Word Salad: Everything I Read in 2022
Or, The Subtle Art of Falling Short of Your Own Naive Expectations
I’m not a big “New Year's Resolution” kind of guy. But I’m also the type of person who’s motivated by setting pointless, arbitrary goals and trying arduously to achieve them. For 2022, my goal was to read 52 books. A modest goal, you might say, with only one book a week. Can’t be that hard, right? Wrong.
I had naively assumed that life would not impede my progress and delight in doing so, but alas, I fell spectacularly short of said goal. So, with the self-flagellation out of the way, here are all the books I read last year for your appraisal and (oh so desperate) approval. Enjoy!
Fiction
Allen Steele – Coyote trilogy (2002-2005)
I came to this series by way of @AndrewLiptak of the fantastic newsletter Transfer Orbit (check that for all things fantasy/sci-fi), and it’s a well-researched, engaging tale focused on exomoon colony building and social dynamics.
The first novel features a neo-fascist uprising and a second Civil War in the U.S. around the mid-2020s (hhmm yes, very “fictional”), while the second focuses on the resistance efforts of first and second-generation settlers against Terran oppression. There are some pseudo-Deadwood shenanigans, a space-Iron Lady analogue, and a creepy, religious zealot gargoyle. Things also get suitably batshit by the third novel, and I’m not sure if I’ll continue with the companion Coyote Chronicle novels. But as far as pulpy sci-fi trash goes, it’s great.
Jorge Luis Borges – Labyrinths (1962)
I’ve wanted to read Borges for years, and I somehow managed not to do so while completing my Honours degree in English literature. But, after a Cameo recommendation from ex-Every Time I Die frontman Keith Buckley, I grabbed a copy of Labyrinths and dove right in.
Every story here is so playful and unique. The prose is rich and engaging, and Borges has excellent control of voice and perspective. There’s also a brilliant collection of essays here that track the author’s fascination with the tensions of philosophical idealism. Nonetheless, a stunning collection of work from such an adroit and insightful mind.
Brian Aldiss – Helliconia trilogy (1982-1985)
I’ve had this epic trilogy sitting in my TBR pile for wayyy too long. Aldiss is extremely patient with setting up the lore and fascinating astrophysics undergirding the titular planet in question, Hellaconia: a planet in a binary star system that orbits each star in “small” and “great” years respectively, charting highly elliptical pathways through space that result in seasonal cycles lasting for hundreds and thousands of years.
While the premise is rock solid on the maths, the narrative itself has the feeling of elevated, high fantasy with meta-sci-fi elements, solid worldbuilding, and a host of interesting characters and indigenous races/creatures. Time rushes forward in drastic leaps between novels, as stellar feudalism fuels war, political revolution, industrial production, and casual genocide. I feel like anyone who’s read Strugatsky’s Hard To Be a God (1964) will resonate with Aldiss’ tone and narrative exploration.
Non-fiction
Steven Shaviro – Extreme Fabulations (2021)
A brilliant collection of insightful essays that dissect and challenge the cognitive mapping undergirding our neoliberal reality focalized through a critical examination of SF stories and speculative philosophy. I love Shaviro’s writing, and this was an absolute joy to read. In particular, the chapter on the concept album Splendor and Misery by hip-hop collective clipping was fascinating and unexpected. Great stuff.
Jonas Čeika – How to Philosophize with a Hammer and Sickle (2021)
God, I loved this book. Čeika, known to many as YouTuber CCK Philosophy, has presented here some of the best contemporary philosophy I’ve read in years. Lucid, insightful and thoroughly engaging. I feel that Čeika’s articulation of Nietzschean socialism via Marx is a vital and necessary one, especially when reactionary elements on the far-right and elsewhere are all too eager to coopt Nietzsche’s work (and, more pointedly, various intentional misreadings of his work) for their blatantly fashy purposes.
Naomi Klein – Hot Money (2021)
George Monbiot – This Can’t be Happening (2021)
The Green Ideas series from Penguin centres on climate change issues with short, easily digestible books from renowned authors and important public voices. Naomi Klein’s Hot Money is a concise and impassioned excoriation of corporate corruption and wilful greed by the 1% at the expense of everyone else, very much in line with the rest of her published work. Meanwhile, This Can’t Be Happening pulls together a selection of punchy essays from Guardian columnist George Monbiot, laying out the cognitive dissonance and lack of political will surrounding radical (and painfully necessary) climate action.
Natalie Starkey – Fire and Ice: The Volcanoes of the Solar System (2021)
For pop-sci writing, this was a weird one. On the surface, this should have been a slam dunk for me. Space? Check. Mars? Check? Volcanoes? Check. Nerdy facts? Quattro check. And yet, while the subject matter was right up my alley, something about Starkey’s style and presentation didn't really click until the final few chapters. I haven’t struggled to read a non-fiction book like this one in years, and much of it felt like the page-flipping equivalent of pulling teeth. Verdict: ice volcanoes are still rad, though.
Simon Clark – Firmament (2022)
I’ve been subbed to Clark’s YouTube channel for years (all the way back to his time as an Oxford undergraduate), so I was eager to read his first published work of popular science nonfiction. Firmament is a fun and breezy read for anyone who wants to understand what the atmosphere actually is, how we came to possess that knowledge, what it means for climate science today, and—of course—how we can encourage better science literacy around important issues like climate change.
Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi – After the Future (2011)
Fredric Jameson – Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions (2005)
Herbert Marcuse – Psychoanalysis, Politics and Utopia (1970)
Here’s the abstract for a presentation I gave in November at the Australasian School of Continental Philosophy annual conference in Melbourne:
Jameson's text, while notoriously dense, was super helpful in conceptualizing the historical impulse of utopian thought, while Marcuse’s lectures helped to frame the idea of utopia as it exists within the Western cultural imagination. Ultimately though, my presentation was concerned with the political valences of utopian thought, on which Berardi’s work contains much rumination.
Philippa Snow – Which As You Know Means Violence (2022)
This was by far my most striking read of 2022. A brilliant and electric exploration of self-harm and injury in contemporary culture framed through Snow’s whip-smart descriptions of violence, aesthetic representation, and toxic masculinity. It’s not every day you encounter someone arguing for the hidden genius of Johnny Knoxville or the performance art aspects of the Jackass franchise. Then again, I don’t think I’ll ever look at grown men drinking horse semen the same way ever again.
Byung-Chul Han – The Burnout Society (2010)
This one is hard to explain, but at a basic level, Han’s argument boils down to capitalism is making us sick through an excess of positivity (rather than its more clear-cut and well-documented incentives for negativity), and this sickness is present in the stark increases in cognitive disorders like ADHD and burnout. Here’s a great video my Twitter mutual Epoch Philosophy did on the subject, which is far more eloquent and concise than my ramblings here:
Bill Peel – Tonight It’s A World We Bury: Black Metal, Red Politics (2023)
This is a sneaky one, as it’s technically not even out yet, but Bill is a good friend of mine (and a fellow music critic/writer), so I was fortunate enough to have early access to a draft of his first book for Repeater Books. Here’s the plug:
“Tonight It’s a World We Bury is a radical re-writing of the history and politics of black metal music. Challenging the commonly-held perception that black metal is a genre of the right — full of wannabe Vikings, Nazis, skinheads and other unsavoury characters — Tonight It’s a World We Bury looks at an array of black metal artists to re-affirm the genre as radically anticapitalist, revolutionary and left-wing. Utilizing an eclectic range of black metal bands, including Darkthrone, Burzum, Liturgy and Deathspell Omega, and taking in the works of Marx, Nietzsche, Deleuze and more, Tonight It’s a World We Bury is a book on black metal like no other.”
Trust me, this book will open your skull and fill it with beautiful, radical knowledge worthy of a thousand frost-bitten winters. It’s spectacular.
BONUS ROUND: Cormac McCarthy Extravaganza
The Cormac McCarthy Journal – Vol. 20, No. 1/2 (2022)
This was mainly research for a larger piece I’m working on regarding McCarthy’s use of transcendental homeless across his entire corpus. I can’t say much more than that, as it’s still very much a work in progress, but yeah. Watch this space, etc.
Cormac McCarthy – The Passenger & Stella Maris (2022)
Well, here it is. An event several decades in the making. Cormac McCarthy’s first novel in 14 years, and it’s not just one, but two. “We’re not worthy!!” Now, the takes: I don’t think Stella Maris works on its own, and it’s more a philosophical, mood-piece companion to the expansive narrative sojourn of The Passenger. Without delving into spoilers, I will say that the novel takes a big meditative turn in the final third, and I loved every moment of it. Everything from the oil rig on is mesmerizing, and what starts out like a rehash of No Country for Old Men with crime and mystery eventually becomes Suttree all the way down.
Cormac McCarthy – Blood Meridian; or The Evening Redness in the West (1985)
At this point, what else do I need to say? This is my favourite book of all time, and I re-read it at least once a year as a ritual. Here’s a particularly striking passage from Chapter IV that resonated with me on this pass through the text:
And here’s a little visual aid, just in case you weren’t feeling it…
