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The other day, I tried to remember all of the books I had read in the past 12 months.
There were a lot. I don’t say that because I want to sound smart. Some were good, some were great and some I’d rather forget. (Still depressed by the Robin Williams biography).
I know there are avid readers like me out there, so here’s a year-end wander through my personal reading list, plus the top reads at the Anne Arundel County Public Library and some notes on what Annapolis (Annapolish?) authors published this year.
Consider it a bookend to 2022.
There were books I read to satisfy my intellectual curiosity, like “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind” and “My Old Kentucky Home: The Astonishing Life and Reckoning of an Iconic American Song” and “Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age.” I learned about humanity, my adopted second home state, and the failings of cultural blindness by opening these books.
Other books offered pure pleasure, like the “Rivers of London” fantasy series. I stumbled across the first one by Ben Aaronovitch and devoured the next eight plus a novella and short story collection. My son gave me another, “The Stormlight Archives” by Brandon Sanderson, and I’m still working through these tomes.
There are some embarrassing admissions on my list, like Jeff Shaara’s decade-old World War II series. Honestly, every time I read a World War II book, I promise myself I will never get dragged into another. This time, I tamped down my surfeit of facts about the German General Erwin Rommel when I learned that he was from the same part of Germany as some of my distant ancestors.
There were books for work, including six of Maryland author David Poyer’s lengthy Navy hero series, the Dan Lenson novels. I read the subset on World War III for a piece I wrote about fear of China. There were journalism books, including my Baltimore Banner colleague Justin Fenton’s “We Own This City” (although not the French translation sitting on a shelf at the office) and Margaret Sullivan’s “Newsroom Confidential: Lessons (and Worries) from an Ink-Stained Life.”
I gave an intern I had mentored a compendium of sports journalism, “The Year’s Best Sports Writing 2021,” so I read it too.
I won’t bore you with the whole list. But to paraphrase an old expression, we are what we read. I’m a journalist with a taste for history, anthropology and science fiction. I like to be surprised, and just to be contrary, I particularly like it while enjoying the comfort of a familiar topic.
So, as I look over the list of most-read books from the Anne Arundel County Public Library, I wonder what it says about Annapolis.
Lots of us like suspense, such as “The Last Thing He told Me” by Laura Dave. This bestseller from 2021 was the most popular fiction title at the library this year.
Library officials acknowledge their readers tend to be older women, but if you look around, popular fiction right now is filled with stories of women overcoming obstacles to form strong bonds. In this case, it’s Hannah Hall and her 16-year-old stepdaughter Bailey Meadows. Hall’s new husband (Bailey’s father) vanishes and they go in search of him together. He’s not who he seems, and each of the main characters learns that’s true of each other as well.
I can’t help but wonder if the setting, Sausalito, California, is part of the appeal. Annapolis is an affluent small city on the bay, and so is Sausalito. Different bays, of course, Chesapeake versus San Francisco, and different levels of affluence and size. The California town has only about 9% of the Annapolis population, but it’s twice as wealthy.
It’s both easier and harder to suss out the popularity of “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck” by Mark Manson. It was the top nonfiction book this year at the library. If you subscribe to the notion that elderly ladies do not use the profanity at the heart of this title, typographically minced by the publishers, apparently, you are wrong.
The appeal of this 2016 book is the same of many other well-read titles — it’s a self-help work that provides another way of looking at things. Basically, by picking carefully the things you care deeply about, you’re more focused, more effective and more comfortable in your own skin.
And while my kids preferred Captain Underpants to Greg Heffley, “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” by Jeff Kinney topped the list of most-read books for children and placed highly on the adult list.
I wish I had read more Annapolis-area authors over the past year, I usually do. Some are entirely new to me.
“A Woman of No Importance” by Sonia Purnell was a great read this year, the story of how Virginia Halls of Baltimore helped lead the French underground during World War II — there it is again. But I missed “The Invisible Woman,” the historical novel on Halls’ life by Severna Park writer Erika Robuck.
Historical fiction writer Laura Kamoie of Severna Park is out with the novella “Hide and Seek” under her romance pen name Laura Kaye. Marcia Talley of Annapolis reached 19 books with the latest installment of her Hannah Ives mystery series, “Disco Dead.” Leigh Goff published her latest young adult thriller, “Koush Hollow.”
Steve Carr recently emailed me about his new book, “Antelope Girl” due out soon. I couldn’t find it, but I did find Carr’s page listing his travel books and fiction works.
Rik Forgo of Pasadena sent me books one and two of his trilogy on the Eagles — yes, the 1970s rock band. They’re called “Before the Band” and “Up Ahead in the Distance.” No word on when the third installment will come out.
Others come from Annapolis writers I know, like Holocaust survivor Charlie Heller’s well-reviewed immigrant memoir, “Cowboy from Prague” and Terry Smith’s journalism autobiography, “Four Wars, Five Presidents: A Reporter’s Journey from Jerusalem to Saigon to the White House.”
There are probably more local writers, but the two most famous from Annapolis are undoubtedly poet Grace Cavalieri and novelist Barbara Kingsolver. (OK, you could throw in noir pioneer James M. Cain, but he’s dead so let’s not).
Cavalieri, the Maryland poet laureate since 2018, still lives here, and recently re-published her 1970 collection “Why I Cannot Take a Lover” on top of “Grace Art: Poems and Paintings” and “The Secret Letters of Madame de Staël” in 2021. That’s quite a pace for a 90-year-old writer.
Kingsolver, who was born here but grew up in Eastern Kentucky, wrote one of the best-reviewed books of the year, “Demon Copperhead.”
If you just want to check out books set in Annapolis, there’s a new one by Stephanie Vernie, “The Letters in the Books.”
That’s a lot about books, and there are lots more to start reading in January. Already on my pile are “Death’s End,” the finale of the sci-fi trilogy by Chinese novelist Cixin Liu. They’re supposedly making a movie.
What did you read this year? What’s waiting on your bookshelf (bedside or electronic)? Send me an email with your recommendations.
If you read a lot, I think the ultimate thing it says about you is that you want to explore the world with your mind and that you appreciate good authors who help you do that.
Happy exploring in 2023.
rick.hutzell@thebaltimorebanner.com
Rick Hutzell is the Annapolis columnist for The Baltimore Banner. He writes about what's happening today, how we got here and where we're going next. The former editor of Capital Gazette, he led the newspaper to a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the 2018 mass shooting in its newsroom.
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