Reviews in Review 2022

Well, life happened and my monthly reviews went to the wayside in 2022. However, I am still posting a brief year end summary. In 2022, I read 130 books, watched 29 movies, and watched 31 documentaries. Different genres trend at different levels for me year-to-year and this last year, I was pretty heavy on reading in the psy disciplines and poetry and read much less in other domains of theory and even literature than usual. In terms of movies, I watched a lot less of the international (i.e. subtitled) films and film fest circuit movies and a lot more horror, including mainstream horror (which I watch weekly in a rooming house with some fellows I support through my job). Documentaries were more dependent than usual on what Netflix has on offer. Not the best year, but I survived it. Here, then, are the best of the best and the worst of the worst.

Books: The Best

Instead of picking a book of the year, I’m picking an author of the year. More than anyone else, Darian Leader captured my interest, helped me look at myself and the world in new ways, and inspired me to think playfully and creatively. Leader is a former President of the British College of Psychoanalysts (a body that is well-known for it’s opposition to the American model of Psychiatry and its sacred text, the DSM), and is an expert in both Freudian and Lacanian schools of psychoanalysis. To the contemporary layperson, Freud can feel dated and Lacan and be esoteric but Leader engages both, as well as our contemporary context, in a way that is intelligible to non-experts and which, in my opinion, in ways that are absolutely essential reading for those of us in North America—dominated as we are by bureaucratic mental health management that is focused upon functionality and productivity (we seek to put a veneer over our symptoms rather than seeking to understand what our symptoms are trying to show us or hide from us about ourselves). Leader doesn’t just ask provocative questions or make fascinating suggestions—he changes the way in which you think about yourself and the world in which you live. For those looking to get started with Leader, you could dive in almost anywhere, but I suggest What is Madness? (2012).

Books: Honourable Mentions

I read several other excellent books in various disciplines. Probably the top two runners up to Leader were An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden World Around Us (2022) by Ed Yong and The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (2021) by David Graeber and David Wengrow. Yong is becoming one of my favourite authors in the genre of popular science and nature writing (his previous book, I Contain Multitudes, is also great) and An Immense World is a wonder-inspiring examination of all the different ways in which animals experience the world, including through senses that we humans do not possess. It’s a book that makes you say wow as and helps remind us that, in the midst of all our inventiveness and technocratic domination of the earth, there is so much that we are only just barely learning and so much that is absolutely mind-blowing that we are just learning. Like whales that can communicate with one another between the North Atlantic and the Carribean. Or leaf bugs that create vibrations with their abdomen that travel through leaf and stalk and are received by vibration sensors on the abdomens of other bugs so that seemingly silent fields and forests are constantly abuzz with a whole symphony of sounds that we cannot hear. I highly recommend this book.

Wonder-inspiring, but in another way, in The Dawn of Everything, Graeber and Wengrow bring together a whole host of archaeological, ethnographic, anthropological, and historico-political research to propose a history of humanity that overturns the facile. Eurocentric histories that have dominated Occidental histories of “civilization.” Sometimes a bit bogged down in the minutiae (which is no big deal if you are like me and find the minutiae to be fascinating!), Graeber and Wengrow demonstrate the richness and diversity of earlier ways in which people structured life together and they do an excellent job of showing the political astuteness of Indigenous politics on Turtle Island and how that influenced the European “Enlightenment.” One of the great results of this is that the book serves as a powerful reminder that life, as we currently know it, really does not have to be this way. We really can decide to do things differently. Also highly recommended.

Speaking of doing things differently, I think one of the most important books I read in 2022 is White Benevolence: Racism and Colonial Violence in the Helping Professions (2022), edited by Amanda Gebhard, Sheelah McLean, and Verna St. Denis. This should be required reading for all White Liberals, all social service or so-called “caring” professionals (including Board Members of organizations that work in those fields!), and especially all charitably-inclined White Christians. All of these people frequently harm others—sometimes fatally—all while claiming to care for others. And they just as frequently do so while remaining absolutely convinced of their own uprightness and moral and intellectual superiority. This collection of essays does a fine job of deconstructing all of that and suggesting other, more truly caring and beneficial ways of moving forward together.

On a related note, Chanel Miller’s memoir, Know My Name (2019), which details her life experiences before, during, and after she was raped by Brock Turner at a party at Stanford University, doesn’t just show how caring professionals can cause harm but, in fact, demonstrates just how deeply rape culture, himpathy, victim-blaming, and the sacrifice of women (of colour) to serve the life goals of wealthy and powerful (White) men, is embedded in all domains of society. From the ways in which Miller is treated (or not treated) when she awakens in the hospital, to the perspective offered by the male judge, to the opinions expressed and reinforced by the media and the public, rape culture is as ubiquitous and as taken-for-granted as the air we breathe. And what is powerfully illustrated in Miller’s memoir is that unless we are fighting with everything we have, every single minute of every single day, we will lose ground to men of violence who have access to wealth and power. And, of course, none of us can fight with everything we have, every single minute of every single day but, if we lose ground, we tend to blame ourselves. And men of violence who have access to wealth and power are more than happy to allow things to play out that way. Go ahead, swim against the current until you are exhausted. Go ahead, blame yourself when you can’t swim any more.

But Miller, with the support of her loved ones, finds her way through all of this to Life. This is not because she has mastered 84 self-care techniques and attended a lot of TEDx talks on resilience (she, like most of us in the struggle, is no fan of the disciplinary discourse of resilience). It’s a mixture of obstinancy, luck, class, and her genuine thoughtfulness and inability to stop caring for herself and others that gets her through. I have the utmost respect for her and think this book would be great for any class or bookclub that wants spend some time considering how deeply rape culture is interwoven into our world.

History, too, has often focused solely on men, and part of what makes Maria Popova’s book, Figuring (2019) an honourable mention in the domain of literature is that she lovingly and in great detail maps of the lives of many notable (and frequently Queer) women of science and art from the 18^th to the 20^th centuries. Many of these were important people who made critical contributions to our collective knowledge… whom I had never heard a word about before. At times the text is a bit dry but when her scientific knowledge is mixed with her more poetic and ascendent literary prose the book becomes a real source of delight.

The two other books in the domain of literature that I am highlighting are by two of my go-to favourite authors. They are The Passenger (2022) by Cormac McCarthy and Lincoln in the Bardo (2017) by George Saunders. Both McCarthy and Saunders are masters in their discipline but they both of very distinct voices. McCarthy sprawls into apocalyptic madness. Saunders does in exacting three strokes what McCarthy does over thirty pages—and he does so with humour which, although McCarthy works that into The Passenger more than most of his prior works, is generally lacking from Cormac’s ontology of violence (and Saunders’s humour is extravagant and playful; Cormac’s is ostensibly clever and always has the hint of a sneer behind it). If McCarthy was the American author whom I loved most as a White man in my early thirties (and who I will still read any time something new drops—although Stella Maris [2022], the much less satisfying companion volume The Passenger, was almost certainly his last work), then Saunders has become the American author whom I love as a White man in my early forties.

Another great work of literature, that blends science, specifically deep-sea marine biology, with memoir is Sabrina Imbler’s How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures (2022). It’s an absolutely marvelous first book by an author who reminds me of a mixture of Maggie Nelson and Robert MacFarlane (two of my GOATs). Her prose isn’t quite at their level (imo), but she’s on her way, this work is excellent, and I will absolutely read anything else she publishes.

Back to the psy disciplines, Nuar Alsadar’s Animal Joy (2022) also deserves an honourable mention. A fascinating exploration of the theme of laughter that draws in her study of psychoanalysis, poetry, and experiences in clown school(!), there’s good reason why this book appeared in several “best of the year” book lists for 2022. I also enjoyed several more books by Adam Phillips—another British psychoanalyst who translates post-Lacanianism for laypeople—and enjoyed his recent trilogy of essay-length books, Attention Seeking (2019), Getting Better (2022), and On Wanting to Change (2022).

Books: The Worst

Not a lot of books I read this last year stand out as terrible. Which is good. In fact, I would say there are more books that were almost-really-great-but-just-not-quite-all-the-way-there. So that’s not a bad place to be. However, as I’ve tried to read more poetry, it has been hard to know where to go next. Plus, poetry is such a subjective reading experience, unless you want to do a MFA and then you just write really technical (and most boring AF) poems. However, there is one collection of poems (2AM Thoughts [2019] by MaKenzie Campbell) that, I think, were written by a teenager for teenagers about teenage heartbreak that I accidentally read that was probably the most uninspiring thing I’ve read this year (NB: my feelings would probably be different about this if I was a teenager and not a middle-aged dude).

Movies: The Best

Hands down, the best movie I watched this year, which can stand alongside of the best movies I’ve watched any other year, is Everything, Everywhere, All at Once (2022), directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. It manages to blend almost every genre imaginable—it’s an action movie, it’s a family drama, it’s a science fiction film, it’s a comedy—and it does all of them, and all of them together, in a way I never imagined possible. I laughed uproariously one minute and then, five minutes later, found myself wanting to cry. Astoundingly creative, expertly shot, with Michelle Yeoh giving a performance that was a master class in acting, I firmly believe that everyone, everywhere should watch this film. And then tell me about your experience of it.

Movies: Honourable Mentions

My first runner-up for movie-of-the-year is X (2022) by Ti West. A lot of indie, art house, or so-called “elevated horror,” falls victim to its own desire to be smartly cool/coolly smart. Ti West owns all those films with X. Set in 1979 in Texas, it follows a group of young people who want to get rich from a porno they film in a guesthouse they rent on a farm owned by an elderly couple.  There’s nothing particularly innovative about this set-up but then the film ends up becoming a fascinating exploration of female-identified aging, beauty, sexuality, and desire (NB: the young female protagonist and the elderly farm woman are portrayed by the same actor). For example, after early scenes portraying some of the sex that the young, able-bodied, conventionally attractive people are filming in the guest house, the viewers are exposed to the elderly couple having sex and, in a film where we see things like shootings, stabblings, a head crushed (standard horror stuff), many viewers experience this scene of consensual sex between two people who obviously love each other as the most viscerally horrifying scene in the movie! Fascinating. Rich characters, artful cinematography, unexpected challenges and lines of questioning, I don’t think any other horror movie in the slasher genre comes close to being what X is. It stands alongside of Julia Ducournau’s Raw (2016), Tomas Alfredson’s Let the Right One In (2008), and Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) as one of my favourite horror films of all-time.

My second runner-up is also a horror movie, Fresh (2022) directed by Mimi Cave. A movie about a woman who falls afoul of a predatory dude in the world of online dating (where so many men treat so many women as “fresh meat”), the film could have easily come across as cartoonish or pretentiously obvious, Fresh actually does a solid job of diving into what it’s like to navigate a society where misogynistic heteronormative masculinity is the default.

Movies: The Worst

I watched some pretty crap movies in 2022. Largely because some fellows I support who like do have pizza and movie days have somewhat different tastes in movies than I do. Probably the crappiest movie was David Blue Garcia’s remake, Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022). If X shows that slasher movies can actually be really great, Texas Chainsaw Massacre illustrates why almost all mainstream Hollywood slasher films totally suck. No character development. No plot consistency. No plausibility. No real suspense. No atmosphere. No talent. No reason to care about anything. Just gore, gore, gore for the sake of gore, gore, gore. Boring AF.

Documentaries: The Best

It’s hard to pick a single “best” in the documentary category this year. So I’ll go with a four-way tie and skip the honourable mentions. The top four documentaries I watched in 2022, in no particular order are: Senna (2010) directed by Asif Kapadia, Hold Your Fire (2021) directed by Stefan Forbes, We Need to Talk About Cosby (2022) directed by W. Kamau Bell, and Fire of Love (2022) directed by Sara Dosa.

I really dig Asif Kapadia’s documentaries. His documentary on Amy Winehouse (Amy [2015]) was top-notch and I’m looking forward to watching his biopic on Diego Maradona (Maradona [2019]). Senna was the documentary that made him and I can see why. It’s an excellent biopic about an elusive and somewhat tortured driver who is ultimately killed by the politics and bureaucratic power struggles that exist behind the scenes in Formula 1 driving. Technicalities can kill—as anyone who works with people who are deprived of housing knows—and the story Kapadia tells about Senna and his tragic demise is a powerful illustration of this.

Speaking of politics and power struggles, Stefan Forbes Hold Your Fire, does a deep-dive into a stand-off into a 1973 standoff between the NYPD and a group of young Black men who tried to rob a store for guns they felt they needed for self-defence. Stuck in a corner, with cops who are all too eager to kill them, it is a tense tale of how people (the young Black men, too, not just the hostages) can overcome the odds and get out alive. But, more than a tense tale, it also looks at matters related to police violence, Black armed self defence, public perceptions, and the racism that exists in the so-called justice system—themes that are just as relevant today as they were in 1973.

Also relevant, even if the media presence of the #metoo movement is waning (although male violence against women is not waning), is W. Kamau Bell’s four-part docuseries, We Need to Talk About Cosby. In a community devastated by racist police violence, where White people, especially wealthy White women, have regularly and fatally deployed racist tropes in order to falsely accuse Black men of sexual violence, Cosby was viewed as a beacon helping to light the way to a post-racial America (as if that’s a good or possible thing…). But, as Bell demonstrates, Cosby was always both role-model and predator. From the very beginning. For a community where “justice system” is spelled L.Y.N.C.H.I.N.G., trying to wrestle through the complexity of Cosby and why people have responded to him in the ways that they have, this is a conversation that deserves thoughtful attention. Which is exactly what Bell gives to it. And, as id only just, Bell centres the voices of those who were assaulted by Cosby even though we see how wealth and power allow Cosby to not only escape being lynched but also, alas, also escape anything that might possibly resemble justice. It’s a difficult conversation but an essential one. And, as we have had conversations like this with more frequency in public over the years, it seems increasingly clear that one lesson is obvious: men + power = rape.

Finally, moving to the primal fires of the earth and the romance of lovers who share a passion unto death, Sarah Dosa’s Fire of Love tells the story of volcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft. Consisting largely of footage recorded by the Kraffts, she spins a tale that is part planet earth, part political tragedy (as politicians decide not to create early warning systems, leading to the preventable deaths of tens of thousands of people), part rambunctious adventure (Maurice dreams of building a canoe he can navigate down a river of lava), and part love story. It’s a wonderful distractions from living a life that is part precarious labour, part inflation and skyrocketing grocery costs, part average rent increasing 33% in one year, part record numbers of homeless deaths, part doing the dishes and cleaning the bathroom, and part being too tired to go out after 9PM. Highly recommended!

Documentaries: The Worst

I really like Viktor Kossakovsky’s documentaries. Both Aquarela (2018) and Vivan Las Antipodas (2012) were creative and challenging and worth it. But I found Gunda (2020), his 1.5 feature about a pig to be almost unbearably dull. Granted, the ending was heart-rending, even though it was hard not to see it coming, but it took me days to watch this one because I kept falling asleep.

Also, Kirsten Johnson’s film about her dying (and then dead) father, Dick Johnson is Dead (2020), got absolutely rave reviews from the critics but it did absolutely nothing for me. Like Robert Greene’s Kate Plays Christine (2016), it felt like a movie that was trying to be sincere, heck, probably believed it was sincere, but was actually aimed right at the critics. Bullseye. And kinda bullshit but, um, sorry about her dad and stuff.

However, by far the worst documentary I barely managed to watch in 2022, is Andrew Douglas’s Ten Million Throwaways (2021). Imagine a documentary about porn made by Evangelical Christians who think masturbating is sinful and sex is too unless you’re married and trying to have kids and not having any fun with it. Now imagine them throwing in every victim trope you can imagine when it comes to sex work and tying it all into sex slavery and child abuse. And imagine it being poorly made. Voila, you have this film.

Unpacking complexity and nuance is absolutely essential for any treatment of the sex industry, sex work, and sex trafficking or sexual abuse. This film has no nuance, no understanding, and no anchor in anything close to reality. To borrow the words of another reviewer, this is Reefer Madness, but for porn. To quote the Dude, “This is a bummer, man.”

And that’s the annual round-up. Below is the full list of what I read and watched. Stand-out titles are highlighted.

BOOKS (130)

Economics (6)

• Blyth, Mark. Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea (2013).
• Durand, Cédric. Fictitious Capital How Finance Is Appropriating Our Future (2017).
• Loxley, John with Salim Loxley. Public Service Private Profits: The Political Economy of Public-Private Partnerships in Canada (2010).
• McBride, Stephen and Heather Whiteside. Private Affluence Public Austerity: Economic Crisis and Democratic Malaise in Canada (2011).
• Tooze, Adam. Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World (2018).
• ________. Shutdown: How Covid Shook the World’s Economy (2021).

Graphic Novels (17)

• Bechdel, Alison. Are You My Mother? A Comic Drama (2012).
• Bédard, Sophie. Lonely Boys (2020).
• Blutch, Blutch. Mitchum (2020).
• Boileau, Kendra and Rich Johnson (eds.). Covid Chronicles: A Comics Anthology (2021).
• Czerwiec, MK. Taking Turns: Stories from HIV/AIDS Care Unit 371 (2017).
• Debeurme, Ludovic. Lucille (2006).
• DeForge, Michael. Heaven No Hell (2021).
• Drnaso, Nick., Beverly (2016).
• Eaton, Hannah. Blackwood (2020).
• Kimball, Margaret. And Now I Spill The Family Secrets(2021).
• Lust, Ulli. How I Tried to Be a Good Person (2017).
• ________. Today is the Last Day of the Rest of Your Life (2013 [2009]).
• Melt, H. There Are Trans People Here (2021).
• Rancourt, Sylvie. Melody: Story of a Nude Dancer (2015 [1985]).
• Stavans, Ilan and Steve Sheinkin. Il Illuminado: A Graphic Novel (2012).
• The Graphic History Collective and David Lester. 1919: A Graphic History of the Winnipeg General Strike (2019).
• The Graphic History Collective with Althea Blames, Gord Hill, Orion Keresztesi & David Lester. Direction Action Gets the Goods: A Graphic History of the Strike in Canada (2019).

Indigenous Studies (3)

• Aazhoodenaang Enjibaajig. Our Long Struggle for Home: The Ipperwash Story (2022).
• Gebhard, Amanda, Sheelah McLean, and Verna St. Denis (eds.) White Benevolence: Racism and Colonial Violence in the Helping Professions (2022).
• Harjo, Joy with Leanne Howe, Jennifer Elise Foerster, and Contributing Editors. When the Light of the World Was Subdued Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry (2020).

Literature (27)

• Alsanea, Rajaa. Girls of Riyadh (2005).
• Backman, Fredrik. Anxious People (2019).
• ________. Beartown (2017).
• Broch, Hermann. The Guiltless (1950).
• Eir, Oddný. Land of Love and Ruin (2011).
• El Akkad, Omar. American War (2017).
• Ernaux, Annie. Getting Lost (2022 [2001]).
• Fung, Pik-Shuen. Ghost Forest (2021).
• Gass, William H. Eyes: Novellas & Stories (2015).
• Grimm, Hans Herbert. Schlump (2014 [1928]).
• Houellebecq, Michel. The Elementary Particles (2000 [1998]).
• Keegan, Marina. The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays & Stories (2015).
• Lispector, Clarice. An Apprenticeship or The Book of Pleasures (2021 [1969]).
• McCarthy, Cormac. The Passenger (2022).
• ________. Stella Maris (2022).
• McGregor, Jon. If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things (2002).
• McLean, Robin. Get ‘Em Young, Treat ‘Em Tough, Tell ‘Em Nothing (2022).
• Moreno-Garcia, Silvia. Velvet Was the Night (2021).
• Müller, Herta. The Land of Green Plums (1996 [1993]).
• ________. The Appointment (1997).
• Petrushevskaya, Ludmilla. There Once Lived a Mother Who Loved Her Children Until They Moved Back In: Three Novellas About Family (2014 [1988]).
• Popova, Maria. Figuring (2019).
• Saunders, George. Lincoln in the Bardo (2017).
• Statovci, Pajtim. Crossing (2020).
• Stuart, Douglas. Shuggie Bain (2020).
• Szabó, Magda. Katalin Street (2017 [1969]).
• Walser, Robert. Jakob Von Gunten (1999 [1909]).

Philosophy & General Theory (9)

• Bhahba, Homi K. The Location of Culture (1994).
• Butler, Judith. Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (2004).
• Byung-Chul Han. Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power (2017).
• Cioran, E. M. The Temptation to Exist (2012 [1956]).
• Foucault, Michel. Psychiatric Power: Lectures at the College de France 1973-1974 (2003).
• Fronsdal Gil (trans.). The Dhammapada.
• Gentili, Dario. The Age of Precarity: Endless Crisis as an Art of Government (2021).
• Moufawad-Paul, J. Austerity Apparatus (2017).
• Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Philosophical Remarks (1975).

Poetry (30)

• Akbar, Kaveh. Pilgrim Bell: Poems (2021).
• Angelou, Maya. The Complete Poetry (2015).
• Asghar, Fatimah. If They Come For Us: Poems (2018).
• Bukowski, Charles. The Flash of Lightning Behind the Mountain (2004).
• Campbell, Mackenzie. 2AM Thoughts (2017).
• Chen, Chen. When I Grow Up I Want To Be A List of Further Possibilities (2017).
• Chin, Staceyann. Crossfire: A Litany for Survival. Poems 1998-2019 (2019).
• Duffy, Carol Ann. Collected Poems (2015).
• Dunn, Stephen. New and Selected Poems 1974-1994 (1994).
• ________. What Goes On: Selected and New Poems 1995-2009 (2009).
• ________. Pagan Virtues: Poems (2020).
• Eliot, T. S. Collected Poems 1909-1962 (1963).
• El-Kurd, Mohammed. Rifqa (2021).
• flynn, nick. the captain asks for a show of hands: poems (2011).
• Gibson, Andrea. You Better Be Lightning (2021).
• Glück, Louise. Poems: 1962-2012 (2012).
• Jones, Saeed. Prelude to Bruises (2014).
• Kaufman, Bob. Collected Poems of Bob Kaufman (2019).
• Limón, Ada. The Hurting Kind: Poems (2022).
• Monet, Aja. My Mother Was a Freedom Fighter (2017).
• Ondaatje, Michael. Handwriting (2000).
• Pain Not Bread. Introduction to the Introduction to Wang Wei (2000).
• Paz, Octavio. A Draft of Shadows (1979 [1969]).
• Pushkin, Alexander (edited by Roger Clarke). Love Poems (2013 edition).
• Salazar, Rebecca. Sulphurtongue: Poems (2021).
• sax, sam. All the Rage (2016).
• Shire, Warsan. Bless The Daughter Raised By A Voice In Her Head (2022).
• Skaja, Emily. Brute: poems (2019).
• Snyder, Gary. Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems (2004).
• Vuong, Ocean. Time Is A Mother (2022).

Politics & History (5)

• Alexievich, Svetlana. The Unwomanly Face of War: An Oral History of Women in World War II (2018 but originally published in Russian in 1985).
• Du Plessix Gray, Francine. At Home with the Marquis de Sade: A Life (1998).
• Graeber, David and David Wengrow. The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (2021).
• Kapuściński, Ryzard. The Shadow of the Sun (2001).
• Zetkin, Clara. Fighting Fascism: How to Struggle and How to Win (2017 edition).

Psy-Disciplines (17)

• Aksadir, Nuar. Animal Joy (2022).
• Abu El-Haj, Nadia. Combat Trauma: Imaginaries of War and Citizenship in post-911 America (2022).
• Greenberg, Gary. The Book of Woe: The DSM and the Unmaking of Psychiatry (2013).
• Jamison, Kay Redfield. Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide (1999).
• Lacan, Jacques. Transference: The Seminar of Jacques Lacan Book VIII (2017 [1991]).
• Leader, Darian and David Corfield. Who Do People Get Ill? (2007).
• ________. What is Madness? (2012).
• ________. Strictly Bipolar (2013).
• ________. Hands: What We Do With Them and Why (2016).
• ________. Why Can’t We Sleep? (2019).
• Phillips, Adam. Attention Seeking (2019).
• ________. On Wanting to Change (2022).
• ________. On Getting Better (2022).
• ________. On Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored: Psychoanalytic Essays on the Unexamined Life (1993).
• Posner, Gerald. Pharma: Greed, Lies, and the Poisoning of America (2020).
• Taylor, Sonya Renee. The Body Is Not An Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love (2018).
• Van Der Kolk, Bessel. The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma (2014).

Race (2)

• Eddo-Lodge, Reni. Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race (2019 [2017]).
• Ray, Victor. On Critical Race Theory: Why It Matters & Why You Should Care (2022).

Science and Nature (10)

• Allan, John S. Home: How Habitat Made Us Human (2015).
• Carroll, Sean B. Endless Form Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo (2005).
• Hogan, Linda. The Radiant Lives of Animals (2020).
• Imbler, Sabrina. How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures (2022).
• Kalanithi, Paul. When Breath Becomes Air: What Makes Life Worth Living in the Face of Death? (2016).
• Labatut, Benjamin. When We Cease to Understand the World (2021).
• Lehrer, Jonah. Proust Was a Neuroscientist (2007).
• Mermin, N. David. It’s About Time: Understanding Einstein’s Relativity (2005).
• Solms, Mark. The Hidden Spring: A Journey to the Source of Consciousness (2021).
• Yong, Ed. An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal The Hidden Realms Around Us (2022).

Sex & Gender (3)

• Angel, Katherine. Daddy Issues: Love and Hate in the Time of Patriarchy (2022).
• Miller, Chanel. Know My Name: A Memoir (2019).
• Parker-Rhodes, Bronwen and Emily Dinsdale. Wanting You To Want Me: Stories from the Secret World of Strip Clubs (2022).

Movies (29)

• Amirpour, Ana Lily. Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon (2021).
• Anderson, Paul Thomas. Licorice Pizza (2021).
• Bailey-Bond, Prano. Censor (2021).
• Baker, Sean. Starlet (2012).
• Bettinelli-Olpin, Matt and Tyler Gillett, Scream (2022).
• Bruckner, David. Hellraiser (2022).
• Cave, Mimi. Fresh (2022).
• Cregger, Zach. Barbarian (2022).
• De Feo, Roberto and Paolo Strippoli. A Classic Horror Story (2021).
• Garcia, David Blue. Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022).
• Gass-Donnelly, Ed. Small Town Murder Songs (2011).
• Glosserman, Scott. Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon (2006).
• Gormican, Tom. The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (2022).
• Kuosmanen, Juho. Compartment No. 6 (2021).
• Kwan, Daniel and Daniel Scheinert. Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022).
• Menghini, Santiago. No One Gets Out Alive (2021).
• Okuno, Chloe. Watcher (2022).
• Peele, Jordan. Nope (2022).
• Posley, Bill. Bitch Ass (2022).
• Robinson, Jennifer Kaytin. Do Revenge (2022).
• Selick, Henry. Wendell & Wild (2022).
• Semans, Andrew. Resurrection (2022).
• Tippett, Phil. Mad God (2021).
• Trachtenberg, Dan. Prey (2022).
• Verhoeven, Paul. Benedetta (2021).
• Wan, James. Malignant (2021).
• West, Ti. X (2022).
• Wnendt, David. Combat Girls (2011).
• Žbanić, Jamila. Quo Vadis, Aida? (2020).

Documentaries (31)

• Bell, W. Kamau. We Need to Talk About Cosby (2022).
• Blotnick, Robin. Gods and Kings (2012).
• Brandestini, Nick. Children of the Arctic (2014).
• Chin, Jimmy and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi. The Rescue (2021).
• Corben, Billy. God Forbid: The Sex Scandal That Brought Down a Dynasty (2022).
• Crawford, Jamie. Trainwreck: Woodstock ’99 (2022).
• Davidson, Kief. Meltdown: Three Mile Island (2022).
• Deacon, Rowan. Jimmy Savile: A British Horror Story (2022).
• Dosa, Sara. Fire of Love (2022).
• Douglas, Andrew. Ten Million Throwaways (2021).
• Dretzin, Rachel. Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey (2022).
• Duffy, Ryan and Tony Vainuku. Untold: The Girlfriend Who Didn’t Exist (2022).
• Forbes, Stefan. Hold Your Fire (2021).
• Furst, Jenner. Time: The Kalief Browder Story (2017).
• Granovsky, Iván. The Territories (2017).
• Guterson, Taylor. Hunting Bigfoot (2021).
• Janisse, Kier-La. Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror (2021).
• Johnson, Kirsten. Dick Johnson Is Dead (2020).
• Kapadia, Asif. Senna (2010).
• Kennedy, Rory. Downfall: The Case Against Boeing (2022).
• Klayman, Alison. White Hot: The Rise and Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch (2022).
• Knappenberger, Brian. Turning Point: 9/11 and the War on Terror (2021).
• Kossakovsky, Viktor. Gunda (2020).
• Morris, Monique W. Pushout: The Criminalization of Young Black Girls in Schools (2015).
• Perut, Bettina and Iván Osnovikoff. Surire (2015).
• Reichert, Julia and Steven Bognar. American Factory (2021).
• Schechter, Olya. A Sniper’s War (2018).
• Sun-Higginson, Shannon. GTFO (2015).
• Wang, Nanfu. Mind Over Murder (2022).
• Yates, Pamela. 500 Years: Life in Resistance (2017).
• Zirin, David. Behind the Shield (2022).