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dolorosa_12My out-of-office email autoresponse is set, I'm slowly filling the house with delicious things to eat over the next couple of weeks, and the town is blanketed in crisp ice and frost. In other words, things are very much in holiday mode, and I'm very much in the mood to reflect and wrap up the year.
With that in mind, today's open thread prompt is another one asking for people's best of 2022 media. This time, I'm asking about written work — something you read or listened to this year. Which was your favourite?
I feel as if I might not have read my favourite thing yet, as I have a tendency to store things up for the holiday period if I feel I'm going to especially enjoy them. But I went back to my Goodreads list to remind myself of the books I read this year, and of the listed books, there is a clear winner so far. Excluding rereads, the best book I read in 2022 was The House with the Golden Door by Elodie Harper, the second in her historical fiction trilogy about women working in a brothel in ancient Pompeii. I had intended to write a longer review of this book soon after I read it, but things got away from me and the review remains unwritten. In short, the book is a marvellous recreation of a very specific time and place, and it digs into things that I always enjoy seeing explored in fiction: the injustices of extreme power imbalances, the ways that the powerless (especially groups of women) build connections and community unnoticed in the margins, and the various dystopian compromises and bargains disempowered people have to make to survive a world which denies them their humanity, and the toll these bargains and (on occasion) hypocrises take on them. The book is excellent, and I am very much looking forward to the follow up.
With that in mind, today's open thread prompt is another one asking for people's best of 2022 media. This time, I'm asking about written work — something you read or listened to this year. Which was your favourite?
I feel as if I might not have read my favourite thing yet, as I have a tendency to store things up for the holiday period if I feel I'm going to especially enjoy them. But I went back to my Goodreads list to remind myself of the books I read this year, and of the listed books, there is a clear winner so far. Excluding rereads, the best book I read in 2022 was The House with the Golden Door by Elodie Harper, the second in her historical fiction trilogy about women working in a brothel in ancient Pompeii. I had intended to write a longer review of this book soon after I read it, but things got away from me and the review remains unwritten. In short, the book is a marvellous recreation of a very specific time and place, and it digs into things that I always enjoy seeing explored in fiction: the injustices of extreme power imbalances, the ways that the powerless (especially groups of women) build connections and community unnoticed in the margins, and the various dystopian compromises and bargains disempowered people have to make to survive a world which denies them their humanity, and the toll these bargains and (on occasion) hypocrises take on them. The book is excellent, and I am very much looking forward to the follow up.
no subject
Date: 2022-12-16 02:32 pm (UTC)I don't have a super clear winner, but I read a bunch of MG/YA books that were new to me that I adored this year: Wise Child and Juniper, Gullstruck Island, and Book of a Thousand Days.
As for nonfiction, The Dawn of Everything: a New History of Humanity was such an endeavor to read, and I think some of the theories are probably not entirely substantiated, but I loved the way it introduced me to societal structures I never knew anything about. I love that it's perspective is both "People have always been people" and "People actually do have a choice in how we organize ourselves, actually, and there are way more possibilities than we've been led to believe."
Oh! And I read The Traitor Baru Cormorant, which knocked me over but was so intense that I haven't read the other books yet.
no subject
Date: 2022-12-17 02:21 pm (UTC)"People have always been people" and "People actually do have a choice in how we organize ourselves, actually, and there are way more possibilities than we've been led to believe."
I love this!
The Traitor Baru Cormorant has been on my radar for ages, and knowing that you liked it is definitely pushing it up my list.
no subject
Date: 2022-12-19 02:12 pm (UTC)This is such a lovely way of putting it!
The Traitor Baru Cormorant has been on my radar for ages, and knowing that you liked it is definitely pushing it up my list.
It is heavy! Very heavy! But really so well-crafted. I don't know that I've ever read anything quite like it.