Well, it’s that time of year when popular magazines and other media outlets compile Best of 2022 Lists of movies, books, albums, TV series, and so on.
To be sure, most of these lists are totally arbitrary and purely subjective.
Despite the shortcomings of doing so, I thought I would compile my own Top 10 Best of 2022 List of books, movies, TV series, events, etc. Keep in mind that this is my list. Please feel free to disagree with me or, better yet, suggest some choices of your own.
Let’s begin this segment with Books.
#1 Books
Quite frankly, I am a voracious reader of both fiction and nonfiction works. Each year I tell myself to keep a running list of the books I have read — but to no avail. Luckily, being a bit of a hoarder, most of the books I have read over the past twelve months are piled up in various locations in my home.
Let’s begin with Nonfiction.
New York Times columnist Maggie Haberman’s Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and The Breaking of America is a masterful book that traces the rise of former President Donald J Trump from his time as a NYC real estate hustler to his tumultuous time in the US Oval Office. Unlike many of the other tell all books about Trump that have been published by former disgruntled insiders, this is a serious work by a serious journalist who had unlimited access to Trump before and during his time as president.
I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand Trump and his ascent to the White House.
Honourable Mentions include: Steve Brusatte’s The Rise and Reign of Mammals, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber and David Wengrow, Last Chance Texaco: Chronicles of an American Troubadour by Ricki Lee Jones, and The Case of the Murderous Dr. Cream: The Hunt for a Victorian Era Serial Killer by Dean Jobb.
Now, to Fiction.
I must admit that when I purchased State of Terror by Canadian crime writer Louise Penny and former U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Rodham Clinton in the Fall of 2021, I put it aside for fear that I would be disappointed. When I picked it up towards the end of 2022, I was pleasantly surprised with this fast-paced, taut geopolitical thriller.
Drawing on Clinton’s knowledge and experience as an international player and Penny’s skills as a crime writer, the novel is a page-turner that reveals a nefarious international plot to overthrow an American government that has been out of touch with international affairs, out of practice with diplomacy, and out of power in the places where it counts for four years under a Trumpian style president.
Halting the plot falls to Ellen Adams, the former proprietor of an international media empire, who has been improbably appointed U.S. Secretary of State by Douglas Williams, the condescending president whose candidacy she had opposed. Readers will no doubt notice a resemblance between Adams and Clinton.
It’s all good fun for readers and the ending leaves the door open for a sequel.
Honourable mentions go to Act of Oblivion by Robert Harris, The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles.
In my next segment, I will identify the Movies I enjoyed most in 2022.
Richard's Blog 
Re “The Dawn of Everything”
Unfortunately, that book lacks credibility and depth.
In fact “The Dawn of Everything” is a biased disingenuous account of human history (www.persuasion.community/p/a-flawed-history-of-humanity ) that spreads fake hope (the authors of “The Dawn” claim human history has not “progressed” in stages, or linearly, and must not end in inequality and hierarchy as with our current system… so there’s hope for us now that it could get different/better again). As a result of this fake hope porn it has been widely praised. It conveniently serves the profoundly sick industrialized world of fakes and criminals. The book’s dishonest fake grandiose title shows already that this work is a FOR-PROFIT, instead a FOR-TRUTH, endeavour geared at the (ignorant gullible) masses.
Fact is human history since the dawn of agriculture has “progressed” in a linear stage (the “stuck” problem, see below), although not before that (www.focaalblog.com/2021/12/22/chris-knight-wrong-about-almost-everything ). This “progress” has been fundamentally destructive and is driven and dominated by “The 2 Married Pink Elephants In The Historical Room” (www.rolf-hefti.com/covid-19-coronavirus.html ) which the fake hope-giving authors of “The Dawn” entirely ignore naturally (no one can write a legitimate human history without understanding and acknowledging the nature of humans). And these two married pink elephants are the reason why we’ve been “stuck” in a destructive hierarchy and unequal class system , and will be far into the foreseeable future (the “stuck” question — “the real question should be ‘how did we get stuck?’ How did we end up in one single mode?” or “how we came to be trapped in such tight conceptual shackles” — [cited from their book] is the major question in “The Dawn” its authors never really answer, predictably).
“All experts serve the state and the media and only in that way do they achieve their status. Every expert follows his master, for all former possibilities for independence have been gradually reduced to nil by present society’s mode of organization. The most useful expert, of course, is the one who can lie. With their different motives, those who need experts are falsifiers and fools. Whenever individuals lose the capacity to see things for themselves, the expert is there to offer an absolute reassurance.” —Guy Debord
A good example that one of the “expert” authors, Graeber, has no real idea on what world we’ve been living in and about the nature of humans is his last brief article on Covid where his ignorance shines bright already at the title of his article, “After the Pandemic, We Can’t Go Back to Sleep.” Apparently he doesn’t know that most people WANT to be asleep, and that they’ve been wanting that for thousands of years (and that’s not the only ignorant notion in the title) — see last cited source above. Yet he (and his partner) is the sort of person who thinks he can teach you something authentically truthful about human history and whom you should be trusting along those terms. Ridiculous!
“The Dawn” is just another fantasy, or ideology, cloaked in a hue of cherry-picked “science,” served lucratively to the gullible ignorant underclasses who crave myths and fairy tales.
“The evil, fake book of anthropology, “The Dawn of Everything,” … just so happened to be the most marketed anthropology book ever. Hmmmmm.” — Unknown
“Never hide the truth to spare the feelings of the ignorant.” — Mikhail Bulgakov
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Tell me how you really feel about the book, Giorgio. Some very interesting observations. What I found most interesting about the book was its claim that the interchange between Europeans and North American Native Peoples provided the impetus for the Enlightenment. I’m not sure if it’s true, but it’s worthy of consideration. And, BTW, what’s wrong with holding out some hope for humankind?
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