Tag Archives: Arts & Literature

Reviews: The Best Books From Top 35 Lists In 2022

The Ultimate Best Books of 2022 List

Literary Hub (December 19, 2022) – From 35 lists and from 29 publications (yes, there are even more lists out there, but we’re all going to die some day), tallying a total of 887 books. 84 books were highlighted on 4 or more lists, and those are collated those for you here, in descending order of frequency.

14 lists:

Hernan Diaz, Trust

Trust - Diaz, Hernan

An unparalleled novel about money, power, intimacy, and perception. Even through the roar and effervescence of the 1920s, everyone in New York has heard of Benjamin and Helen Rask. He is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; she is the daughter of eccentric aristocrats. Together, they have risen to the very top of a world of seemingly endless wealth–all as a decade of excess and speculation draws to an end. But at what cost have they acquired their immense fortune? This is the mystery at the center of Bonds, a successful 1937 novel that all of New York seems to have read. Yet there are other versions of this tale of privilege and deceit.

Penguin Random House


Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow - Zevin, Gabrielle

On a bitter-cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn’t heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom. These friends, intimates since childhood, borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo. Overnight, the world is theirs. 

Ed Yong, An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us

An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us - Yong, Ed

The Earth teems with sights and textures, sounds and vibrations, smells and tastes, electric and magnetic fields. But every kind of animal, including humans, is enclosed within its own unique sensory bubble, perceiving but a tiny sliver of our immense world.In An Immense World, Ed Yong coaxes us beyond the confines of our own senses, allowing us to perceive the skeins of scent, waves of electromagnetism, and pulses of pressure that surround us. We encounter beetles that are drawn to fires, turtles that can track the Earth’s magnetic fields, fish that fill rivers with electrical messages, and even humans who wield sonar like bats. 

12 lists:

Jennifer Egan, The Candy House
Jonathan Escoffery, If I Survive You
Namwali Serpell, The Furrows

11 lists:

Margo Jefferson, Constructing a Nervous System: A Memoir

10 lists:

Tess Gunty, The Rabbit Hutch
Hua Hsu, Stay True: A Memoir
Celeste Ng, Our Missing Hearts

Arts & Culture: The New Yorker – December 26, 2022

A hand draws an intricate drawing involving two characters Circle and Square.
“Ups and Downs”  by Chris Ware

The New Yorker – December 26, 2022 issue:

Roz and Emily Eat Their Way Through Midwood

Our first stop: a cheese Danish. Can’t skip breakfast

What Kevin McCarthy Will Do to Gain Power

Kevin McCarthy behind a shadow of Trump.

The Republican leader’s ambition has always been his defining characteristic. Attempting to placate both Trumpists and moderates may lead to his downfall.

Picturing the Cove Inn

Memories of a high-school job at a local seafood restaurant, blurred by time.

Reviews: ‘The Week In Art’

It’s our final podcast of 2022 and so, as ever, we’re looking back at the worlds of art and heritage over the past 12 months.

Ben Luke is joined by three members of The Art Newspaper team: Louisa Buck, contemporary art correspondent, Kabir Jhala, acting deputy art market editor, and Ben Sutton, editor in the Americas. Among much else, they discuss the effects of the war in Ukraine,

Just Stop Oil’s activism, unionisation in US museums, the restitution of African and Native American (and Greek) objects, and the NFT crash. They also look at the big art shows and, finally, choose a work of the year. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Art: ‘Making Modernism’ – Royal Academy, London

Royal Academy of Art (December 14, 2022) – What would Modernism look like if you saw it through the eyes of women artists? How would it change your perception? What other stories might you find?

Watch Royal Academy curators Sarah Lea and Professor Dorothy Price discuss the pioneering work of four women making art on their own terms: Paula Modersohn-Becker, Kӓthe Kollwitz, Gabriele Münter and Marianne Werefkin.

Making Modernism is open now until 12 February 2023.

Books: TLS/Times Literary Supplement – Dec 16, 2022

Image

Times Literary Supplement @TheTLS – December 16, 2022: Featuring @CLEdwall on Keats; @prospect_clark on Starmer’s Labour; Martin Ivens on Liz Truss; @zoeguttenplan on Orlando at the Garrick; @pottmeister on White Noise; @angusjnicholls on Eckermann and Goethe – and more.

Preview: The New Yorker Magazine – Dec 19, 2022

A portrait of Santa.
“Believe,” by George Booth.

@NewYorker Magazine – December 19, 2022 issue:

Shooting Shakespeare with Jean-Luc Godard

Molly Ringwald as Cordelia in Godard’s surreal 1987 adaptation of “King Lear.”

The actress and writer recalls working with French cinema’s enfant terrible.

The World-Changing Race to Develop the Quantum Computer

Such a device could help address climate change and food scarcity, or break the Internet. Will the U.S. or China get there first?

The Promise and the Politics of Rewilding India

Ecologists are trying to undo environmental damage in rain forests, deserts, and cities. Can their efforts succeed even as Narendra Modi pushes for rapid development?

Books: The New York Times Book Review – Dec 11, 2022

The New York Times Book Review - December 11, 2022 | Magazine PDF

@nytimesbooks December 11, 2022 features:

2022 Reading Picks From Times Staff Critics

The books they read this year that have stayed with them.

When It Comes to Picture Books, Santa Sells

At this time of year, the best-selling books for children are all Christmas, all the time. And they’re not even new!

A Family Drama, Taiwan History and Murder Case, Rolled Into One

“Ghost Town,” a novel by Kevin Chen, recounts the overlapping — and hotly contested — memories of a Taiwanese family.

Arts & Literature: Ursula Magazine – Winter 2023

Ursula (Winter 2023) is the art magazine of Hauser & Wirth, featuring essays, profiles, films, interviews, original portfolios, and photography by some of the most thought-provoking writers and artists in the world.

Artists and Sitters

Henry Taylor in conversation with Sheree Hovsepian about depiction and the depicted

Maker: Akiko Hirai

For our first film in a new series focusing on some of the world’s best emerging and established artist-makers, we take you inside the studio of Akiko Hirai

Culture: The American Scholar – Winter 2023

Winter 2023

@TheAmScho Winter 2023 issue:

The Road to Paradise and Back

Fires in the West, hurricanes in the East—what it’s like on the ground as we confront our rapidly changing world

The Corals and the Capitalist

The key to avoiding an ecological catastrophe might be found in the wealth of nations and the spirit of innovation

Our Founding Contradiction

The entrenched dichotomy at the center of the national story