Top Fives of 2022: Books

This week I’m counting down my favorite works of arts and entertainment in 2022. Here’s what I’ve done so far:

Monday: Movies/stage shows

Tuesday: TV

Today: Books! I read somewhere around 50 books this year. Most of them were research for my dog book (working title: DOGLAND). But I did manage to get in a bunch of reading for pleasure. I’m going to limit my list to five, but just know that this particular list could have been five times as long.

As with my other picks, I stuck to books released this year. Here’s what I enjoyed the most:

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Oliver Burkeman’s FOUR THOUSAND WEEKS was a life-changer for me. Four thousand weeks is roughly how long you get on this earth if you live to be 80. Most books about time management lean hard into productivity, efficiency, all the things you can get done if you just try their system. They’re a lot like diet books: Effective in the short term, useless in the long term. Burkeman starts with a radical idea: You’re never going to get everything done. So much of life is out of your control. And the human lifespan is (in his words) “absurdly, insultingly brief.” So what should you REALLY do with this little speck of time? For me, this became a book about how to appreciate your life instead of maximize it. It has led me to rethink a lot of what I do and why. It’s not about selling everything and moving to Key West (although that feels tempting every December). It’s more about how to live a meaningful life. You might find FOUR THOUSAND WEEKS listed under business or self-help in your local bookstore. It should be under philosophy.

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My favorite new novel this year was Kevin Wilson’s NOW IS NOT THE TIME TO PANIC. A teenage girl in small-town Tennessee longs for a more interesting life. She meets a boy who’s just as much an outsider as she is. They start making art together. They create a poster with a strange drawing and an ominous caption: The edge is a shantytown filled with gold seekers. We are fugitives, and the law is skinny with hunger for us. They put up the poster all over town. Chaos ensues. There’s no other writer remotely like Kevin Wilson. His ideas and voice are utterly his. (His last novel, NOTHING TO SEE HERE, was about children who literally burst into flames.) This book’s themes of loneliness and the transformative power of art rang bells deep in my soul. The book is like the poster—funny and strange and beautiful.

(FYI, I did an episode of my podcast SOUTHBOUND with Kevin back in 2019.)

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I was slow getting into Kathryn Schulz’s LOST AND FOUND because I was afraid of it. It’s a story about deep love and deep loss—how Schulz met her life partner just 18 months before her father died. The joy of discovery and the wreckage of sadness live within most of us at the same time, and Schulz dives in from both ends—through a long look at history and a close look inside her heart. The further I got into LOST AND FOUND, the more it picked up emotional steam, and by the end I had to put it down a couple of times to catch my breath. Now that I think about it, LOST AND FOUND makes a natural pair with FOUR THOUSAND WEEKS. They’re both about the brevity and magic of life, and they both appreciate its miracles.

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Marissa R. Moss’ HER COUNTRY is nonfiction, but still a mystery of sorts: How are women in country music so undervalued, even when they sell so many records and write so many hits? You won’t be surprised to learn that sexism is involved, but you might be startled by not just how deep it goes in Nashville, but the completely dumb reasoning behind it. (One influential program director likens women in country music to tomatoes in a salad—a nice extra, but not essential). Moss tells the story of that struggle through the stories of three artists—Kacey Musgraves, Maren Morris and Mickey Guyton (who faces the even bigger hurdle of being black). I finished the book furious at the country music establishment, but hopeful that the great music made by so many women in country is still finding its way through.

(I also talked to Marissa for SOUTHBOUND back in May.)

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The last book on my list is a Christmas gift that I’ve already burned almost all the way through. Tom Breihan’s THE NUMBER ONES traces the history of pop music through 20 songs that hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100—all the way from Chubby Checker’s “The Twist” through BTS’ “Dynamite.” Pop music geekery is absolutely in the center of my wheelhouse, and this book delivers on every page—I spent 10 minutes at the supper table the other night telling the story of Mariah Carey, and how her debut single “Vision of Love” not just brought a new kind of singing to the Hot 100 but basically invented “American Idol.” (I’m a great guest at parties.) Breihan lays out the case for how each of the 20 songs changed pop music in one way or another, either through style or technology or attitude. And if you’re like me, you’ll be scrabbling through your music collection to find all the other tracks that paved the way for the big hits. (I had no idea until I read this book that Soft Cell’s “Tainted Love” was a cover of a ‘60s track by soul singer Gloria Jones.) If you followed Casey Kasem’s old American Top 40 shows, or if you’re just curious about how and why a song becomes a hit, this book is a must.

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Now it’s your turn: What books did you enjoy the most this year? Drop your picks in the comments.

Tomorrow: Music!