2022: books and reading during the worst year of my life
This is a tough paragraph to write. In 2022, our lives, as we knew them, stopped. Our daughter Masha, our only child, passed away last March after two years and three months of bravely living and dealing with a rare and aggressive form of cancer. It completely devastated us, and our lives were squarely divided into ‘before March 2022’ and ‘after March 2022’ parts.
Reading, an activity so central to my identity over decades, lost its meaning altogether, like so many other things around us.
My wife and I are trying our best to continue Masha’s legacy by launching a global, foundation, a peer-to-peer, global mentoring and empowering community, based on cutting-edge neuroscience to support young people. If you feel like supporting this cause, please consider donating here. Thank you.
Some books offer readers a chance to escape, some lend a helping hand, and some give strength, hope or perspective, so much needed in these desperate times. Slowly and very selectively, I started reading again.
Despite everything, I decided to go ahead with publishing my annual list. This list, like my life itself, is directly inspired by or connected with Masha — 14 books out of 24 have that direct connection with her, in fact. She either loved some of them herself or gave them to me as presents or I needed to read them to deal with what had happened to us.
If you, like us, are grieving and dealing with a loss, I seriously recommend paying attention to the Spirituality section below. It has been helping us enormously and we hope those books will do so for you, too.
This is the ninth year since I started publishing my annual reading lists with comments and recommendations here, you can see the previous articles here — 26 in 2021, 22 in 2020, 36 in 2019, 38 in 2018, 44 in 2017, 40 in 2016, 41 in 2015, 32 in 2014.
In 2022, 24 titles, like in the past, were again broadly divided in half — 11 fiction and 13 non-fiction titles. Language-wise, I got back into reading contemporary Russian literature (8 titles of 24 were read in Russian), with many more titles already added to my 2023 and 2024 lists (see a pic at the very end!).
So, here are all the books I read in 2022. The full breakdown with links and some recommendations are below these photos.
Non-fiction list
Spirituality and self-improvement
- The Art of Dying by Peter and Elizabeth Fenwick
- Evidence of the Afterlife. The Science of Near-Death Experiences by Jeffry Long and Paul Perry
- The Light Between Us. Lessons from Heaven That Teach Us to Live Better in the Here and Now by Laura Lynn Jackson
- Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife by Eben Alexander
- Signs: The secret language of the universe by Laura Lynn Jackson
- The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse: The Animated Story by Charlie Mackesy
History
- Namedni. 1921–1930 by Leonid Parfenov.
- Last Witnesses: An Oral History of the Children of World War II by Svetlana Aleksievich
- Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War by Svetlana Aleksievich
- The Time Traveller’s Guide to Restoration Britain: Life in the Age of Samuel Pepys, Isaac Newton and The Great Fire of London by Ian Mortimer
Medicine
- The Grieving Brain: The Surprising Science of How We Learn from Love and Loss by Mary-Frances O’Connor
Society and World Around Us
Business and career
- World Class: How to Lead, Learn and Grow like a Champion by Will Greenwood and Ben Fennell
Fiction list
Drama
- Verification Bureau by Alexander Archangelsky
- Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata
- The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
- Former Lenin street (Byvshaya Lenina) by Shamil Idiatullin
- Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson
Crime
- Girl A by Abigail Dean
- A Time for Mercy by John Grisham
History
- Shadows of the Teutons by Alexei Ivanov
2 & 3. Tobol (volumes 1 & 2) by Alexei Ivanov
Spirituality
1. Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
Some reviews…
Best non-fiction: The Art of Dying, which we bought off the back of watching a long YouTube interview with Oxford professor and researcher Peter Fenwick was the clearest indication that physical death is not the end of a soul, but its passing into a different form. All other books in the Spirituality section, whether written by mediums or medical doctors or researchers, further developed and strengthened this view. Numerous signs from Masha confirmed it for me later.
Biggest non-fiction surprise: The same topic as above, and this one is written by a successful, distinguished neurosurgeon, who went through a massive Near Death Experience himself and then wrote a book about it — Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife
Best book for a career: World Class: How to Lead, Learn and Grow like a Champion. Developing others, and leading and building teams is something I miss in my consultancy work, and although there are always some aspects of it, the nature of consulting is different. I do miss it though and I also know that these things always came naturally to me. I used to read a lot on leadership to improve myself, and this is the first book of the kind I’ve read in a while, and it’s a really good one. An advertising expert and an ex-rugby star united their efforts to write a leadership book based on elite sports people's experience. It certainly offers a very interesting perspective. It’s full of anecdotes, as all business books tend to be, yet it’s practical and filled with really good advice applicable across sectors, industries and disciplines. I recommend you read it if you lead or plan to lead people.
Non-fiction everyone has to read: I’ll continue with my last year’s recommendations — by adding two more books by Svetlana Aleksievich's first-person account cycle based on the biggest upheavals of the Soviet era. The entire collection of her works should be introduced to compulsory reading, regardless of the country of study. This year, two of her books — about childhood memories of the Second World War and those of Afghan veterans — were especially difficult to read: there are too many parallels with the real nightmare of our days, happening in Ukraine.
New author, I will now never miss books by: Caleb Azumah Nelson, whose debut novel Open Water is simply spectacular. This novel reads like a poem, although it’s in prose. It’s about modern-day London, it’s about young people’s love. It’s about black London male experiences. It’s about many more things, like grit, trust, music and belonging. It’s outstanding, one of the best novels about London and one of the best novels about love I’ve ever read.
A book I never thought I’d like, but loved: Convenience Store Woman was given to Masha as a present some time ago and I did not have many expectations about it, as I never heard about this writer before. I really wanted to share this reading experience with her, so I added it to my list. It’s a fun little novel, and the title captures its content perfectly. It tells a story of a 36yo Keiko, a local convenience store worker, going through her life stacking shelves, being the best employee ever, serving customers, and avoiding sharing anything from her personal life, while still considering looking for love and even searching for life’s meaning.
Disappointing novel: none this year.
The most surprising novel I read and probably the best novel I read this year: I’d have to say Tobol duology by a prominent Russian historical novelist Alexey Ivanov, a meticulous researcher of the Russian past and probably one of my favourite modern writers in Russian. Amazing attention to detail, deep knowledge of difficult and very diverse material, non-flat characters, and most importantly — an amazing sense of language. I remember how the Heart of Parma, the Gold of Revolt, and, although to a lesser extent, Shadows of the Teutons shocked me with his style and vocabulary. Tobol is more accessible, but not everyone is able to handle almost 1500 pages of it. I gave this great historical novel a solid A*, although I continue to maintain that editors are afraid of him: it could and should have been shorter. I wonder what century Ivanov will take on next.
Special mention: I finally read The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, one of Masha’s favourite novels, if not the favourite. For me, it has a lot in common with Catcher in the Rye but from a young woman’s perspective. It’s partly autobiographical, as the themes of mental health, self-identity and personal achievement were central to the author’s existence, too. Starting as a coming-of-age novel, it gradually descends into a slow-burning drama. You are only left wondering what literary legacy Plath would have left were it not for her own suicide, The Bell Jar being her only novel.
And here we are, that’s it. Thank you for sticking around. My reading list for 2023 and 2024 is already oversubscribed (look at the image below, my birthday and Christmas presents!), and I can not wait to start on it in January. Meanwhile, I am wishing you all the best in 2022! Happy reading!
