I did a lot of traveling in 2022. Mexico, Germany, Spain, Czech Republic, Hungary, Nevada, Ohio, Tennessee, Florida, Mississippi, Texas, New Mexico, and back in Mexico as I write this. Somehow I'm still employed. But I'm working on that.

In most of those places I read books in bars and cafes. These are the books I read in 2022, from worst to first:

17. The Alchemist (1988) - Paulo Coelho

An Ecuadorian cab driver in Vegas was raving about this book to me. I guess he must have been religious. It's a better read than the bible, but not by much. Avoid unless you're trying to impress an Evangelist.

I had a good 3 weeks in Vegas last summer, poor book recommendations notwithstanding. Scored my biggest poker tournament score ever and left +$30,000 after 3 weeks before fleeing to Europe with a lady friend from Mexico.

16. Empire of the Ants (1991) - Bernard Werber

There are two narratives in this book. It alternates chapters between some ants and some humans. The human chapters are basically unreadable. The ant chapters are better but you never really care about any of the characters - ant or human.

I was somewhere in Europe - let's say Budapest - when another man with poor literary taste recommended this one to me. I guess I've been traveling enough that I don't remember where things occurred. Do read Watership Down. Do not read this.

15. Catch-22 (1961) - Joseph Heller

I picked this up in Guadalajara, Mexico when I had limited options available in English.

This was one of my favorite books as a teenager. As an adult I found the absurdist humor annoying and the misogyny offensive. There's casual sexual violence and none of the women characters are likeable or believable. It's very 1961.

14. The Maltese Falcon (1929) - Dashiell Hammett

This is a fun pulpy read. Also pretty macho but this one didn't offend my delicate literary sensibilities.

An old mystery novel starring a stoic cigarette-smoking detective in San Francisco. He's looking for a statuette of a falcon. A Maltese Falcon.

13. The New Moon's Arms (2007) - Nalo Hopkinson

The heroine of this novel is a brash mostly unlikeable middle-aged woman who lives on a nameless Caribbean island. It has elements of magical realism and a compelling narrative. I liked it but couldn't love it mostly because I disliked the main character.

12. In Order To Live (2015) - Yeonmi Park

This is a brutal autobiography of a woman who escaped North Korea and was sex-trafficed in China. It's compelling but not exactly uplifting.

This one I heard recommended on a football podcast. I dipped a toe into the world of high stakes fantasy football this past year and spent a lot of time listening to podcasts. Ultimately I broke exactly even to the dollar. $4500 in, $4500 out. I lost money betting on football though. Stupid podcasts.

11. Salvador (1982) - Joan Didion

Essays by Joan Didion about her two weeks in El Salvador in 1982 during a civil war. The government was disappearing people with regularity and Joan is more or less terrified the entire time.

She passed away in 2021. What a legend. RIP.

10. My Antonia (1918) - Willa Cather

Another one I picked up in Mexico given limited options. A chess streamer I watch sometimes really likes this book. I watched a lot of chess on the internet last year. I guess my chess game improved a little. Not much. Speed chess is more of an addiction than a hobby.

But oh yeah - the book: It's a pleasant read. The narrator is an orphan boy who goes to live with relatives on a farm. Antonia is an immigrant girl a few years older who steals the show.

9. The Three-Body Problem (2008) - Liu Cixin

This is a much celebrated sci-fi novel about first contact with an alien species that takes place in China. It jumps around throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. At times I got super invested in it and at times it lost me.

Seems this is a TV show now that I should check out. I continued to not watch enough TV in 2022. So many apparently good TV shows I haven't seen. I'm a failure of an American.

8. The Night Watchman (2020) - Louise Erdrich

Local Minnesotan author Louise Erdrich's most celebrated novel to date (but not my favorite). It's historical fiction that takes places around the time of the "Indian termination" in the 1950s when the United States passed legislation ending recognition of Native American tribal sovereignty.

There are some scenes in 1950s Minneapolis, but most of it takes place on a reservation and centers around a young woman who works in a factory and an old man who is the night watchman at said factory. If you like modern fiction, you'll like this one.

7. The Glass Hotel (2020) - Emily St. John Mandel

I loved Station Eleven (the book and the TV show!) so I was excited to check out Mandel's other work.

Like Station 11, this one hops around in time and switches point of view a fair amount. There are a few threads of plot in this one but the strongest storyline centers around a young woman who marries a billionaire running a ponzi investment scheme.

It's a good read, but mostly you need to read it because turns out it's a prequel to Sea of Tranquility.

6. The Deficit Myth (2020) - Stephanie Kelton

I've been trading stocks and derivatives the past few years. This past year I became confused by the bond market. I'm still confused, but this book explained a bit. And some of it is quite shocking!

Turns out there is no national debt. In a nutshell. We don't borrow money - we make it. The US Government can spend as much money as they want, because we make the money. The risk is inflation. There is no risk that China is going repossess America for example though.

Many other interesting ideas in this progressive economic text. For example every period of balancing the national budget has historically caused a recession. And the greatest period of economic expansion in US history - the post WW II era - was when the US had the highest deficit spending as a % of GDP in our history.

I had a down year investing in 2022. Not nearly as down as the previous 2 were up, but turns out I can indeed lose money in the stock market.

5. Zeroville (2007) - Steve Erickson

I didn't like this book at first and thought it was going to be another macho turdfest. Instead it quickly engrossed me and I tore through it.

It follows a slightly autistic main character through Hollywood of the 70s. It ends with some supernatural plot but the more engrossing parts are just adventures in a Hollywood lost to time.

The main character is obsessed with the history of film so I imagine if you're a film buff you'll enjoy this even more.

4. A Desolation Called Peace (2022) - Arkady Martine

This is the followup to A Memory Called Empire and it delivers.

It's space politics in the tradition of Ursula K. Leguin - absent much in the way of battles and military strategy. It's more about the main characters trying to navigate their own contradictory positions in the empire. Looking forward to the next one!

3. The Rum Diary (1998) - Hunter S. Thompson

On Twitter I mostly just laugh at cats tending bar, but when I'm reading a quotable book I tweet out the lines I like. This book doesn't have much of a plot but it's very quotable and appeals to both my degeneracy and my sense of humanity.

It's about an American journalist from New York who takes a job at a newspaper in Puerto Rico during the 1950s. He drinks a lot and waxes philosophical. As you do.

Interestingly HST didn't like the novel and only allowed it to be published in the late 90s more than 20 years after he wrote it because he needed the money. As you do.

2. Check-Raising The Devil (2009) - Mike Matusow

This is Mike "The Mouth" Matusow's autobiography about his journey through the world of poker. It's no literary masterpiece but I felt a deep connection to it. He writes about depression, drugs, prison, and a couple legendary deep runs in the World Series of Poker Main Event.

I finished it at a bar and left the bar having decided that I was done drinking forever. Not that there's a whole lot in the book about alchohol - Matusow mostly struggled with a meth addiction. But his description of addiction and how he had messed up his greatest asset - his mind - hit me hard. Hard enough that I took a couple weeks off of drinking before hopping back on the wagon.

As I write this I'm 24 hours removed from a desperate hangover where I struggled to raise my head in Mexican taxis and airports en route to Guadalajara. But I went running this morning and just had a killer lunch so all is well enough.

1. Sea of Tranquility (2022) - Emily St. John Mandel

I heard a lot of chatter about this one through various channels and it lived up to the hype. It's set in the same world as The Glass Hotel (and apparently Station 11? I didn't even realize...) and with some of the same characters. This one has more of a sci-fi element to it and takes some surprising turns.

Emily St. John Mandel may be my favorite writer of non-genre literature at the moment. You could call her a sci-fi writer but I don't.

That's it for 2022. Kind of a down year for books. No new Joe Abercrombie book. Still no new Song of Fire and Ice book. And I learned a hard lesson about heeding book recommendations from cab drivers.

I have concrete plans to go to Ireland soon and vague plans to continue on to Asia, so I expect I'll be on the road reading a lot for at least a few months this coming year. Send me your book recommendations! Unless you're a cab driver.