Reading 2022

It was difficult to resist using “Reading 2022” as the title of this column. If only, I thought, as I typed the words on the page, we could read the year that is unfolding before us. Since we cannot, we read books. Now, when the days are short, and the nights are (too) long. When our breath rises in the air and the chill finds its way through layers of puffy clothing. Brew a cup of tea, pull on a warm sweater and lose yourself in a book.

This is the time of year when magazines, journals, podcasts, newspapers, and bookstores publish their lists of the best books of the past year, and the books being published and anticipated in the spring of 2022. The question is, with so many choices, what to read?

It would be difficult for me to list only 10 books that I have enjoyed last year as I spend so much time reading. One of the books I particularly enjoyed was "Shuggie Bain" by Douglas Stuart, winner of the 2020 Booker Prize. He has a new book coming out this spring, titled "Young Mungo." Damon Galgut, a South African author, received the Booker Prize last year for "The Promise." This is the third time Galgut has been shortlisted for the prestigious prize and I read four of his previous books along with "The Promise." "Black Buck" by Mateo Askaripour, "The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois" by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers and "Beneficence" by Meredith Hall are among the other books I recommend.

If you want to read and then discuss the book you are reading there are many book clubs in the Lakes Region. The Belknap Mill Page Turners Book Club is a history-focused book club that meets monthly. The 2022 program is beginning soon and you can learn more and register by visiting belknapmill.org/page-turners-book-club.

The Laconia Public Library has a mystery book group that meets mid-week in the late afternoon. On Wednesday, Jan. 12, from 4 to 5 p.m., they will be discussing "If We Were Villains" by M.L. Rio. “Oliver Marks who has just served ten years in jail — for a murder he may or may not have committed. On the day he's released, he's greeted by the man who put him in prison. Detective Colborne is retiring, but before he does, he wants to know what really happened.”

The Meredith Public Library has a science-fiction and fantasy book group. The first book they are reading in 2022 is "The Bear and the Nightingale" by Katherine Arden. This is a hybrid group and will meet both in person and via Zoom. In "The Bear and the Nightingale," "winter lasts most of the year at the edge of the Russian wilderness, and in the long nights, Vasilisa and her siblings love to gather by the fire to listen to their nurse’s fairy tales about Frost, the blue-eyed winter demon. Wise Russians fear him, for he claims unwary souls, and they honor the spirits that protect their homes from evil. Vasilisa’s widowed father brings home a new wife from Moscow. Fiercely devout, Vasilisa’s stepmother forbids her family from honoring their household spirits and Vasilisa must call upon dangerous gifts she has long concealed — to protect her family.”

If you are interested in reading about books that are being published, signup for the Bayswater Books newsletter. Bayswater, in Center Harbor, also has an active book group and what they are reading can be found by visiting bayswaterbooks.com. The Innisfree Bookshop’s newsletter is titled Shelf Awareness and you can sign up by visiting innisfreebookshop.com. And, of course, you can purchase your books through these local shops, supporting two of New Hampshire’s independent bookstores.

If you want a challenge, you might attempt "Ulysses" by James Joyce. The book was published in Paris 100 ago on Feb. 2, 1922, the day of Joyce's 40th birthday. "Ulysses" has been considered on the “most important works of modernist literature.”

At the beginning of the lockdown for COVID in March 2020, A Public Space, an independent nonprofit publisher of an award-winning literary, arts, and culture magazine, extended an invitation to join Yiyun Li in reading "War and Peace." “Tolstoy Together” was originally envisioned as a moment each day to gather as a community. The virtual book club continued for 85 days, and the experience has been compiled into a book, "Tolstoy Together: 85 Days of War and Peace with Yiyun Li."

“There is no Frigate like a Book To take us Lands away.” — Emily Dickinson, Amherst Manuscript #462.

What are you reading? What books and authors do you recommend? I would love to know.

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Listen to Elizabeth on the Short Fuse Podcast found on Apple or Spotify, follow her on Instagram @elizh24 or send her a note at elizabeth@laconiadailysun.com. She is an author and journalist. Her books include Ned O’Gorman: A Glance Back, a book she edited (Easton Studio Press, 2015), A Day with Bonefish Joe (David R. Godine, 2015), Queen Anne’s Lace and Wild Blackberry Pie, (Thornwillow Press, 2011).