Shelf Improvement: Vermont Librarians Pick Their Favorite Books of 2022 

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This hasn't been a great year for librarians. Across the nation, a flurry of politically motivated challenges to books — especially children's books focused on racial equity or LGBTQ people — has put the guardians of those books "under attack," in the words of a July New York Times headline. Budgets are an issue, too. Gothamist reported this month that new cuts to New York's public library system could "push us over the edge," in the words of an administrator.

In a press release marking the annual Banned Books Week in September, the Vermont Library Association reported that the state "has had relatively few attempts to curtail the freedom to read." However, a Drag Queen Story Hour met opposition in Chester, the release notes, and "[o]ther Vermont librarians report receiving online abuse and threats, usually for providing a wide range of materials."

As we continue to support the "freedom to read," let's also celebrate the librarians who are on the front lines defending that freedom. This year, Seven Days asked Vermont library professionals to tell us about some of their favorite books released in 2022. The result is an array of recommendations — including some books by local authors — that should have you all set for winter fireside reading.

Sophie Marks

Youth services librarian, Maclure Library, Pittsford

• Mad Honey by Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan (fiction). I thought Mad Honey was an impressive mishmash of a lot of genres and themes — teen romance, court drama, mystery — and the characters are sympathetic but realistically flawed. But it's also a book that is very much of 2022: the ways we currently think about relationships, gender, masculinity, etc.
• I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy (memoir). This book is a gut punch, but it's also very funny. I've recommended it to people who have no earthly idea what "iCarly" [the TV show in which McCurdy starred] is, and the emotional impact is the same either way.
• Nona the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir (science fiction). Nona is my self-indulgent pick for the year, the one that I wouldn't recommend to everyone (it's the third book in a series, for one) but that I found just utterly delightful. You have to be willing to open your heart to the weirdness and confusion, but it's completely worth it.

Gretchen Wright

Director, Jericho Town Library

• Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng (fiction). This novel — set in a near-future dystopia that feels uncomfortably close to reality — is a heartrending story of family, fear and the power of art. Ng doesn't waste words: Every single sentence is profound and beautiful and devastating. You will weep!
• I Kissed Shara Wheeler by Casey McQuiston (young adult fiction). This is everything a YA novel should be: chock-full of high schoolers finding themselves, getting into wild shenanigans and experiencing first loves that will make you feel like a giddy, lovestruck teenager again. Put on Fearless by Taylor Swift and dive right in.
• Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt (fiction). Not to brag, but I've had a 100 percent success rate with recommending this book to others: It's just so lovable. A tale of unexpected friendships, finding family and one grumpy old octopus, it will charm and surprise you.

Jeannette Bair

Director, Rochester Public Library

• Leaving Coy's Hill by Katherine A. Sherbrooke (fiction). This is a work of historical fiction that brings to light the history of the women's movement in the 1800s and the work of the forgotten Lucy Stone. While other contemporaries are well known, Stone's lifelong fight for her rights and the rights of people of color is relatively unknown, as was the reason for her split with better-known suffragettes. [Editor's note: This one's actually from 2021, but we included it because it sounds like a great read — from a New England author!]

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Emer Pond Feeney

Assistant director, Fletcher Free Library, Burlington

• Pig Years by Ellyn Gaydos (memoir). This debut memoir recounting experiences and observations gleaned over the five years Gaydos spent "jobbing" (semi-itinerant farming) in New York and Vermont is stunning: a rare exemplar of literary acumen applied to the visceral beauty and harsh realities of farmwork. If you can only read one memoir this year, this should be a contender.
• The Storyteller's Death by Ann Dávila Cardinal (fiction). Sometimes, you just want a good story to escape into. Vermont author Ann Dávila Cardinal invokes and illuminates the tradition of the Puerto Rican cuantista (storyteller) in this cozy weekend read, a thriller that will enchant you with its story of magical powers, family secrets and murder.
• What Is Otherwise Infinite by Bianca Stone (poetry). Stone, granddaughter of the poetry giantess Ruth Stone, has quickly staked out her own vast territory of skilled poetic exploration. Here, in her sixth publication, a finalist for the New England Book Award in Poetry, surface themes turn on questions of motherhood and marriage, but there is nothing domestic about Stone's courageous, erudite inquiry into an intellectual woman's fracturing identities.

Trina Magi

Library professor, University of Vermont, Burlington

• The Grieving Brain: The Surprising Science of How We Learn From Love and Loss by Mary-Frances O'Connor (nonfiction). If you have lost a loved one (or care about someone who has) and wonder why it is so devastating and disorienting, why it takes so long to adjust to the loss, and why there are limits to the benefits of talk therapy, read this book. In The Grieving Brain, Dr. Mary-Frances O'Connor uses the lens of neuroscience to examine attachment, grief and bereavement. She describes how sharing a life with a loved one changes your brain and how their death presents the brain with an enormous project of learning and neural rewiring. It's not like learning something easy, such as how to ride a bike, she says. "This type of learning is like traveling to an alien planet and learning that the air cannot be breathed, and therefore you need to remember to wear oxygen all the time." The book is engaging and easy to understand, and its contents will help you be more compassionate and patient with yourself or someone else who has suffered a great loss.

Lori Mitchell

Adult services librarian, Norman Williams Public Library, Woodstock

• A Book of Days by Patti Smith (memoir). "Three hundred and sixty-six ways of saying hello." Patti Smith's A Book of Days is artful, intriguing and immensely companionable.
• Foster by Claire Keegan (fiction). "Walking back along the path and through the fields, holding her hand, I feel I have her balanced." Claire Keegan's Foster offers the full measure of emotional depth and gorgeous craft in a slender-paged stunner. [Editor's note: This book was published years ago overseas, but the first U.S. stand-alone edition was published this year.]
• The Hurting Kind by Ada Limón (poetry). "I have always been too sensitive, a weeper / from a long line of weepers. // I am the hurting kind." The newest resonant collection of poetry by Ada Limón, poet laureate of the United States.