Original image by There Stands the Glass.
Page 737 of the edition of James Joyce’s Ulysses I finished reading this week delivered the sort of spine-tingling sensation I associate with the most sublime musical experiences. I gasped when the interior monologue of Molly Bloom references her husband Leopold’s insistence she read François Rabelais’ Gargantua and Pantagruel.
Absorbing Rabelais’ outlandish epic was one of my most entertaining experiences of the year. Recognizing Joyce’s penchant for exhaustive inventories and wackadoodle lists as homages to the writings of the influential 16th century French physician made me feel as if I’m finally reaching a respectable degree of cultural literacy.
I didn’t merely conquer one of the most notoriously challenging works of fiction in the English language- I genuinely enjoyed reading Ulysses. I may not have left the United States this year, but books allowed me to travel the globe and pass through time and space. I completed 81 books in 2022. Here are a few of my favorites:
Favorite book: François Rabelais’ Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532 and 1534)
Favorite novel published in 2022: Hanya Yanagihara- To Paradise (2022)
Least favorite book: Octavia E. Butler- Parable of the Sower (1993)
Least favorite book published in 2022: Ling Ma- Bliss Montage (2022)
Favorite novel: Toni Morrison- Beloved (1987)
Favorite book about politics: Samantha Power- The Education of an Idealist: A Memoir (2019)
Favorite biography: Edmund S. Morgan- Benjamin Franklin (2003)
Favorite non-fiction book: William Dalrymple- From the Holy Mountain: A Journey Among the Christians of the Middle East (1997)
Best music book published in 2022: Joseph Horowitz- Dvořák’s Prophecy and the Vexed Fate of Black Classical Music (2022)
Best overall music book: Tony Whyton- Beyond a Love Supreme: John Coltrane and the Legacy of an Album (2013)
Most impactful book: Thomas Merton- The Seven Storey Mountain: An Autobiography of Faith (1948)
Most entertaining book: James Fenimore Cooper- The Last of the Mohicans (1826)
Most difficult book: Friedrich Nietzsche- On the Genealogy of Morality (1887)
Longest book: Olga Tokarczuk- The Books of Jacob (2022, 965 pages)
What’s this survey doing at There Stands the Glass? Until I create a separate book blog, I don’t have a better home for this accounting. Furthermore, the inclusion of several albums of piano recitals and French art songs on my Top Albums of 2022 list is directly related to spending much of the past 12 months with my nose in a book.