Sunetra Choudhury picks her favourite reads of 2022

When one of my favourite writers, journalist Joan Didion, died in the last week of 2021, I started reading her classic work The Year of Magical Thinking. It’s an achingly moving book to read at any point of time because it is a raw account of how Didion deals with the death of her husband. As she deals with debilitating sorrow on her own, she looks for literature of bereavement as a coping strategy because she says, “Read, learn, work it up, go to the literature. Information is control.’’ It’s a great philosophy to adhere to and it certainly became my reading mantra for 2022.

For instance, how do you deal with the vulnerability of aging parents? Just when I started enjoying the relative independence that comes with being the mother of a pre-teen, I became part of the sandwich generation -- managing the needs of parents while also handling homework and class tests. Just like it has touched the lives of millions across the world, the pandemic has aged my parents. In their early 70s, the last two years have left them vulnerable and robbed them of the freedom they so loved. That’s where the wonderful book Goodbye, Vitamin by Rachel Khong comes in. It’s a story about a young woman moving back to her parents’ home to help take care of her father, who has dementia. The plot sounds depressing because how could dealing with a progressive condition that has no cure, have a happy ending. And yet, the book is surprising in its lightness. It reiterates what has been the great lesson for all of us through Covid – that we should enjoy the present and not worry about the future.

Among political books, the one I really enjoyed and literally laughed out loud while reading was Margaret Alva’s autobiography titled Courage & Commitment. It came out a few years ago and was recommended highly by an academic but I never got around to reading it till this year, when Alva contested for the Vice Presidential elections. It’s arguably the most honest Indian memoir I have read with gems like MPs going abroad and drinking too much, and what Indira Gandhi was like in private. If you want to know what politics is really like, this is the book for you.