Sometime in the autumn, I was texting a friend that I wasn’t sure if this were a that good of a reading year, so I whipped out my ongoing, electronic list of books to confirm, and I was thrilled to see that I was wrong. I immediately was able to come up with 15-20 books I’d easily press into the hands of others and judge them if they didn’t feel the same way I did about them.
I never know whether Best Of lists are supposed to represent the books of highest quality that one reads or one’s favorite reading experiences of the year. I’ve kind of landed somewhere in the middle and put together a journey of 25 books that could be described as either or both. There are a whole bunch of honorable mentions, too, many of which could be traded out for another in the toppish 25. Some fun statistics follow, since I used Storygraph for the first time this year.
THE LIBRARY IS OPEN
It certainly felt like a lot of authors saved up a bunch of their feelings about the state of the world during lockdown and released them all in doorstop-sized tomes. It was a year of very long books! Two of them were Franzenesque takes on the modern family that drew a lot of attention for good reason. Wellness by Nathan Hill skewered late Gen X/early millennial cultures and weaved a story of a married heterosexual and all the ways their relationship came together and how it may go forward. The Bee Sting by Paul Murray similarly showed a family falling apart, but Irish and let’s say more heteroflexible. Both were 700+ pages, and both flew by because they were excellent.
One long book I hated long ago was The Luminaries (one too many old man talking about going to gaol.) So it was a shock to me how much I loved Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton, a rip roaring eco-thriller that’s equally critical of the way billionaires and progressives contribute to the the climate crisis. It crescendoes to one of the year’s wildest endings.
Worthy award winners! The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka was part of the should-be popular queer ghost of a murdered Sri Lankan who comes back to solve his own murder genre. It’s a gorgeous book that reveals itself slowly and then never lets off the gas - while teaching you everything from Sri Lankan history to penis taxonomy. The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty was a beautiful and bizarre examination of a town Midwestern town in decline that centers consumption culture and never condescends to its residents.
I don’t read a ton of nonfiction, but when I do I want it to be like Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma by Claire Dederer: incisive, fun, and offering no easy answers on how we separate beautiful and important art from the absolute monsters who make it. More nonfiction should also be like Stay True by Hua Hsu, a vulnerable portrait of an unlikely friendship that ended in tragedy. It’s a memoir, worthy of its Pulitzer, that will make you nostalgic for the friends that formed you and wistful for those that have passed.
Blackouts by Justin Torres isn’t an easy read; it’s sometimes not even enjoyable. But it will have you mulling over the way folks have pathologized queerness, how we think about death and the body, what we deserve from queer inheritance, and how we overlook lesbian activism. Mobility by Lydia Keisling feels like a much easier read until you realize how it’s showing you how you, yes you, are complicit in the destruction of the world through dependence on fossil fuels. If that sounds dry, it really isn’t! Our guide, Bunny, will frustrate and delight you in equal measure.
All the Sinners Bleed by S.A. Cosby is a fact paced thriller about a serial killer in a Southern town and the sheriff tasked with bringing them to justice. S.A. Cosby books are never just thrillers, though, and this one thoughtfully handles racism and religious fundamentalism.
If you’re not intrigued when I tell you that you should read a book about a queer mountain lion contemplating his life in Los Angeles as the world crumbles around him, then Open Throat by Henry Hoke is not for you. It was for me! As was Big Swiss by Jen Beagin, a hilarious novel about someone who acts as a transcriptionist for the world’s worst therapist and falls in love with a client of his by listening to her voice. Frasier-like hijinks ensue in the Hudson Valley as we get to know the client called Big Swiss.
The Guest by Emma Cline careens towards disaster the whole time with a sex worker trying her hardest not to fall from grace in a simultaneous character study of both one damaged person and the whole messed up country.
Bellies by Nicola Dinan is an intimate portrait of a relationship when one of the participants self-actualizes by beginning to transition. It’s a searing look at identity and how we fall in love and maintain that feeling with evolving people. Idlewild by James Frankie Thomas is an unhinged look at toxic friendships at a New York Quaker school in which two queer friends try to navigate high school, the crucible which is drama club, and how their queerness presents in the early 2000s.
Let’s say you didn’t have enough of the Irish financial crisis of 2008 in The Bee Sting and also wanted a book to feel a bit like Will and Grace, then I’d say the delightful The Rachel Incident by Caroline O’Donoghue is for you. The Late Americans by Brandon Taylor does the impossible and makes a book about writers in Iowa and polyamory feel fresh and exciting in a way that won’t make you roll your eyes. Happiness Falls by Angie Kim keeps the pages turning with a mystery of what happened to the family patriarch who went missing when the only person with him at the time is their nonverbal, autistic son. The book is a tender look at a family that never lets anyone in it off the hook for cruelty, as well as one of the first books I’ve read that handles the COVID pandemic well as a plot point.
It was a great year for lesbian dystopian tales. Biography of X by Catherine Lacey asks if we can ever really know anyone as a woman struggles to put together the facts about her wife after her death in an America set in an alternative history where the South seceded in earlier in the 20th century. I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself by Marissa Crane tells the story of a queer-led family living in a country where punishments are doled out to the impure by attaching an extra shadow to criminals as a mark. These Shadesters are disenfranchised, publicly shamed, and deprived of civil rights protections, and their baby daughter is one of them.
Gay romances came in all flavors and styles this year. Some of my favorites included Farrell Covington and the Limits of Style by Paul Rudnick, following the relationship of a comedy writer and the scion of a rich family through the decades. This is the rare book I’d call “actually funny.” The People Who Report More Stress by Alejandro Varela is a collection of short stories, some of which add up to a devastating novela about a couple who goes through highs and lows and a heap of vocalized tension, and it solidified Varela as an author I’ll follow anywhere.
Speaking of relationship hurdles, how about WWI? In Memoriam by Alice Winn tells the tale of a couple of soldiers who fall for each other during the Great War. (One of them even joins the army because the other one is in it! Couldn’t be me!) The book throws in a surprising heist and happy endings of various kinds, but it’s mostly about how bleak war is. Family Meal by Bryan Washington checks all the author’s boxes: queer folks struggling to love themselves and others, gorgeous food descriptions, and bittersweet reconciliations.
My favorite traditional m/m romance of the year was Something Wild and Wonderful by Anita Kelly, which brings all the feels without putting the characters through untold amounts of misery. It’s the kind of book you hold close to your chest when you finish, even if it’s on a kindle.
Note that I’m also halfway through Doppelganger by Naomi Klein, a terrifying and clear-eyed look at how social media and misinformation is destroying us all, and it would certainly be among the year’s top reads if I managed to finish it.
HONORABLE MENTIONS, ALL OF WHICH YOU SHOULD PICK UP!
Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance by Alison Espach
Dinosaurs by Lydia Millet
The Shards by Bret Easton Ellis
Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano
I Have Some Questions For You by Rebecca Makkai
Confidence by Rafael Frumkin
Brother and Sister Enter the Forest by Richard Mirabella
Juno Loves Legs by Karl Geary
Fraud by David Agnew
Oscar Wars by Michael Schulman
Hi Honey, I’m Homo by Matt Baume
Foster Dade Explores the Cosmos by Nash Jenkins
The Chaos Machine by Max Fisher
10 Things That Never Happened by Alexis Hall
Land of Milk and Honey by C Pam Zhang
American Mermaid by Julia Langbein
HOW THE READING YEAR LOOKED
I read a lot of gay stuff!
I liked big books, and I cannot lie. And they were mostly fiction.
These were my reading moods.
Until next year…happy reading!
Thanks for sharing this! I also absolutely loved The Guest. I saw you also added Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano in honourable mentions. I have it but have been hesitant to pick it up because so many people say that it was kind of meh. What did you think of it?