Books I read in 2022. And I dearly recommend them.

I have prepared a list of the books I read in 2022 that I dearly recommend to you.

Should you be curious to read my books, you can find some of them here, here and here.

And here below are my book recommendations:

The air in bones – Otilia Țeposu

The decision – Karine Tuil

A Short Philosophy of Birds – Philippe J. Dubois

Little Liar– Lisa Ballantyne

Mortua Est –Teodor Hossu-Longin

I cannot find you anywhere – Laura Ionescu

Death - Julian Barnes

The Morning when I should have died– Semezdin Mehmedinovic

Theatre –Sidonia Drăgușanu

Dinner with Liver and Heart – Mihaela Apetrei

Achluophobia. Ten macabre stories– Flavius Ardelean

Prisoner of Tehran – Marina Nemat

Ophanim – AnaBarton

Oneiron - Laura Lindtstedt

Bread with something – Liliana Nechita

The Three Women of the Consul – Jean-Christophe Rufin

Everything the genius man must know– Oliver Kuhn

How to kill your family– Bella Mackie

Great love – Balla

Broadway – Fabrice Caro

Broken wings – Kahlil Gibran

The world inflames – Siri Hustvedt

Endearing black - Gabriela Chiran

Nothing but blue sky – Kathleen MacMahon

Kill the sons – Benoit Severac

Bellevue – Ivana Dobrakovova

Fratricids – Nikos Kazantzakis

The Paganini contract– Lars Kepler

House of leaves – Mark Z. Danielewski

The secretary’s poems – Ștefania Mihalache

Dehumanized – Osamu Dazai

How I became a hooligan – Mihail Sebastian

The exod of lambs – Irina Georgescu Groza

It’s all in your head – Suzanne O’Sullivan

The future of humanity and other unpopular essays – Bertrand Russell

The journal of a jazz player – Bujor Nedelcovici

The feeling of an ending – Julian Barnes

What brought you here won’t take you there – Marshall Goldsmith

The institution – Andreea Lupu

The art ofcompromising – Ileana Vulpescu

On earth we’re briefly gorgeous – Ocean Vuong

A distance perspective – Alexander McCall Smith

The amnesia – Cristina Lincu

Milk teeth – Zoje Stage

The reading list – Sara Nisha Adams

Ioshka – Cristian Fulaș

North Korea. A camp as large as a country – Adelin Petrișor

Between twoenemy lines – Oana David

Born a crime – Trevor Noah

The three daughters of Eve – Elif Shafak

One hundred days of happiness – Fausto Brizzi

The paradoxe of the chimpanzee – Steve Peters

Happiness is a safety pin – Răzvan Exarhu

High-heeled girls – Michael Kurland

The praise of the road – Florea Lucaci

Misogynation – Laura Bates

The girl in green – Derek B. Miller

The Indian signature – Sergiu Radu Ruba

Momo – Michael Ende

The discomfort of evening – Lucas Marieke Rijneveld

A trip around the human being – Alexandru N. Stermin

Burned alive – Souad

The silent power – Susan Cain

The polar star – Martin Cruz Smith

The history of bees – Maja Lunde

A woman’s prospect – Ana Barton

Masks – Leonardo Padura Fuentes

Letters to Lucilius – Seneca

Piranesi – Susanna Clarke

Your story started a long time ago – Mark Wolynn

Kay’s anatomy – Adam Kay

Confiteor – Jaume Cabre

Adventures

My Adventures have gone on a trip.

A colleague of mine is visiting Ghana and he took the book as companionship while on his flight.

And you, what are you planning to read in the holiday season?

Mortua Est (From Latin, It Is Dead) – Teodor Hossu-Longin

I was 6 years old when the revolution that brought the fall of Communism happened. I have only a few memories and the stories from my folks, and some books I read to make me draw the line to the shape of how people were living during those days.

But the fond of the shape … Well, I have not lived it and I hardly believe that I can imagine it, regardless of how many books I would read about the way of living during the Communism, about what happened during the revolution or at the mineriads.

But still, I keep reading. And it seems essential to me not to ignore the voices, so few these days, because this is how we learn about us, about where we are going and what to do in order to avoid the mistakes of the past.

 

Mircea, the main character of the novel Mortua Est, was wounded during the mineriads and decides to emigrate from Romania, searching for a more suitable place to fulfil his dreams and expectations and finds that place in a foreign country. Deeds and people, remorse and recalibrations (when one finds out that the grass is actually not that greener on the other side), convince him to return to Romania. All this journey is filled with stories and philosophical analysis in which the reader may or may not find oneself but has the liberty to choose so.

And there is another main character in the novel, a character that is noticed by the reader only at the end of the novel. The pure wish for better days. It belongs to no one and to everyone. It is due to it that youngsters nowadays have a present. It comes from a very far, far away place, from our ancestors and grandparents. And it does not leave, but tests us into measuring our own values while admiring ourselves in the mirror that it holds to ourselves.

 

Here, below, there is a small excerpt to convince you to read the novel:

‘Soya salami, rapeseed oil, brown bread, everything was given on ration. It feels like I am reading a menu that a nowadays nutritionist has especially drafted. How ironic! Maybe in 20-30 years, we will find out that, actually, Ceausescu’s only plan  was to make Romania healthy…’

I cannot find you anywhere – Laura Ionescu

It’s a little hard to write about Laura Ionescu’s book, but it’s rather easy to love it, to find oneself in it, to recommend it to others and to let yourself be enchanted by the magic of simple words that usually mean more than those pompous words we see being used around.

In ‘I cannot find you anywhere’, I found myself in many of its chapters. I found my mom with her love for the village life, I found myself being fussy because I was lucky enough and did not live so many years under Communism, and I found my sister – here below is an excerpt that applies for us, too:

‘The two of us got to know each other better later in life, when I became her eldest child and the difference of 13 years between proved to be a divine mathematics.’

I wish you find yourself in this book too, and when you do let it teach you a thing or two.  

Memories

They say that memories are the refuge when one feels restless or alone. I often happen to be found by memories then the other way around. Like this post I found recently. It’s a lovely thing to be reminded of something you remembered seven years ago. How lucky I am with this blog!

On my nightstand, I have a book written by Vlad Musatescu, to protect me from sleeplessness or evil thoughts. And as I was opening it the other night, I remembered that some years back, more than seven years for sure, I was talking on the phone with a friend of mine and I happened to tell her how lovely are Vlad’s books. Being the passionate speaker that I am when I truly believe in something, I went straight to directly convince her. So the conversation on the phoned turned into something different; my friend spoke no more and listened while I was reading excerpts from one of Vlad’s books.

 

It sometimes seems to me that the only clothes we need are memories. So cover yourself nicely!