Have you sorted all your Christmas presents?
Don’t lie. Like many of us last-minute shoppers, it’s always a crazy scramble to buy the last remaining gifts for the silly time of year.
There are only 4 days until Christmas and books are always a good idea when inspiration doesn’t strike. So here’s our helpful personalized guide to the best literary offerings of 2022.
For your friend who is irretrievably online
Scorched Earth: Beyond the Digital Age into a Post-Capitalist World
“If there is a livable and shared future on our planet, it will be an offline future.”
This is how Jonathan Crary’s essay “Scorched Earth” begins. Crary describes the dangers of the digital age and paints a picture of a world in which daily life is regulated by a series of algorithms and every social interaction is monetized. In this hellscape, the environment dies and living standards fall, while a billionaire class is making more and more money at our expense.
It won’t do anything to end your creeping Black Mirror-style fears you have that everything is going horribly wrong.
According to Crary, if humanity is to have any chance of survival, we must make the digital age a footnote in human history and create a new world based offline.
How do we do that? You need to read the book — but spoiler alert: To do so, you’ll need to log out of Twitter. Given recent events, that may not be such a bad thing. Tim Gallagher
For the discerning music lover in your life
Rolling Stone: The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time
How does Taylor Swift’s album “1989” compare to John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme” and The Beatles’ “Abbey Road”? If these questions are keeping you up at night, look no further: Rolling Stone’s recently updated book of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time from 2022 has some answers.
How is this list curated, I hear you ask? Well, the book’s editors contacted 500 personalities from the music world, including Beyonce, Nile Rodgers, Herbie Hancock and Billie Eilish, and asked them about their top 50 albums. Rolling Stone received a total of 4000 albums and reduced them to 500.
While the book offers unique critical commentaries on each of the albums, it also tells the stories of how they were created and presents breathtaking photos and archived interview material.
This would not only make a perfect Christmas gift for all the music lovers in your life who want to expand their listening spectrum, but also for anyone who loves a good coffee table book! Theo Farrant
For the person looking for a transcendental literary experience
Faith, Hope, and Carnage
If you’re aware of Nick Cave’s fluency, thoughtful manner, and continuous dialogue with his fans in his open forum, The Red Hand Files, you should have an idea of how intimate, devastating, and ultimately uplifting this book will be.
Open conversations in “Faith, Hope and Carnage” consist of dialogues that Cave conducted with Irish journalist Seán O’Hagan (interviews worth over 40 hours, arranged in a Q&A format). They focus on art, creativity, religion, addiction, lockdown, how vulnerability leads to “invincibility,” and Cave’s life after the accidental death of his son Arthur in 2015. The book was completed before another personal tragedy occurred: The epilogue explains that Cave lost another son, 31-year-old Jethro, in May 2022, and the book is a clue as to why the artist is not before the world has sealed off and can.
His disarming meditations on hope (“Hope is heartbroken optimism”) and grief (“It makes demands on us. It asks us to be sensitive.”) are not just for fans of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds; this book is also not a memoir or a completely dark affair. It is a balm that often shows Cave’s quirky sense of humor. But above all, “Faith, Hope and Carnage” is a deeply thought-out collection of reflections on what it means to be alive. The reader emerges from his pages with a sense of humility, but also with great empathy, and we should be very grateful for that. It definitely was me, and it is by far my favorite book of the year. David Mouriquand
For your friend who likes greenwashing
The value of a whale
Another year, another step closer to an irreversible climate disaster… But don’t try to be negative, okay?
Your friends order oat milk latte and buy CO2 offsets for their third short vacation of the year, while the world’s politicians make another “historic” deal to stop climate change… But somehow CO2 emissions aren’t reducing. Just like ever.
In “The Value of a Whale,” Adrienne Buller takes apart the idea of green capitalism and points out the shortcomings that arise when the very market forces that cause climate change are used as a solution. Buller describes the inherent colonial mindset of carbon markets and the problems of viewing climate change as an economic issue. It is essential read for anyone who believes that planting a tree makes up for their shein profit. Tim Gallagher
For the person who wants to descend into a pit of despair
Zum Paradies
Hanya Yanagihara’s band “A Little Life”, released in 2015, was the definition of unexpected success. The over 800-page novel was followed by four friends living in New York. Like everyone else, Yanagihara’s book left me devastated. The portrayal of the main character’s internal and external turmoil is so haunting that there has been a backlash calling it torture porn. That may or may not be a fair accusation, but the result was still one of the most emotionally harrowing experiences I’ve ever had in almost every novel.
Of course I was looking forward to Yanagihara’s sequel. It arrived in the characteristic shape of a door stopper and comprised over 700 pages. This time though, Yanagihara didn’t just have one novel. This year’s “To Paradise” consisted of three novels, all connected by a single address in Washington Square in New York.
The novels cover three centuries and examine the lives of the inhabitants of the addresses in 1893, 1993 and 2093. And… the first two parts were kind of duds. As much as this is a recommendation for the best books of the year, it would be disingenuous to pretend that the first 300 or so pages are actually that good. They drive the late 19th and 20th century forward and tell beautiful stories, but they don’t bring with them the cataclysmic misanthropy with which Yanagihara made her name in “A Little Life.”
And then you reach the third novel. It is set over the next hundred years and tells the story of how New York has fallen into a dystopia of endless pandemics, relentless climate change, and unbearable government control. The weaponized despair of “A Little Life” focused on the destruction of a single man who didn’t deserve it. In “To Paradise,” Yanagihara applies the same treatment, but this time for all of humanity over the next century. Her vision of our future is grim, but unlike other dystopias, this one feels fully realized for a potential future that we can’t help but avoid. If Yanagihara’s forecasts are even slightly correct, then the only place we’re certainly heading for isn’t paradise. Jonny Walfisz
For the person who wants to catch up on the Nobel Prize
The event
French author Annie Ernaux received this year’s Nobel Prize for Literature “for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, alienations and collective limitations of personal memory.” That’s an unusual way for the Swedish Academy to say that she’s a damn good writer who you should get to know better late than never.
The award given to Ernaux, 82, could not have been more timely, particularly in a year in which the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and set society back decades — just to name one of many attacks on women’s reproductive and sexual liberties this year.
In her books, Ernaux often portrays uncompromisingly sexual encounters, abortion and illness, in a style that she describes as “flat writing” (“ecriture plate”). They provide a very objective view of the events she describes, regardless of an exaggerated description or overwhelming emotions.
There are many books in her work that can be recommended, but one that should not be missed is her bestselling autobiographical novel “L’Événement” (“Happening” — 2000). It is written in its unmistakable raw style and takes a look at French abortion laws (when abortion was still illegal in France until the liberalized law was passed in 1975) and the terrible consequences they had. She not only describes how she almost died after finding an abortion counselor, but uses the topic of abortion to paint a picture of society’s attitudes toward working-class women. It is a groundbreaking work and, like the film version that won the Golden Lion in Venice in 2021, it never gets into didactics. Ernaux states simply but decisively that women have been denied liberties and that it is madness to deprive a person of the right to vote.
Although published 22 years ago, the book remains depressingly timely and an important read in 2022. David Mouriquand
For those who miss Hillary Mantel
Jenseits von Schwarz
This year, the world has arguably lost one of its greatest living authors: Hillary Mantel.
Mantel was best known for her multiple Booker Prize-winning series “Wolf Hall,” and this, together with her work on the French Revolution, “A Place of Greater Safety,” means that many regard her as the woman who redesigned the genre of historical fiction.
Outside of this genre, Mantel was a talented essayist. After her death, the groundbreaking work “Some Girls Want Out: Spectacular Saintlines” circulated. Mantel’s magical realist “Beyond Black,” the story of a medium that combats childhood trauma, is a must in relation to her previous work and offers a moving meditation on memory, grief, and loneliness.
The book gains a new dimension in light of the author’s death, while the main character’s struggles with her own body are a moving part of Mantel’s life story. Tim Gallagher
For cinephiles who love to eat what they watch
Eat What You Watch: A cookbook for movie lovers
I’m cheating a bit with this one as it wasn’t released this year. However, no book has managed to capture the fusion of cinema and cooking as well as the book “Eat What You Watch: A Cookbook for Movie Lovers” by culinary film author Andrew Rea. It’s the perfect book if you’ve ever seen a dish on the big screen that caused you a massive, stomach-growling craving. And it makes a great Christmas gift. That’s how I got my copy.
Rea is the man behind the brilliant YouTube channel Binging With Babish and is known for his recreations of popular meals and snacks from movies and television. With this recipe book, he is aimed at both movie buffs and practitioners of dark cooking and ensures that anyone can prepare these delicious meals on the screen at home.
With more than 40 recipes from classic movies and cult films — written briefly and precisely and explained step-by-step so even the novice chefs can’t screw it up too much — you’ll find cooking tricks and improved versions of the recipe. Rea has also released a longer version — “Binging With Babish: 100 Recipes Recreated from Your Favourite Movies and TV Shows” — in case you’d like to go one step further.
So whether you want to make the notorious Moistmaker Sandwich from Friends, are curious whether you can slice garlic with a razor blade and liquefy it in tomato sauce (like in Goodfellas), Ratatouille Ratatouille from Ace Ratatouille (or more specifically: Confit Byaldi, you dirty pagans) or prepare the now iconic Ram-Don dish from Parasite, this book is a must. David Mouriquand
Have you sorted all your Christmas presents?
Don’t lie. Like many of us last-minute shoppers, it’s always a crazy scramble to buy the last remaining gifts for the silly time of year.
There are only 4 days until Christmas and books are always a good idea when inspiration doesn’t strike. So here’s our helpful personalized guide to the best literary offerings of 2022.
For your friend who is irretrievably online
Scorched Earth: Beyond the Digital Age into a Post-Capitalist World
“If there is a livable and shared future on our planet, it will be an offline future.”
This is how Jonathan Crary’s essay “Scorched Earth” begins. Crary describes the dangers of the digital age and paints a picture of a world in which daily life is regulated by a series of algorithms and every social interaction is monetized. In this hellscape, the environment dies and living standards fall, while a billionaire class is making more and more money at our expense.
It won’t do anything to end your creeping Black Mirror-style fears you have that everything is going horribly wrong.
According to Crary, if humanity is to have any chance of survival, we must make the digital age a footnote in human history and create a new world based offline.
How do we do that? You need to read the book — but spoiler alert: To do so, you’ll need to log out of Twitter. Given recent events, that may not be such a bad thing. Tim Gallagher
For the discerning music lover in your life
Rolling Stone: The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time
How does Taylor Swift’s album “1989” compare to John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme” and The Beatles’ “Abbey Road”? If these questions are keeping you up at night, look no further: Rolling Stone’s recently updated book of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time from 2022 has some answers.
How is this list curated, I hear you ask? Well, the book’s editors contacted 500 personalities from the music world, including Beyonce, Nile Rodgers, Herbie Hancock and Billie Eilish, and asked them about their top 50 albums. Rolling Stone received a total of 4000 albums and reduced them to 500.
While the book offers unique critical commentaries on each of the albums, it also tells the stories of how they were created and presents breathtaking photos and archived interview material.
This would not only make a perfect Christmas gift for all the music lovers in your life who want to expand their listening spectrum, but also for anyone who loves a good coffee table book! Theo Farrant
For the person looking for a transcendental literary experience
Faith, Hope, and Carnage
If you’re aware of Nick Cave’s fluency, thoughtful manner, and continuous dialogue with his fans in his open forum, The Red Hand Files, you should have an idea of how intimate, devastating, and ultimately uplifting this book will be.
Open conversations in “Faith, Hope and Carnage” consist of dialogues that Cave conducted with Irish journalist Seán O’Hagan (interviews worth over 40 hours, arranged in a Q&A format). They focus on art, creativity, religion, addiction, lockdown, how vulnerability leads to “invincibility,” and Cave’s life after the accidental death of his son Arthur in 2015. The book was completed before another personal tragedy occurred: The epilogue explains that Cave lost another son, 31-year-old Jethro, in May 2022, and the book is a clue as to why the artist is not before the world has sealed off and can.
His disarming meditations on hope (“Hope is heartbroken optimism”) and grief (“It makes demands on us. It asks us to be sensitive.”) are not just for fans of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds; this book is also not a memoir or a completely dark affair. It is a balm that often shows Cave’s quirky sense of humor. But above all, “Faith, Hope and Carnage” is a deeply thought-out collection of reflections on what it means to be alive. The reader emerges from his pages with a sense of humility, but also with great empathy, and we should be very grateful for that. It definitely was me, and it is by far my favorite book of the year. David Mouriquand
For your friend who likes greenwashing
The value of a whale
Another year, another step closer to an irreversible climate disaster… But don’t try to be negative, okay?
Your friends order oat milk latte and buy CO2 offsets for their third short vacation of the year, while the world’s politicians make another “historic” deal to stop climate change… But somehow CO2 emissions aren’t reducing. Just like ever.
In “The Value of a Whale,” Adrienne Buller takes apart the idea of green capitalism and points out the shortcomings that arise when the very market forces that cause climate change are used as a solution. Buller describes the inherent colonial mindset of carbon markets and the problems of viewing climate change as an economic issue. It is essential read for anyone who believes that planting a tree makes up for their shein profit. Tim Gallagher
For the person who wants to descend into a pit of despair
Zum Paradies
Hanya Yanagihara’s band “A Little Life”, released in 2015, was the definition of unexpected success. The over 800-page novel was followed by four friends living in New York. Like everyone else, Yanagihara’s book left me devastated. The portrayal of the main character’s internal and external turmoil is so haunting that there has been a backlash calling it torture porn. That may or may not be a fair accusation, but the result was still one of the most emotionally harrowing experiences I’ve ever had in almost every novel.
Of course I was looking forward to Yanagihara’s sequel. It arrived in the characteristic shape of a door stopper and comprised over 700 pages. This time though, Yanagihara didn’t just have one novel. This year’s “To Paradise” consisted of three novels, all connected by a single address in Washington Square in New York.
The novels cover three centuries and examine the lives of the inhabitants of the addresses in 1893, 1993 and 2093. And… the first two parts were kind of duds. As much as this is a recommendation for the best books of the year, it would be disingenuous to pretend that the first 300 or so pages are actually that good. They drive the late 19th and 20th century forward and tell beautiful stories, but they don’t bring with them the cataclysmic misanthropy with which Yanagihara made her name in “A Little Life.”
And then you reach the third novel. It is set over the next hundred years and tells the story of how New York has fallen into a dystopia of endless pandemics, relentless climate change, and unbearable government control. The weaponized despair of “A Little Life” focused on the destruction of a single man who didn’t deserve it. In “To Paradise,” Yanagihara applies the same treatment, but this time for all of humanity over the next century. Her vision of our future is grim, but unlike other dystopias, this one feels fully realized for a potential future that we can’t help but avoid. If Yanagihara’s forecasts are even slightly correct, then the only place we’re certainly heading for isn’t paradise. Jonny Walfisz
For the person who wants to catch up on the Nobel Prize
The event
French author Annie Ernaux received this year’s Nobel Prize for Literature “for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, alienations and collective limitations of personal memory.” That’s an unusual way for the Swedish Academy to say that she’s a damn good writer who you should get to know better late than never.
The award given to Ernaux, 82, could not have been more timely, particularly in a year in which the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and set society back decades — just to name one of many attacks on women’s reproductive and sexual liberties this year.
In her books, Ernaux often portrays uncompromisingly sexual encounters, abortion and illness, in a style that she describes as “flat writing” (“ecriture plate”). They provide a very objective view of the events she describes, regardless of an exaggerated description or overwhelming emotions.
There are many books in her work that can be recommended, but one that should not be missed is her bestselling autobiographical novel “L’Événement” (“Happening” — 2000). It is written in its unmistakable raw style and takes a look at French abortion laws (when abortion was still illegal in France until the liberalized law was passed in 1975) and the terrible consequences they had. She not only describes how she almost died after finding an abortion counselor, but uses the topic of abortion to paint a picture of society’s attitudes toward working-class women. It is a groundbreaking work and, like the film version that won the Golden Lion in Venice in 2021, it never gets into didactics. Ernaux states simply but decisively that women have been denied liberties and that it is madness to deprive a person of the right to vote.
Das Buch wurde zwar vor 22 Jahren veröffentlicht, ist aber nach wie vor deprimierend aktuell und eine wichtige Lektüre im Jahr 2022. David Mouriquand
Für diejenigen, die Hillary Mantel vermissen
Jenseits von Schwarz
In diesem Jahr hat die Welt wohl eine ihrer größten lebenden Autorinnen verloren: Hillary Mantel.
Mantel was best known for her multiple Booker Prize-winning series “Wolf Hall,” and this, together with her work on the French Revolution, “A Place of Greater Safety,” means that many regard her as the woman who redesigned the genre of historical fiction.
Outside of this genre, Mantel was a talented essayist. After her death, the groundbreaking work “Some Girls Want Out: Spectacular Saintlines” circulated. Mantel’s magical realist “Beyond Black,” the story of a medium that combats childhood trauma, is a must in relation to her previous work and offers a moving meditation on memory, grief, and loneliness.
The book gains a new dimension in light of the author’s death, while the main character’s struggles with her own body are a moving part of Mantel’s life story. Tim Gallagher
For cinephiles who love to eat what they watch
Eat What You Watch: A cookbook for movie lovers
I’m cheating a bit with this one as it wasn’t released this year. However, no book has managed to capture the fusion of cinema and cooking as well as the book “Eat What You Watch: A Cookbook for Movie Lovers” by culinary film author Andrew Rea. It’s the perfect book if you’ve ever seen a dish on the big screen that caused you a massive, stomach-growling craving. And it makes a great Christmas gift. That’s how I got my copy.
Rea is the man behind the brilliant YouTube channel Binging With Babish and is known for his recreations of popular meals and snacks from movies and television. With this recipe book, he is aimed at both movie buffs and practitioners of dark cooking and ensures that anyone can prepare these delicious meals on the screen at home.
With more than 40 recipes from classic movies and cult films — written briefly and precisely and explained step-by-step so even the novice chefs can’t screw it up too much — you’ll find cooking tricks and improved versions of the recipe. Rea has also released a longer version — “Binging With Babish: 100 Recipes Recreated from Your Favourite Movies and TV Shows” — in case you’d like to go one step further.
So whether you want to make the notorious Moistmaker Sandwich from Friends, are curious whether you can slice garlic with a razor blade and liquefy it in tomato sauce (like in Goodfellas), Ratatouille Ratatouille from Ace Ratatouille (or more specifically: Confit Byaldi, you dirty pagans) or prepare the now iconic Ram-Don dish from Parasite, this book is a must. David Mouriquand