For a while, these recaps were full of drama. An aspiring dictator elected for president, a contagious virus that shutdown the world, and last year, a dead mom and a new baby. I thought this year was going to be different. And in fact, for most of the year, it did feel different. I hadn’t just lost a parent, within our borders, politics were more or less sane, and I was getting enough sleep. At parties, I had blessedly little to say. My kids were cute, my husband was great, my job was fine, my writing was consistent. But on the day before the darkest day of the year, my friend killed himself.
I met M. through writing. He was an incredible first-draft writer. If he were at the keyboard now, he would have written this whole thing straight, in just a bit longer than it would have taken to type it. But he wasn’t great at revision; he took everyone’s feedback. Instead of finding his voice, his work got more and more diluted on each draft. This is maybe symbolic; M. never wanted to own up to his sadness in real life or his weirdness on the page.
The past few years—COVID, but before that, too—had been rough for him. He was impulsive, easily excited, and apparently, hiding the depths of his sadness. But he was still M., a guy I had known forever, or since 2014, who believed in my writing and our friends’ writing, who started a short story club in 2017 that became weekly during the pandemic and still continues. In short, he was a friend, and he had a lot of friends. We were supposed to meet the day after he committed suicide to talk about my book in progress; he had seen our mutual friends five times that week. He had support, he had a community. I don’t know if that makes that better or worse. Probably worse.
In the spring, he keyed his car as an act of creative genius and then defended the installation as at worst protecting his car from theft. And truly, when M. asked me what was wrong with superficially damaging his own property, I had no answer. In this debate, he sounded like a self-righteous teen, and I, a phony adult. Scratching his car just felt inherently insane to me, and even if I had trouble explaining why, it wasn’t art.
A month or so after that, he and his wife separated, but he soon seemed back on track. He bought a condo, got joint custody of their four-year-old, and found a new girlfriend. Whatever he had gone through, there seemed to be more friendship ahead of us. Our sons, 10 months apart, were starting to feel like the same age, and there’s always more to read and more to write.
In October, the car he had keyed did get stolen, and he was normal-person bummed about it. By November, he had found a good price on a used car near where he grew up, and put together a plan to accompany his new girlfriend on her work trip to Italy, have his mother watch his kid while he was away, fly back to Chicago and then take the train to his hometown, where his mother had taken his son, and finally drive back to Denver with his kid, with a stop in Omaha to visit friends from our reading group.
How could a person who puts such a plan together be mentally unwell? Just writing out that 83-word sentence was hard. But three weeks later, M. was dead by his own choosing. People are impossible to know.
Many of the books and writers below I discovered through him and our short story club. I read his copy of Klara and the Sun, which he lent me in part because he knew I’d return it, which I did. I continue to read books about Korea and adoption for my novel, which M. read early parts of, but will never read all of.
Anyway, here’s the list of books I read this year:
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark
Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, Oliver Burkeman
For an optimistic nihilist like myself, this book about time management, or anti-time management, reminded me that my priorities should determine how I spend my time.
Seeds from a Silent Tree: An Anthology By Korean Adoptees, edited by Jo Rankin & Tonya Bishoff
Palimpsest: Documents From a Korean Adoption, Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom
Older Sister, Not Necessarily Related, Jenny Heijun Wills
Empire of Pain, Patrick Radden Keefe
Sometimes I like to cosread as a dad on vacation. If you are a dad on vacation, or just like pretending to be one, this is a great read that lays out plain the Sacklers’ culpability in the opiod epidemic.
Quartet in Autumn, Barbara Pym
Night, Elie Wiesel
Wow, No Thank You, Samantha Irby
The Swimmers, Julie Otsuka
This book is about more than swimming, but was excellent enough that I’ve recommended it to every swimmer I know.
Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro
Be Brief and Tell Them Everything, Brad Listi
After listening to so many Brad Listi interviews (his backlogs got me through a particular tedious web redesign in 2018), seeing what he chose to make felt like seeing the house of an architecture professor.
The Known World, Edward P. Jones
Everyone's a Aliebn When Ur a Aliebn Too, Jonny Sun
Happy-go-lucky, David Sedaris
The Idiot, Elif Batuman
Disrupting Kinship: Transnational Politics of Korean Adoption in the United States, Kimberly D. McKee
Sharp Objects, Gillian Flynn
Along with some truly horrifying visuals, this book has one of the best endings I’ve ever read.
There There, Tommy Orange
Raising Raffi, Keith Gessen
Ten Little Indians, Sherman Alexie
Lucy by the Sea, Elizabeth Strout
My Aunt was visiting with a copy of this book and she gave me a 40-hour loan. There was something so relaxing about binge reading, which I haven’t done since maybe 2019?
Circe, Madeline Miller
This felt like kabbalah for Greek myths, but in the best way.
This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage, Ann Patchett
Feel Free, Zadie Smith
This is a hodge-podge collection of essays, without a real theme or reason for being, but who cares? It’s Zadie Smith, being clever and conspiratorial, making jokes and taking names. I borrowed this book from a friend, but so enjoyed it, that I bought my own copy.
The Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller
This also felt like kabbalah for Greek myths, but I was less into it.
Metropolitan Denver: Growth and Change in the Mile High City, Andrew R. Goetz & E. Eric Boschmann
My Own Country: A Doctor's Story of a Town and Its People in the Age of AIDS, Abraham Verghese
Previously read: 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006