Reading Material: Top Books of 2022
“The nights I sleep best, I spend time unwinding before bed. I soak in a warm bath to melt the day away, leave my phone in another room, take a dropper of NOVA, and read a few chapters in a novel to let my mind fully settle and leave the to-do list behind. Once my eyes get heavy, I turn in for the night, fall asleep within five minutes and escape into my fantastical dreams.”
Reading has been something I’ve loved since I was little. I love the escape, the knowledge, the characters, the stories, and the perspectives I am able to uncover. I set a reading challenge every year as my reminder to take a break from my day-to-day and reset my mind. I prefer to read non-fiction during the day so my mind is able to stretch and absorb the information and I prefer novels before bed so I can escape into a fantastical world and prepare for a deep sleep. I’ve curated my favorite books I’ve read during 2022 and hope you are able to connect to some of the books, stories, and characters below.
Feel free to join me and set your own reading challenge for 2023. I use Goodreads to track & rate my books and they have an easy one click way to set up your own goal of books for the year. Happy reading!
- Kayla Clements, Founder & CEO Luna Volta
Most Powerful
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
by Isabel Wilkerson
“If you only read one book this year, read this one.” - Kayla
The Pulitzer Prize–winning, bestselling author of The Warmth of Other Suns examines the unspoken caste system that has shaped America and shows how our lives today are still defined by a hierarchy of human divisions.
In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings.
2. Best Climate Read
All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis
Edited by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson & Katharine Keeble Wilkinson
Provocative and illuminating essays from women at the forefront of the climate movement who are harnessing truth, courage, and solutions to lead humanity forward.
'ALL WE CAN SAVE' illuminates the expertise and insights of dozens of diverse women leading on climate in the United States--scientists, journalists, farmers, strategists, teachers, activists, innovators, builders, and designers, across ages, geographies, and ethnicities--and aims to advance a more representative, nuanced, and solution-oriented public conversation on the climate crisis. These women are offering a spectrum of ideas and insights for how we can rapidly, radically reshape society.
3. Best Science Fiction
Klara and the Sun
by Kazuo Ishiguro
From her place in the store, Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, watches carefully the behavior of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass on the street outside. She remains hopeful that a customer will soon choose her, but when the possibility emerges that her circumstances may change forever, Klara is warned not to invest too much in the promises of humans.
In Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro looks at our rapidly changing modern world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator to explore a fundamental question: what does it mean to love?
4. Best Fiction
To Paradise
by Hanya Yanagihara
From the author of the classic A Little Life, a bold, brilliant novel spanning three centuries and three different versions of the American experiment, about lovers, family, loss and the elusive promise of utopia.
In an alternate version of 1893 America, New York is part of the Free States, where people may live and love whomever they please (or so it seems). To Paradise is a fin de siècle novel of marvellous literary effect, but above all it is a work of emotional genius. The great power of this remarkable novel is driven by Yanagihara’s understanding of the aching desire to protect those we love – partners, lovers, children, friends, family and even our fellow citizens – and the pain that ensues when we cannot.
5. Best Nonfiction
In the Flo
by Alisa Vitti
“A must read for people with periods or anyone wanting to tap into the cyclical nature of hormonal mastery of your body.” - Kayla
The bestselling author of WomanCode presents a biohacking program for women, teaching them how to use their natural 28-day cycle to guide their time, diet, fitness, work, and relationships.
By tapping into this natural power source, you’ll get more done with less effort, you’ll feel better consistently throughout the month, and you’ll enjoy the freedom that comes with living on your own time.
6. Best Page Turner
The Other Black Girl
by Zakiya Dalila Harris
Get Out meets The Stepford Wives in this electric debut about the tension that unfurls when two young Black women meet against the starkly white backdrop of New York City book publishing.
Twenty-six-year-old editorial assistant Nella Rogers is tired of being the only Black employee at Wagner Books. Fed up with the isolation and microaggressions, she's thrilled when Harlem-born and bred Hazel starts working in the cubicle beside hers. They've only just started comparing natural hair care regimens, though, when a string of uncomfortable events elevates Hazel to Office Darling, and Nella is left in the dust.
Then the notes begin to appear on Nella's desk: LEAVE WAGNER. NOW.
It's hard to believe Hazel is behind these hostile messages. But as Nella starts to spiral and obsess over the sinister forces at play, she soon realizes that there's a lot more at stake than just her career.
7. Best Memoir
Crying in H Mart
by Michelle Zauner
A memoir about growing up Korean American, losing her mother, and forging her own identity.
Michelle Zauner tells of growing up one of the few Asian American kids at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother's particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother's tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food.
As she grew up, moving to the East Coast for college, finding work in the restaurant industry, and performing gigs with her fledgling band--and meeting the man who would become her husband--her Koreanness began to feel ever more distant, even as she found the life she wanted to live. It was her mother's diagnosis of terminal cancer, when Michelle was twenty-five, that forced a reckoning with her identity and brought her to reclaim the gifts of taste, language, and history her mother had given her.
8. Best Thriller
Mexican Gothic
by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
After receiving a frantic letter from her newly-wed cousin begging for someone to save her from a mysterious doom, Noemí Taboada heads to High Place, a distant house in the Mexican countryside. She’s not sure what she will find—her cousin’s husband, a handsome Englishman, is a stranger, and Noemí knows little about the region.
There are many secrets behind the walls of High Place. The family’s once colossal wealth and faded mining empire kept them from prying eyes, but as Noemí digs deeper she unearths stories of violence and madness.
And Noemí, mesmerized by the terrifying yet seductive world of High Place, may soon find it impossible to ever leave this enigmatic house behind.
9. Best Wanderlust
Nowhere for Very Long
by Brianna Madia
In this beautifully written, vividly detailed memoir, a young woman chronicles her adventures in an orange van named Bertha traveling across the deserts of the American West and reflects on an unconventional way of life.
A woman defined by motion, Brianna Madia bought a beat-up bright orange van, filled it with her two dogs Bucket and Dagwood, and headed into the canyons of Utah with her husband on a journey of discovery. Nowhere for Very Long is her story of exploration--of the world outside and the spirit within. From the backroads to the breakdowns, married to solo, lost to found, it is the chronicle of a woman in the wild, learning and unlearning.
Nowhere for Very Long isn't about extreme minimalism or tiny house living or #VanLife. It's about cherishing the moment and being a woman living a life true to herself, come what may.
10. Honorable Mention
The Apprentice: My Life in the Kitchen
by Jacques Pépin
In this captivating memoir, the man whom Julia Child has called "the best chef in America" tells the story of his rise from a frightened apprentice in an exacting Old World kitchen to an Emmy Award winning superstar who taught millions of Americans how to cook and shaped the nation's tastes in the bargain.
The Apprentice is the poignant and sometimes funny tale of a boy's coming of age. Beyond that, it is the story of America's culinary awakening and the transformation of food from an afterthought to a national preoccupation.