Book Recommendations 2022

September 05, 2022

Hello everyone! It’s been a while hasn’t it? Remember when I said I was going to try to update my blog regularly? Well that hasn’t exactly worked out as planned 😵‍💫. Mental health and life got in the way, but I’ve grown a lot over the last 6 months and I felt a strong desire to return here and write again.

While I haven’t been updating my blog much, I have been reading a lot!

In the past 6 months I’ve read 17 books. Most have been biographies and autobiographies because that genre is what has interested me the most lately. However I’ve also read some fiction that I’ve enjoyed as well!

Since I’ve read quite a few books that I’ve really loved, I thought a great kickoff for my return would be to recommend some of my favorites to you! I’ve compiled a list of some of my favorite reads below. I hope you’re able to find a new favorite from this list!

If you like autobiographies…

Becoming - Michelle Obama

I’m sure this is not the first time you’ve seen this book on a must-read list, and there’s a reason for that; this book is excellent. Mrs. Obama chronicles her whirlwind life beautifully, from her early days as Michelle Robinson to her rise to fame as First Lady Michelle Obama.

Mrs. Obama narrates her journey in a way that is completely enrapturing. I found it so fascinating to hear about her upbringing in Chicago and how her family and the city itself shaped her formative years. We learn how the cool and collected Barack Obama won her heart and how her marriage to him would change her life in a way she never expected. We get a first-hand explanation of what goes on behind the scenes in a political campaign, and how she has learned to navigate such a tumultuous landscape with grace and poise.

I truly appreciated Michelle’s candor in the book. She detailed moments that were private and may have been difficult to decide to share, but I found them so touching and it reminded me that even a woman like her has problems, has hard moments, has an imperfect life. And yet she has tackled everything with such sophistication and has always put everything she has into her work and her family. She displays a positivity I don’t think I’ve ever seen or read before until now.

Throughout the book, Mrs. Obama is open and honest throughout the struggles she’d faced at several points in her life and how everything she’s experienced, both good and bad, have helped form her into the woman she is today. And needless to say, she is an incredible woman!

Michelle’s story will grip you from beginning to end and is absolutely worth the read.

Educated - Tara Westover

This book was an absolutely fascinating read for me. Most of us have led a pretty ordinary childhood in that we went to school to learn the yearly subjects and generally had contact with the outside world, right?

For Tara Westover, her life was so far outside from ordinary it became a whole book.

Educated chronicles Tara’s childhood living with her, uh, eccentric family preparing for the impending apocalypse that was destined to hit soon. She never went to school and spent every day rummaging for metal scraps or hoarding canned food. Her family never went to doctors; they instead practiced herbal medicine to heal everything- including serious injuries from car crashes and construction accidents. Her life was completely isolated from the outside world, which she’d been taught to fear and defend herself against.

It wasn’t until one of her older brothers, called Tyler in the book, ventures off to college and encourages Tara to pursue a life away from the mountains of Idaho that she starts to see that she doesn’t have to follow the survivalist plan her family expects her to follow.

She embarks on a journey to learn how to, well, learn. She struggles quite a bit throughout, but eventually manages acceptance to Brigham Young University. Once she goes to college and experiences life away from her family, she sees clearly what her life can become through the power of education. She continues on her journey to Harvard, and later across the Atlantic to Cambridge.

This book is a vivid view into Tara’s two worlds and her struggles to reconcile them. In order to be part of the educated world, she had to leave the world she knew for 18 years behind, and yet it will always be a part of her. If you’ve read The Glass Castle, I feel this book gives a very similar vibe in its format and will equally engross you in the author’s life story.

Tara’s memoir is a moving story about a girl’s journey to learn about a world away from her secluded family upbringing and how she will always be torn between both of them.

If you like biographies…

Anna - Amy Odell

If you’ve ever wondered how the world’s iconic fashion mogul became the woman she is now, you’ll love this biography on Anna Wintour by Amy Odell.

It details Anna’s life from her early days admiring her father’s work in the newspaper business to blazing her own trail in the fashion world all the way to Editor in Chief of Vogue and Global Chief Content Officer of Condé Nast.

Not only is is an incredibly detailed account of Ms. Wintour herself, but it also gives a lot of insight into the fashion world and Anna’s friendships and connections to some of the most powerful people in the fashion industry aside from herself. While I was reading this book I felt I got to experience some of the rush of working in fashion and editing without having to deal with all the ugly parts. It’s fascinating to learn not only about Anna Wintour’s incredibly special life path, but also learn how much of her industry is similar to The Devil Wears Prada.

If you have any interest in fashion and beauty and enjoy to read biographies about trailblazers in their field, I think you’ll really enjoy this biography. Ms. Odell does a great job giving Anna’s life account without anything feeling boring or unrelatable.

Janet, Jackie & Lee - J. Randy Taraborrelli

Mrs. Jacqueline Kennedy has always been a star and a true presence throughout history, but what makes this biography special is how Mr. Taraborrelli weaves together the life history of the three Bouvier women and how their relationships with each other evolved throughout their lifetimes.

We see how Janet Bouvier, strong-willed and unafraid to speak her mind, raised and guided her daughters to the best of her ability during her life. We view Lee’s loving yet contentious relationship with Jackie, always living in Jackie’s shadow and doing anything she can to distinguish herself from Mrs. Kennedy. And of course, we get another account of Jackie’s destiny as First Lady of the United States, and how she struggled to keep a private life behind the scenes.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading about the relationships between these three ladies. As in any family relationship there was good and bad, but I felt that when it truly mattered these ladies did everything they could for each other as any good family would do. Each had their own private battles to overcome and fought for their own paths in life, not to mention family drama. But while I sometimes was annoyed by them (particularly Janet) I never disliked any of the three. They were truly incredible women who blazed their own paths without abandoning each other, because they knew they were stronger together than apart.

If you enjoy reading about American history and particularly the JFK era, I think you should give this biography a shot. You get insight into the Bouvier family and how the three women would come to define the 60s onward with a style and grace that only they could pull off.

If you like fiction…

Now I’ll be honest, I’ve only read one fiction book this year 😅. But the one I did read I thought was so great that I made a fiction category just to talk about this one book!

The Midnight Library - Matt Haig

content warning - mention of suicide

In times when you have experienced regret and even despair, have you ever wondered if your life could’ve been better? If you had just taken the other road, would you be better off, more content, truly happy?

We will never know, but Nora Seed gets to see for herself in the Midnight Library.

On a particularly bad day after what has seemed to be a miserable life, Nora decides she’s had enough and attempts to commit suicide. But instead of experiencing any sort of afterlife or even just nothingness, she finds herself in a library with her old school librarian. Except it’s not really her old librarian, but the entity that presides over the Midnight Library.

The library is full of books (of course), and each book represents a different life path that Nora could have taken at some point. Nora is able to go into these books and live various different lives in order to figure out which life is the best, and once she finds the perfect book she can go on happily living that new life.

I really liked the concept of this book. I mean, who wouldn’t be tempted to see how their lives can change based on a single choice? I found it so interesting to see Nora go through several books fully living out a completely different version of her life. I also appreciated that there were flaws in every life; I felt this accurately reflects real life, which is inherently imperfect!

There’s only one thing about this book that I didn’t love, and it was the way it portrayed Nora’s use of antidepressants. In some books she was taking antidepressants, just like she already did in her current life before she ended it. But in books where her life seemed practically picture perfect, she didn’t seem to be taking antidepressants. Now both scenarios are fine, but Nora used her use of antidepressants as one way to judge how happy she was in each life. This rubbed me the wrong way because it seemed to imply that if you are on antidepressants your life is bad, and that is absolutely not the case. Many people need antidepressants to help their mental state, and many find that this type of medicine changes their lives because it helps them truly live their lives, giving them some control over their illness instead of the other way around. I personally found Nora’s view on antidepressants a little backwards, though this was probably not the intention of the author.

This book was very touching and gives some excellent perspective on how important it is to be grateful for all the ways life has been good to us instead of dwelling on the negative (which tends to be my default unfortunately). By the end you’ll hopefully have more appreciation for the way your life has turned out and be inspired to enjoy life to its fullest.

These are just a few of the books that have captured my attention so far this year, and I’m sure there will be more. I’ve read many great books and I’m sure I’ll read more, but these really stood out to me so far. I hope you’re able to find a new read in this post! I think I’ll make another post at the end of the year of my top books, so stay tuned! 😊

-S