2022 reading list

This was a very busy year for me and my writing, but grateful for all the time I spent reading and then reading some more. It was novel to read a novel outside my own four walls and even home country. From travel reads, to bedtime books, to lunchtime poems, to library picks, here are my top twelve books old and new that got me through these twelve months (I struggled to whittle down to ten).

  • All Down Darkness Wide – Seán Hewitt (read my thoughts in The Skinny)
  • Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe – Benjamin Alire Sáenz
  • Young Mungo – Douglas Stuart
  • The Nerves and Their Endings – Jessica Gaitán Johannesson
  • There Are More Things – Yara Rodrigues Fowler (read my thoughts in The Skinny)
  • Some Integrity – Padraig Regan
  • England’s Green – Zaffar Kunial
  • Letters Home – Jennifer Wong
  • Hourglass – Keiran Goddard
  • Assembly – Natasha Brown
  • Another Country – James Baldwin
  • Goodbye to Berlin – Christopher Isherwood

Here is everything I read in 2022:

  1. Poems selected by Alan Hollinghurst – A.E. Housman
  2. Second Place – Rachel Cusk
  3. Some Integrity – Padraig Regan
  4. New Skin for the Old Ceremony – Arun Sood
  5. Winter Trees – Sylvia Plath
  6. The Tempest – William Shakespeare
  7. Nevada – Imogen Binnie
  8. Physical – Andrew McMillan
  9. The Last Days of Terranova – Manuel Rivas
  10. The Arena of the Unwell – Liam Konemann
  11. There Is (Still) Love Here – Dean Atta
  12. These Bodies of Water – Sabrina Mahfouz
  13. In Search of Equilibrium – Theresa Lola
  14. England’s Green – Zaffar Kunial
  15. Another Country – James Baldwin
  16. Selected Poems – T.S. Eliot
  17. Hourglass – Keiran Goddard
  18. All Down Darkness Wide – Seán Hewitt
  19. Sterling Karat Gold – Isabel Waidner
  20. Why I’m Like Tequila – Lupe Mendez
  21. Carrie Kills A Man – Carrie Marshall
  22. The Pharmacist – Rachelle Atalla
  23. The Giant Dark – Sarvat Hasin
  24. Bolla – Pajtim Statovci
  25. Like A Tree, Walking – Vahni Capildeo
  26. Standing Heavy – GauZ
  27. The Nerves and Their Endings – Jessica Gaitán Johannesson
  28. X – Davey Davis
  29. Libertie – Kaitlyn Greenidge
  30. Another Way to Split Water – Alycia Pirmohamed
  31. Tiepolo Blue – James Cahill
  32. Boy Friends – Michael Pedersen
  33. How to Make a Basket – Jazz Money
  34. Assembly – Natasha Brown
  35. Dancer from the Dance – Andrew Holleran
  36. We Move – Gurnaik Johal
  37. Quiet – Victoria Adukwei Bulley 
  38. Slum Virgin – Gabriela Cabezón Cámara
  39. An Exciting and Vivid Inner Life – Paul Dalla Rosa
  40. Dark Neighbourhood – Vanessa Onwuemezi
  41. Elena Knows – Claudia Piñeiro
  42. Just By Looking at Him – Ryan O’Connell
  43. Anoche Cuando Dormía – Antonio Machado
  44. No Man’s Land – Anne East
  45. from murky waters, we rise – Etzali Hernández
  46. Lions and Shadows – Christopher Isherwood
  47. Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
  48. Fishing In The Aftermath – Salena Godden
  49. Teen Couple Have Fun Outdoors – Aravind Jayan
  50. Meditación Fronteriza – Norma Elia Cantú
  51. Gingerbread – Helen Oyeyemi
  52. Goodbye to Berlin – Christopher Isherwood
  53. Bang – Daniel Peña
  54. More Fiyah – edited by Kayo Chingonyi
  55. Rattlesnake Allegory – Joe Jiménez
  56. There Are More Things – Yara Rodrigues Fowler
  57. Aristotle and Dante Dive Into The Waters of The World – Benjamin Alire Sáenz
  58. Christopher and His Kind – Christopher Isherwood
  59. All The Names Given – Raymond Antrobus
  60. Kismet – Jennifer Lee Tsai
  61. Bless The Daughter Raised By A Voice In Her Head – Warsan Shire
  62. The Sunlight Pilgrims – Jenni Fagan
  63. The Buried Giant – Kazuo Ishiguro
  64. This Fruiting Body – Caleb Parkin
  65. Selah – Keith Jarrett
  66. Peaces – Helen Oyeyemi
  67. Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe – Benjamin Alire Sáenz
  68. Honorifics – Cynthia Miller
  69. Blood Salt Spring – Hannah Lavery
  70. Tender – Ariana Harwicz
  71. Loose Woman – Sandra Cisneros
  72. Nudes – Elle Nash
  73. Limbic – Peter Scalpello
  74. Young Mungo – Douglas Stuart
  75. Letters Home – Jennifer Wong
  76. Brickmakers – Selva Almada
  77. After the Formalities – Anthony Anaxagorou
  78. An Eye for An Eye for An Eye – Ellen Renton
  79. Shuggie Bain – Douglas Stuart
  80. Mrs Death Misses Death – Salena Godden
  81. Wake me when I’m gone – Odafe Atogun
  82. Klara and the Sun – Kazuo Ishiguro
  83. Cosmogramma – Courttia Newland
  84. Mona – Pola Oloixarac
  85. Meanwhile – Cynthia Rodriguez
  86. Black Lion – Sicelo Mbatha

2021 reading list

Well it was another strange year, but like the past few years, reading has been a tonic, a friend, a portal to the outside world. Here are my top ten picks of books both old and new from poetry to memoir to fiction.

  • A River Called Time by Courttia Newland.
  • Lote by Shola von Reinhold.
  • Detransition Baby by Torrey Peters.
  • Bitterhall by Helen McClory.
  • Tell Me How It Ends by Valeria Luiselli.
  • Small Bodies of Water by Nina Mingya Powles.
  • Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan.
  • Magnolia by Nina Mingya Powles.
  • Homie by Danez Smith.
  • sikfan glaschu by Sean Wai Keung.

Here is everything I read in 2021:

  1. Byobu – Ida Vitale
  2. Night Sky with Exit Wounds – Ocean Vuong
  3. Olga Dies Dreaming – Xochitl Gonzalez
  4. Faces In The Crowd – Valeria Luiselli
  5. Experiments in Imagining Otherwise – Lola Olufemi
  6. The Private Joys of Nnenna Maloney – Okechukwu Nzelu
  7. Rotten Days in Late Summer – Ralf Webb
  8. The Story of My Teeth – Valeria Luiselli
  9. A Recipe for Sorcery – Vanessa Kisuule
  10. Notes on Loneliness – Daniel Cockrill
  11. Flip The Script – Arusa Qureshi
  12. Blind Spot – Maud Rowell
  13. Swimming in the Dark – Tomasz Jędrowski
  14. Tell Me How It Ends – Valeria Luiselli
  15. How We Are Translated – Jessica Gaitán Johannesson
  16. C+nto – Joelle Taylor
  17. Kindred – Octavia Butler
  18. The Rabbit Magician Plate – Judith Kazantzis
  19. The Gospel According to Cane – Courttia Newland
  20. Autumn – Ali Smith
  21. The New University – James Coe
  22. A Thousand Mornings – Mary Oliver
  23. Signs Preceding the End of the World – Yuri Herrera
  24. The End – Katie Goh
  25. Deep Wheel Orcadia – Harry Josephine Giles
  26. Magnolia – Nina Mingya Powles
  27. Queer Poets of Color – Christopher Soto
  28. The Selfless Act of Breathing – JJ Bola
  29. Keeping The House – Tice Cin
  30. A Blood Condition – Kayo Chingonyi
  31. Quesadillas – Juan Pablo Villalobos
  32. Morgan & Me – Hamish Whyte
  33. Detransition, Baby – Torrey Peters
  34. Ballad of a Happy Immigrant – Leo Boix
  35. A Boy’s Own Story – Edmund White
  36. The Tradition – Jericho Brown
  37. Paul – Daisy Lafarge
  38. The One Who Wrote Destiny – Nikesh Shukla
  39. The Appendix – Liam Konemann
  40. Burnt sugar – Avni Doshi
  41. Love That Journey For Me – Emily Garside
  42. A River Called Time – Courttia Newland
  43. Rendang – Will Harris
  44. Under the Blue – Oana Aristide
  45. The Topeka School – Ben Lerner
  46. The Prosperities of Perpetual Light – Julian Aguon
  47. Small Bodies of Water – Nina Mingya Powles
  48. Sincerity – Carol Ann Duffy
  49. To Bury Our Fathers – Sergio Ramírez
  50. The Carrying – Ada Limón
  51. Granta 155: Best of Young Spanish-Language Novelists
  52. A Body Made of You – Melissa Lee-Houghton
  53. The Country Girls – Edna O’Brien
  54. pandemonium – Andrew McMillan
  55. Everyone In This Room Will Someday Be Dead – Emily Austin
  56. We Have Always Been Here – Samra Habib
  57. A Choosing – Liz Lochhead
  58. HWFG – Chris McQueer
  59. The Actual – Inua Ellams
  60. The Vanishing Half – Brit Bennett
  61. sikfan glaschu – Sean Wai Keung
  62. 100 Boyfriends – Brontez Purnell
  63. Exciting Times – Naoise Dolan 
  64. House of Names – Colm Tóibín 
  65. Checkpoint – Joe Donnelly
  66. Tongues of Fire – Seán Hewitt
  67. Call Me By Your Name – André Aciman
  68. Mexica Mix – Marina Sánchez
  69. Bitterhall – Helen McClory
  70. Homie – Danez Smith
  71. Dryland – Sara Jaffe
  72. Teeth in the Back of My Neck – Monika Radojevic
  73. Where the Crawdads Sing – Delia Owens
  74. Occupation -Julián Fuks
  75. Felicity – Mary Oliver
  76. Scabby Queen – Kirstin Innes
  77. My Darling from the Lions – Rachel Long
  78. Postcolonial Love Poem – Natalie Diaz
  79. Lairies – Steve Hollyman
  80. Havana Year Zero – Karla Suárez
  81. The Opposite of Fate – Amy Tan
  82. Empty Houses – Brenda Navarro
  83. Open Water – Caleb Azumah Nelson
  84. The Speculative Book 2021 – Various Writers
  85. Luckenbooth – Jenni Fagan
  86. Before the Coffee Gets Cold: Tales from the Cafe –  Toshikazu Kawaguchi
  87. Real Life- Brandon Taylor
  88. Fourteen Poems – Issues 1, 2, 3
  89. This Is Not About Me – Janice Galloway
  90. On the Edges of Vision – Helen McClory
  91. Lote – Shola von Reinhold

2019 reading list

What a year I had with all things writing, workshopping, editing, performing, and of course, reading. My top read of 2019 goes to the groundbreaking and utterly delicious Paul takes the form of a mortal girl by Andrea Lawlor. They have created such an intersting, nostalgic, sexy and moving work of fiction that centres itself in an unapologetically queer world.

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Here is the complete list of what I read in 2019:

  1. The Goldbum Variations – Helen McClory
  2. Extra Teeth Magazine – Issue #1
  3. The Mars Room – Rachel Kushner
  4. Giovanni’s Room – James Baldwin
  5. A Single Man – Christopher Isherwood
  6. It’s Not About the Burqa – edited by Mariam Khan
  7. Ceremony – various authors + me
  8. The Rental Heart and Other Fairytales – Kirsty Logan
  9. Escape from Earth – Fraser MacDonald
  10. The Seafarers – Stephen Rutt
  11. A Superior Spectre – Angela Meyer
  12. Stroke – Ricky Monahan Brown
  13. Blushing Is For Sinners – Tracy Patrick
  14. All the Time We Thought We Had – Gordon Darroch
  15. Threads of Life – Clare Hunter
  16. Overlander – Alan Brown
  17. Nevertheless – Shane Strachan
  18. The Doll Factory – Elizabeth Macneal
  19. A Code for Carolyn: A Genomic Thriller – V. Anne Smith
  20. Lotería Cards and Fortune Poems: A Book of Lives – Juan Felipe Herrera
  21. The Line Becomes a River – Francisco Cantú
  22. Amphibian – Christina Neuwirth
  23. The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories
  24. The Hate U Give – Angie Thomas
  25. Gutter Magazine – Issue #18
  26. Trout, Belly Up – Rodrigo Fuentes
  27. Tokyo Ueno Station – Miri Yu
  28. Vicky Romeo Plus Joolz – Ely Percy
  29. We Are The End – Gonzalo C. Garcia
  30. Far Off Places (literary magazine)
  31. I Am A Pretty Circler – Iain Morrison
  32. A Star Called Henry – Roddy Doyle
  33. The Refugees – Viet Thanh Nguyen
  34. Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl – Andrea Lawlor
  35. Memoirs of a Polar Bear – Yoko Tawada
  36. Let Me Tell You This – Nadine Aisha Jassat
  37. Wain – Rachel Plummer
  38. Conversations with Friends – Sally Rooney
  39. Milkman – Anna Burns
  40. We Were Always Here – various authors + me

2020 reading list

This was truly a year like no other. Like many, I would never have predicted 2020 to turn out the way it did. I vividly can recall how I rang in 2020 on December 31st which was such a far cry to what today looks like. As trying as this year has been, I am grateful for the opportunities of growth in my writing career and for actively broadening my reading choices. I am thankful for these novelists, poets, and writers who helped guide me through the ups and downs of 2020. I am thankful for all the opportunities to speak, perform, and publish my own writing. Mostly, I am just thankful for writing and words and their ability to serve as a tonic and escape for me.

This year my top pick has to go to ‘Afropean’ by Johny Pitts which is not like anything I have read before. I don’t read much nonfiction but am grateful I spent time with this wonderful exploration of Black Europe. A truly eye opening read! I look forward to what Pitts does next.

Honourable mentions:

  • Dead Girls, Selva Almada (translator, Annie McDermott)
  • The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
  • Dominicana, Angie Cruz
  • Rainbow Milk, Paul Mendez
  • I Won’t Expect Anyone to Believe Me, Juan Pablo Villalobos (translator, Daniel Hahn)

A hand holding a copy of a book, Afropean by Johny Pitts.

Here is everything I read in 2020:

  1. Cockfight – María Fernanda Ampuero
  2. The Edwin Morgan Twenties: Scotland – Edwin Morgan
  3. If You Kept A Record of Sins – Andrea Bajani
  4. I Won’t Expect Anyone to Believe Me – Juan Pablo Villalobos
  5. The Havoc of Choice – Wanjiru Koinange
  6. Afropean – Johnny Pitts
  7. Memorial – Bryan Washington
  8. Where The Memory Was – Hibaq Osman
  9. Poor – Caleb Femi
  10. To Be A Man – Nicole Krauss
  11. You Will Be Safe Here – Damian Barr
  12. Ramifications – Daniel Saldaña París
  13. Dominicana – Angie Cruz
  14. Mother Country – edited by Charlie Brinkhurst-Cuff
  15. The Distance – Ivan Vladislavic
  16. Me and White Supremacy – Layla F Saad
  17. This Mournable Body – Tsitsi Dangarembga
  18. Constitution Street – Jemma Neville
  19. Dead Girls – Selva Almada
  20. In Memory’s Dance – Murid L Keshtmand
  21. The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
  22. Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close – Jonathan Safran Foer
  23. The End of Eddy – Édouard Louis
  24. The Wind That Lays Waste – Selva Almada
  25. Rainbow Milk – Paul Mendez
  26. Your Silence Will Not Protect You – Audre Lorde
  27. Sons and Lovers – D.H Lawrence
  28. The Dizziness of Freedom – Bad Betty Press
  29. Holiday Heart – Maragrita García Robayo
  30. We That Are Young – Preti Taneja
  31. The Adventures of China Iron – Gabriela Cabezón Cámara
  32. The Green Road – Anne Enright
  33. An Orphan World – Giuseppe Caputo
  34. Animals Eat Each Other – Elle Nash
  35. Falsos Odiseos – Gabriel Rodríguez Liceaga
  36. The Panopticon – Jenni Fagan
  37. The Trick is to Keep Breathing – Janice Galloway
  38. Hinge – Alycia Pirmohamed
  39. The Black Flamingo – Dean Atta
  40. Mayhem & Death – Helen McClory
  41. Tonguit – Harry Josephine Giles
  42. Jellyfish – Janice Galloway
  43. The Spell – Alan Hollinghurst
  44. Sal – Mick Kitson
  45. Broken Sleep Books 2019 Anthology
  46. The Poet X – Elizabeth Acevedo
  47. Collected Stories – Janice Galloway
  48. EARTH: 404 ink magazine
  49. Hijito – Carlos Andrés Gómez
  50. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous – Ocean Vuong