Books To Read In 2022
For all the book lovers
It has been another crazy year. But I am not here to dwell on that. This year I have fallen in love with books, again. They have served me as an inspiration and support through the changes in my life lately — of course, one of them starting to write on Medium.
Who knows how 2022 will be so for now it’s time to plan so have your notes app aside and check out these book titles.
I hope that you will find one or more that catches your interest.
1. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is the second novel by Anne Brontë, published in 1848 under the male pseudonym Acton Bell which at the time of its publication won much praise from her contemporaries, as well as the scandal and shock from several critics.
The author presents us with an epistolary work, in which, through letters, Gilbert Markam tells his friend a past event from his youth in which an evasive widow named Helen Graham moves with her son to the gloomy mansion of Wildfell Hall. Her new appearance and isolated personality will not take long to attract the attention — and rumors — of its neighbors, since she keeps a mysterious past that will be discovered as the reading progresses.
From marital and educational inequality to domestic violence and alcoholism, you get to admire the audacity, hardness, and precision of the author’s prose who had the courage to bring to the spotlight the taboos of Victorian society.
2. Of Love and Shadows by Isabel Allende
“Until now I’ve been living a dream, and I’m afraid to wake up.”
A passionate affair of two people willing to risk everything for justice and truth is the subject of the author’s novel, set during the beginnings of Augusto Pinochet’s military dictatorship in Chile.
Here we follow Irene Beltran, a journalist daughter of an upper-middle-class family who as such grew up unconscious of the terrible events that were happening in her country, blind to reality; and Francisco Leal, a photographer who comes from a family of Spanish refugees that embarked to Chile without knowing that years later they would be in another national conflict.
The plot takes shape when the pair are sent to investigate the mysterious case of Evangelina Ranquileo — a girl suffering from outbursts popularly believed to perform miracles. As the story continuous, Irene and Francisco untangle a web of terror and violence that covers a hideous crime that could put the regime in a great challenge, putting their lives in danger.
3. 1984 by George Orwell
“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”
The dystopian novel 1984 by George Orwell depicts a totalitarian society where every action is watched and the face of Big Brother — the omniscient leader of the Party which prohibits free thought, sex, and any expression of individuality— is present wherever you look.
As the novel opens, the protagonist Winston Smith feels frustrated by the oppression of the Party, and from purchasing a diary in which to write his criminal thoughts, he goes deeper until reaching the core of the society he lives in that has many parallelisms with our own.
I’ve already written about the role of language in the story but there are several aspects you can look at — constant propaganda, liberty, censorship, technology, etc.
4. Yerma by Federico Garcia Lorca
Yerma is a little gem by the writer Federico García Lorca where he addresses the issue of the ‘sterile woman’ as well as the concepts of honor, caste, and popular beliefs in a rural town in order to depict the cruel reality of women that the feminist movement attempted to end in a time when gender roles were rigidly defined.
The main character Yerma has been married to a hard-working man named Juan for over two years and yet she still has not become pregnant. Years pass and as Lorca mentioned what stands out of this play is not the succession of events but the psychological degradation of the protagonist who goes from the hope of having a child to despair that ends with a tragic act.
5. Orlando by Virginia Woolf
Orlando: A Biography is a novel by Virginia Woolf, inspired by Woolf’s lover and close friend the aristocratic poet Vita Sackville-West.
It narrates the adventures of Orlando, an attractive, witty poet who changes sex from man to woman all of a sudden and lives for three centuries, meeting the key figures of English history.
The novel shows the transformation of Orlando in every moment of his life, sometimes a man, the poet, the ambassador, sometimes a woman, and so on.
Although is not a book I recommend to start with this author, is a must-read for everyone.
Thanks for reading!
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