Opinion – Darwin and God: See the best science and fiction books of 2022, according to the blog

It’s the third consecutive year that I’ve been able to write down all the books I’ve finished reading over the course of 365 days. I also adopted the ritual of sharing the list with the blog’s kind readers. This time, I do something a little more organized: after the complete list, I choose the best of the most relevant categories for the topics we follow here: scientific divulgation, story and fiction (with that special attention dedicated to the Science fiction and the fantasymy favorite genres and, as I always believed, extremely important for the scientific imagination).

You will notice that the list below includes many rereads (the only good book is the book that deserves to be reread once a year, say the sages) and some classics. Therefore, I will only include recent works — even if not necessarily released in 2022 — in the list of the best of the year. (Yes, it’s a bit of a rip-off, but it’s my blog, right?).

Here it is first, the “raw” list:

1)The Minotaur, Monteiro Lobato (rereading)
2)Gifts, Ursula K. Le Guin
3) Stringing Together A Nation, Todd Diacon
4) Dom Casmurro, Machado de Assis (rereading)
5)Thebes, Paul Cartledge
6)Coraline, Neil Gaiman (reinterpretation)
7) Nuestra Parte de Noche, Mariana Enríquez
8)Roberto Marinho, Eugênio Bucci
9) Out of the Silent Planet, CS Lewis (rereading)
10)Piranesi, Susanna Clarke
11) The Bird Way, Jennifer Ackerman
12) Origin: A Genetic History of the Americas, Jennifer Raff
13) The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams (reread)
14)A Pocket History of Human Evolution, Silvana Condemi and François Savatier
15) Warm Men, Samir Machado de Machado
16)The Bright Ages: A New History of Medieval Europe, Matthew Gabriele and David M. Parry
17) How to Hide an Empire, Daniel Immerwahr
18)The Caped Crusade: Batman and the Rise of Nerd Culture, Glen Weldon
19) Bomber Mafia, Malcolm Gladwell
20) Superman: The Unauthorized Biography, Glen Weldon
21) Reigns of Narizinho, Monteiro Lobato (rereading)
22) The Roman Republic: A Very Short Introduction, David Gwynn
23) Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art, Rebecca Wragg Sykes
24) Rings, Swords and Monsters, Michael Drout
25) The Mosquito, Timothy G. Winegard
26) The Life and Legacy of Muhammad, Maria Dakake
27)M: The Man of Providence, Antonio Scurati
28) Flowers, Vows and Bullets, Angela Alonso
29)The History of Politics and Race in America, 1968-Present, Candis Watt Smith
30) Perelandra, CS Lewis (rereading)
31) The Heart Goes Last, Margaret Atwood
32)The Big Mysteries of Human Evolution, Elen Feuerriegel
33)Feeling and Knowing: The Origins of Consciousness, António Damásio
34)A History of Video Games, Jeremy Parish
35) Understanding Russia, Lynne Ann Hartnett
36) Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas, Machado de Assis (rereading)
37) Unseen Academicals, Terry Pratchett
38) A Thousand Ships, Natalie Haynes
39) The Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller
40) The Secret Wisdom of Nature, Peter Wohlleben
41)Sauron Defeated, JRR Tolkien (rereading)
42) The Rise of Humans, John Hawks
43) How to Train Your Dragon, Cressida Cowell
44) How to Be a Pirate, Cressida Cowell
45) How to Raise Kids Who Aren’t Assholes, Melinda Wenner Moyer
46) How to Speak Dragonese, Cressida Cowell
47) Depression is the Loss of an Illusion, J.-D. Nasio
48) The Fall of Gondolin, JRR Tolkien (rereading)
49) The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan
50) Language Families of the World, John McWhorter
51) The Pope at War, David I. Kertzer
52) This is Your Brain On Music, Daniel J. Levitin (reinterpretation)
53) The Dispossessed, Ursula K. Le Guin (rereading)
54) Under the Times of the Equinox, Eduardo Góes Neves
55) The Rise and Reign of the Mammals, Steve Brusatte
56) Dynasty, Tom Holland
57) Good Omens, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett (reinterpretation)
58)Twelve Caesars, Mary Beard
59)A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin (reinterpretation)
60) We Don’t Know Ourselves, Fintan O’Toole
61) Bible — The Founding Stories, Frédéric Boyer and Serge Bloch
62) Pandora’s Jar, Natalie Haynes
63) Romanceiro da Inconfidência, Cecília Meireles
64) The Overstory, Richard Powers
65) Historia Universal de la Infamia, Jorge Luis Borges
66) Lucy, Neanderthal and Noi, Guido Barbujani
67)The Journey of Our Genes, Johannes Krause and Thomas Trappe
68) The Children of Húrin, JRR Tolkien (rereading)
69) The Return of the King, JRR Tolkien (rereading)
70)The Tombs of Atuan, Ursula K. Le Guin (rereading)
71)Fairy Tale, Stephen King
72)The World of JRR Tolkien, Dimitra Fimi
73) Faith and The Founding Fathers, Adam Jortner
74)From Here To Infinity, Michael Drout
75)Psalm for a Pilgrim Robot, Becky Chambers
76) Breathless, David Quammen
77)See Morir Una Polilla, Valeria Luiselli
78)Welcome to Your Teenager’s Brain, Abigail Baird
79) Stone Blind, Natalie Haynes
80) The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien (rereading)
81) The Sandman – Act III, Neil Gaiman
82)The Fall of Númenor, JRR Tolkien
83) Essentials of Social Psychology, Wind Goodfriend
84) The Farthest Shore, Ursula K. Le Guin (reinterpretation)
85) The Dead Sea Scrolls, Gary Rendsburg
86)Tehanu, Ursula K. Le Guin (rereading)
87) The Sound of the Jaguar’s Roar, Micheliny Verunschk
88) Fictions, Jorge Luis Borges
89)Maps and Legends, Michael Chabon
90) The Happiness Hypothesis, Jonathan Haidt
91)Contact Strategies, Heather Roller
92)Buddhism, Malcolm David Ackel
93) Illuminations, Alan Moore
94) Meditations, Marcus Aurelius

And now, with you, the great books of the year (at least according to this poor reader and scribe):

Scientific Disclosure Category

Technical tie that made me very happy between two delicious archaeological books. Are they:

– The gringo “Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art” (“Parentela: Vida, Amor, Morte e Arte dos Neanderthals”), by the British Rebecca Wragg Sykes (out there in 2020, but here it is still unpublished, so it’s worth it, go);

– The Brazilian “Under the Times of the Equinox: Eight Thousand Years of History in the Central Amazon”, by Eduardo Góes Neves, from USP.

I have already written about both in this Sheet. (Links to read the texts are in the titles of the books, above). I will conclude by simply saying that Sykes’ work is a sensorial experience of diving into the world of the Neanderthals, while Neves’ work helps to think about Brazilian prehistoric transformations without putting them in the straitjacket of Old World archeology. Fine thing.

History Category

“The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler” by American historian David Kertzer does what most people expect For Decades: A dispassionate portrait of the title pontiff’s role during World War II, based on newly released documents from the Vatican archives.

Unfortunately for a Catholic like myself, it has to be recognized that the portrayal of Pius XII in the book is not the most complimentary. The pope placed the survival of the Church’s hierarchical structure above all else and took a timid stand against the persecution of Jews in Italy and Rome (although he was far from condoning Nazi anti-Semitism).

Category Fiction

Another technical tie, this time with two writers that I had the pleasure of discovering this year that is now ending:

– “O Som do Rugido da Onça”, by Brazilian Micheliny Verunschk, winner of the 2022 Jabuti Prize;

– “Psalm for a Pilgrim Robot”, by American Becky Chambers.

The link to the column I wrote about Chambers’ little glowing book is above. With regard to “O Som do Rugido da Onça”, what I can say is that no narrative that I have read to date has managed to capture as well as he did the essence of the mythical logic of the original Amazonian cultures, with an “inside” view, and not “outside”. Read.