by Peter Mann (ditto)

*If You Kept A Record of Sins by Andrea Bajani and translated gloriously by Elizabeth Harris

*We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

*Krapp's Last Tape by Samuel Beckett

*Night Boat to Tangier by Kevin Barry (permission given to all to stop reading my blog right now to go read this book right now)

*Against Forgetting: 20th Century Poetry of Witness

("This anthology was born of a desire to gather works of poetic witness to the sufferings and struggles of the 20th century," reads the introduction, and the compendium includes this line of verse from Abba Kovner: "Sorrow already on his clothes/Like an eternal crease.")

What I actually read (Italian):

*Accabadora by Michele Murgia (Fiction)

*Dora Bruder by Patrick Modiano (In Italian, yes, just because)

*Le otto montagne by Paolo Cognetti

*Come una rana d'inverno: Conversazioni con tre sopravvissute by Daniela Padoan (Nonfiction)

*Sono Francesco by Edith Bruck

*"Inverno in Abruzzo" ("Winter in Abruzzo") an essay by Natalia Ginzburg that I re-read every year or so if for no other reason than she writes, "...era quello il tempo migliore della mia vita e solo adesso che m'è sfuggito per sempre, solo adesso lo so." = It was the best time of my life and only now that it has gone from me forever, only now do I realize it.)

Graphic novels that I read (NEW CATEGORY!!!):

*The Complete Maus by Art Spiegelman (file under essential reading for any human being on Earth)

*Fun Home by Alison Bechdel

Dual-language books (NEW CATEGORY!!!):

*La plage/La Spiaggia by Cesare Pavese

*Placeres carnicos/Meaty Pleasures by Monica Lavin, translated by Dorothy Potter Snyder

(This category in 2022 also included quite a few Italian-English combos, such as La stanza del vescovo, Il sistema periodico and Lettera alla madre, as part of my on-the-job translational studies, but I am particularly interested in the French-Italian editions).

What I re-read (Italian):

*Se questo è un uomo, Levi

*Il sistema periodico, Levi

*Lettera alla madre by Edith Bruck

*A ciascuno il suo by Leonardo Sciascia (birthday treat; I sometimes re-read his novel, Il giorno della civetta, in which he wrote this inimitable thought: "Niente è la morte in confronto alla vergogna." You can translate it like this: Death is nothing compared to shame. And there you were thinking nothing could be worse than death, right?)

What I re-read (English):

*A Christmas Carol -- Dickens

Some of the books I'd planned to read but did not:

The Spy Who Came in From the Cold 

Emily Wilson's translation of The Odyssey

*The Ones Who Don't Say They Love You by Maurice Carlos Ruffin

Books I began but did not finish:

*What You Have Heard Is True 

*The Nasty Bits by Anthony Bourdain

*This Is Your Brain On Music

What I'd like to read in 2023:

*Horizontal Vertical: A City Called Mexico by Juan Villoro (began it last year but had to return it to the library before I was finished -- it's brilliant!)

*A book by new Nobel Laureate Annie Ernaux

*The Ones Who Don't Say They Love You by Maurice Carlos Ruffin

*Good Morning, Midnight by Jean Rhys

*Emily Wilson's translation of the Odyssey

*Books about Patrick Modiano (and probably by him, too)

*The Devil Finds Work by James Baldwin

*Graphic novels of the caliber of Maus and Fun Home (SUGGESTIONS, PLEASE!)

*Se consideri le colpe by Andrea Bajani (in the original)

*The Friends of Eddie Coyle (file under 'books from my father's library')

*The bible in Italian (I've never read it in Italian, now have I? So I bought a copy this year)

*The Letters of Alberto Moravia and Elsa Morante (Quando verrai saro’ quasi felice)

*Clint Smith's How the Word Is Passed

So what did you read this year? What can you recommend, especially in the genres of graphic novel, memoir and spooky post-war psychological thrillers (fiction or nonfiction)?

And what do you plan to read in 2023? So exciting! Another year of reading awaits us, my friends.

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