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Catapult co-owner Seth Marko founded the original Book Catapult blog in 2006. He has worked in bookstores from New Orleans to San Diego since 2001 and was a field sales rep who visited bookstores all over the West for a publishing distribution group until early 2020.
Seth's 10 favorite reads of 2022
Seth's 10 favorite books from our First Five years (2017-2022)
Archipelago Books produces these cool looking, square paperbacks of translated fiction that I’ve long admired. This newly translated French gem is about a Russian conscript who’s unwillingly on a train headed to military service in the far east of the country. Panicking, he decides to try and escape & enlists the help of a French woman (who doesn’t speak Russian) traveling on the same train. It’s a compact, intense, emotional, and gripping novella – which felt all the more relevant because of Russia’s current engagement in Ukraine. (Conscripted, forced soldiering was something I just hadn’t realized was still happening.) The language is elegant, vibrant, and flies off the page like a speeding train across the Taiga. -sm
Danish author Dorthe Nors has been known as a short story writer before this volume of cultural, geographical, historical, & personal essays about her solo travels over the course of a year on the western Danish coastline. I love nonfiction that transports me to places I’ve never been before – and I don’t think I could have drawn a remotely accurate map of Denmark before this. These essays meander and crisscross themselves, mixing personal with historical, coastal culture with nature writing. Childhood summers in a rustic cabin on the Harboøre Peninsula, surfers in “Cold Hawaii” in Thyborøn, the wreck of the Zwaluw that dumped thousands of tulip bulbs along the Iron Coast. Tulips that spouted along the beach during the following spring. They’re bracing and beautiful essays that almost defy categorization – much like the coastline they illuminate. -sm
Could this be the definitive California novel of this young century? I found these interlocking stories of native Californians so profoundly moving – people who float through the Golden State, mostly indigenous or pre-border Mexican from 300 years back, the fiery backbone of the California economy, anonymous & unseen. An “American epic” as they say, just not from the usual conquering Euro-perspective. And the landscape reads EXACTLY as it truly is, written by native eyes – the dry air, the baking desert sun, the Santa Anas, the smell of the orange groves, terrifying wildfire. Gorgeous. And the ending will break your little heart. THE BEST NOVEL ABOUT CALIFORNIA I HAVE EVER READ. -sm
This incredible debut novel is easily one of the best books I read in 2022. It's lyrical & lovely while somehow being menacing and heartbreaking all at the same time. Set during the Troubles in Northern Ireland – Cushla is a teacher outside of Belfast, Michael is a married barrister who frequents her family’s pub. A secret affair ensues, but Michael is Protestant while Cushla is Catholic... you know things can’t end well. Political violence swirls around them, creating this beautifully crafted sense of impending collapse that sort of hovers behind everyone. It's a gorgeously written novel that doesn't read romancey, but more as a well-wrought story of a specific time & place, with a love story at its core. And it's a total heartbreaker, I promise. -sm
I’ve long been a fan of Johnny Evison (West of Here, Lawn Boy) and this is far and away his most ambitious, sprawling, wide-perspective novel while also being his most well-crafted, poignant, & introspective work yet. The title says it all - even with 8 billion of us here, in many ways, we do indeed live in "a small world" of interconnectivity and you never know how your life may link backward in time to another's to complete an unseen circle of humanity. The connecting threads between characters & families across 170 years of American progress all are perfectly parceled out to the reader here, letting things click into place gradually as the whole epic unfolds. In the end, this is the story of America across the generations, restlessly "yearning for something out of reach", moving ever forward "collectively...like a runaway train." -sm
I have what feels like a healthy interest in Japanese folk art (mingei) culture - we've been to Japan for vacation and stayed long enough to bathe in an onsen and visit a porcelain kiln, but not long enough to make sake or charcoal or harvest rice. But Hannah Kirshner did all that and then some. She spent most of 4-5 years as a Brooklyn transplant in the tiny mountain town of Yamanaka, where she learned a wide variety of skills from the artisan craftspeople there. A two-month apprenticeship in a tiny sake bar turned into a long-term education where she learned how to make paper, turn and lacquer a wooden bowl, catch a duck with a net, grow her own rice, serve tea, make sake, capture a boar, and forage for "mountain vegetables." Japan has a fascinating duality of culture - the sprawling metropolis of glittering tech and neon, juxtaposed with the quiet admiration of the flush of cherry blossoms, the appreciation of every single grain of rice for the work that went into bringing it to table, and that "mingei" culture of crafting with your hands. Kirschner is witness, participant, and an eloquent ethnographer of the preservation of that folk art culture and her writing is endlessly engrossing, soothing, and compelling for those of us looking for a deep appreciation of an incredible culture of artistic mindfulness. -sm
It's definitely a skilled writer who can take the obscure true story of the early 17th-century witchcraft trial of Johannes Kepler's mother and make it funny. I mean, at first you might think, "This is a serious take on how poorly people treat each other and/or a literal witch hunt and/or a morality tale etc etc." And okay, it is a bit of that, but it's also weirdly hilarious. Of course Frau Kepler hasn't cast any spells on anyone or walked backward with a goat or poisoned her neighbor. But the hysterical fear that spreads throughout the community is completely bonkers - even if this story is based in truth. Galchen peppers in fictional deposition interviews (that have an almost modern linguistic flavor to them) with everyone who has had contact with or heard rumors of Frau Kepler that give the whole thing an odd flair that is just so funny if you step back from it for a second. I loved it, as you can tell. -sm
A beautiful heartbreaker of a novel. Filled with both the joyful exuberance & innocent carelessness of youth, as well as the bottomless well of grief that comes with losing that once-in-a-lifetime friend. BFFs Tully and Jimmy are both diamonds of unusual rarity – friends we all wish we had or could ourselves be. Yes, this is a novel about the bonds of “male friendship” but don’t nail it down so easily. The grace that this story is told with is unparalleled in most things I’ve read. And god it’s funny. If you liked Tin Man by Sarah Winman or are looking for a good tale of raucous Scottish lads in the 80’s... well then. -sm
A literary ‘what if’ for your consideration... what if Vikings settled in the Caribbean and the indigenous population didn’t all die of small pox? Then when Columbus arrived, he was captured, tortured, & killed by healthy, Thor-worshiping Incas. And when he didn’t return home, the Spanish decided there was no point in exploring westward anymore, so the Incas came to Europe instead – easily conquering the complacent Spanish & Portuguese. Atahualpa becomes the king of western Europe (known as “the New World”) & Holy Roman Emperor, while creating a more just & equal society in the process. Oh, and the Aztecs conquer France too. Huzzah! A masterful work of speculative fiction that’s playful & funny & smart, while also illuminating as to how easily the history of colonization could have been written altogether differently. -sm
The very funny Sloane Crosley has an astute New Yorker’s eye for all things that sort of reminds me of an east coast Joan Didion, if you can believe that. She disarms you early on in this wacky novel into thinking she’s setting up just another funny NYC relationship story/maybe romance. But OF COURSE there’s a weird cult-like group of her former colleagues and friends operating a thought-altering experiment using her love life as their first exercise, working out of an old synagogue in the middle of Manhattan. I mean, what else would this be about? Loved it. -sm
It almost feels like Erdrich wrote this understatedly powerful novel about 2020 in real time – it unfolds in the same innocent way we all thought things would go at the outset. How bad could things really get? Tookie is an Indigenous bookseller in Minneapolis (Erdrich's other life is a bookstore owner) whose bookstore is haunted by her “most annoying” customer (don’t get any ideas.) But when COVID hits... well, you know – the world gets flipped on its head & the bookstore survives through curbside pickup & online ordering (just like TBC, thank you.) But then George Floyd. The ensuing protests in the city are emotional and palpable and terrifying, all over again. Yet kindness, community, and the strength of a unified people win the day – this is the best piece of writing I’ve found that covers the range of emotions I felt throughout 2020. -sm
Culled from and expanded upon Ken Layne’s super-weird & wonderful late-night desert radio show of the same name, this reads like the transcript of stories told by a mysterious stranger to your campfire at 1am. Strange headlights on the open road, aliens & murderers, la Llorona & outlaws, artists and Edward Abbey. Great for dipping into and out of for a dose of California desert history and weirdness. -sm
Lauren Groff’s 2015 National Book Award finalist, Fates & Furies was one of my favorite books from that year - Matrix is absolutely nothing like it and somehow an even better book. I’m not sure how Groff managed the pivot from that previous contemporary novel of marriage to this 12th-century story of a nunnery, but Matrix is an absolute masterpiece of historical fiction. Marie is cast out from the court of Eleanor of Aquitane to a nunnery in the English countryside, where she becomes a visionary prioress devoted to the protection of her sisters and the sustainability of her faith and the utopian abbey she creates. Remarkably (or perhaps, predictably) this 800 year old story of female ingenuity, power, and resiliency in a male-dominated society rings true and timely to today. It's powerful, ambitious, and lovely - I wasn't sure what it would be when I started, but I found it so utterly compelling and gorgeous, it's definitely one of the best books I've read this year. -sm
A fascinating, firsthand exploration of twelve places around the world that have been abandoned by humanity – like Chernobyl, the Korean DMZ, Detroit, the Salton Sea - in an attempt to discover whether the earth is able to reclaim and heal from the effects of human hands. These are not pristine, untainted places, but rather human abandoned "islands" where "nature has (since) been allowed to work unfettered." And for the most part, Flyn finds that the planet will recover from us over long enough of a timeline - even if that means millenia. The result is a hopeful, energizing travelogue of sorts that shows we should never give up on the places we've damaged and ignored. All is not lost, but that doesn't mean we should carry on as we have been, as we should be much more responsible members of the broader, interconnected planet. -seth
Sometimes books just have a way of finding you at the right moment.... This is a fantastic meditation on the benefits of silence that I encountered just when I needed it. Kagge (who once spent 50 days skiing alone across silent, frozen Antarctica) advocates for turning off your devices, unplugging from the modern world, and getting comfortable in your own head. Silence freaks humans out for some reason, but quieting your mind - whether through meditation or quietly reading a book or spending time in a grove of redwoods - can make you happier and help you "gradually rediscover other sides of yourself." -sm
Doerr’s finest book to date – and even better than his Pulitzer Prize-winning All the Light You Cannot See. An astounding novel about libraries, books, and the preservation of stories - with Doerr's trademark gossamer threads of human connection that will blow you away. Easily the best book I read in 2021. -sm
This here is the novel you didn't know needed to be written, but it did. Oh it did, friend. A delightful novel about a computer printer repair technician named Claire who works at New York's vaunted Tekserve repair shop during the 90's heyday of Apple's pre-iPhone, more Macintosh era. Claire struggles mightily with human interactions, but can navigate the innards of 45 lb laser printers with her eyes closed. Plus, some sections are narrated by the inner parts of those behemoth printers - the gears, the octagonal mirrors, the ceramic capacitors, the malfunctioning fans. As much an ode to the lost, scrappy, pixelated upstart Apple as it is to the New York City of the 90's and our own pre-internet computerized world. A super-funny, weirdo palate-cleanser. -sm
Like their previous collaboration, Around the World in 80 Trees, Drori & Clerc's latest book is really one that begs to be handled, thumbed through, savored, and appreciated in person. If ever there was an advantage that small bookshops have over online mega-websites, it's this tactileness of certain special volumes. Drori concisely and eloquently highlights 80 plants from around the world that have a human connection, often altering the course of our history as we bend them to our will or are bent by theirs. But without Lucille Clerc's incredible, stunning illustrations, you might never give this book a second thought on the shelves of your local bookshop. Did you know that artichokes don't exist in the wild? Or that the Breaking Bad poison ricin comes from the innocuous castor bean? Or that linoleum floors are made from flax? While you gush over the gorgeous illustrations, the facts come fast and furious and your plant knowledge will expand beyond your wildest imagination. A stunner! -seth
From the outset of this incredible debut novel, I really thought I knew what sort of book I was getting into. Magical healers, old Hawaiian gods, sharks rescuing children. But midway through, the story does a perfect, gradual pirouette to become both a tighter, smaller story about the struggles of a complex, flawed family while also expanding into this much, much bigger, weirder, older story about Hawaii itself. A thoroughly unexpected, gorgeous, and devastating novel that I truly loved every single word of. -sm
I love a book that promises to lead you in a certain direction, only to have it completely surprise you mid-way through. The Bear did that for me - I thought I was reading a "straightforward" post-apocalyptic novel about a girl surviving alone in the wilderness... and it is that, for sure, but about a third of the way in it becomes something much bigger, beautiful, poignant and magical. Suspend your disbelief, friends. Maybe the natural world has more going on in it than we self-involved humans can comprehend. I loved and savored every single word - a book that by page count should have taken me a day to read, I spread out over a week, not wanting it to end. -seth
I picked this for the Catapult Book Club and was completely surprised & enthralled by it. It perfectly transported me to a time and place that I've never been to before or even thought about - early 20th-century agrarian island life on the Norwegian archipelago. The isolated, tight-knit Barrøy family is earthy, real, flawed, familiar, and lovely - another bookseller perfectly described this as a Wyeth painting come to life. I've been spending so much time reading the news lately, thinking about the current state of the world, discussing systemic racism, defunding police departments, global pandemics, co-raising two feisty little girls, working long, weird hours at the shop - and this gem from Norway was the perfect escape for me. I'm sure it's not for everyone, which is the beauty of fiction - but sometimes that perfect book comes along out of nowhere for you and helps push that reset button in your brain. This was just the ticket for me. -seth
See also the equally excellent second volume in the trilogy, White Shadow!
A lovely, meadering contemplation of walking and the paths our feet take us down. I read most of this while walking from home to the shop everyday. Peaceful, inward, perfection. -seth
Macdonald's collection of nature writing essays (a followup to her brilliant 2015 book H is for Hawk) was the perfect COVID-Trump-2020 escape for me - a dose of balance inserted into my days. Whether learning about how swifts sleep on the wing or that seven billion insects "pass over a square mile of English farmland in a single month" or reading of her early childhood on the grounds of the very British estate Tekels Park (a gorgeous essay, that) or passages like this one, from an essay about summer storms:
All my clearest summer memories are of storms. The afternoon in the early 1980s on the Kennet and Avon canal when I heard my first nightingale singing into charged grey air, accompanied by distant thunder that swung closer and seemed a voice answering the bird. Or that hot week in Gloucestershire in the 1990s when thunderstorms came every evening so the air turned sepia at six and before the first drops of storm rain sent pollen-dust up in puffs from the skylight I'd open the windows and wait for thunder while little owls called through the thick air, and in the morning tiny white dots of storm-blown blossom covered the house with wet French lace. I've measured all my summers by their storms.Perfection. -sm
Who doesn’t love summer? The approach of the solstice brings days lengthening to their longest as we reach the furthest point from the darkness of winter. Days of corn on the cob, sand between the toes, fireflies, ice cream, summer camp. Nina MacLaughlin (author of the excellent memoir, Hammerhead and the novel Wake, Siren: Ovid Resung) has put together a gem of a little book - just 60 pages of concise, languid, beautiful prose: a meditation on all things summer. A pocket-sized beauty with French-flaps and a letter press cover, published by the equally excellent & tiny Black Sparrow Press. It’s one of those books you'll be surprised & delighted by when you stretch out in your hammock with your lemonade for the afternoon. -sm
Oh this book! A wholly unique, beautifully perfect gem of an essay collection - a gorgeous, joyful mix of personal memoir and nature essay by poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil. Stories of fireflies & narwhals, axolotls & corpse flowers braid together with her experiences growing up a person of color in Kansas & Arizona and raising two sons to have her same sense of wonder at the natural world around them. What can a firefly teach you about climate change & respect for the planet, memory & family, how to treat one another, what to do when you feel overwhelmed by the weight of the world? One of the best books I've read in a good long while. -sm
What an incredible stunner of a book. While certainly a grief memoir surrounding the death of Renkl's complicated mother but also the story of a marriage, of parents, of family, mixed together in a most amazing way with a profound appreciation for the natural world & how it all connects. This gorgeous gem of a book is worth returning to over & over again - and is absolute perfection for lovers of H is For Hawk or Terry Tempest Williams & the like, while being wholly unique in its own beautiful way. -seth
Ben Ehrenreich's unclassifiable, brilliant new book is a polymath's mix of personal memoir, nature writing, micro-histories, Mayan mythologies, and how it all relates to the (outgoing) American president, the acceleration of climate change, the politics of race, and the nature of time itself. It's a most unusual book, as you can tell, but one I can't seem to shake - and it's holding up as one of the best books I've read this year. Ehrenreich's general theory is that "Trauma stops time. Catastrophe breaks all cycles. Whatever rhythm had once been attained collapses." 2020 has definitely been such a massive, yearlong trauma point for most of us - whether racism, COVID, climate, Trump, or a heavy combination of all of the above. Now how do we deal with that trauma and move forward into the future? Through the desert, friends. -sm
Macfarlane is already the best nature and landscape writer of this generation, but Underland is far and away his masterwork to date. He chronicles an amazing series of underground adventures: a harrowing caving experience beneath innocuous Somerset, England; visiting humanity's folly in a nuclear waste site far underground; spending a night traveling the vast Paris catacombs; discovering underground rivers and mountainous black sand dunes beneath the Italian Alps. Yet his experiences making his way to the incredible cave of Kollhellaren in Norway - alone - and watching 100,000 year old "deep time" ice calve from a Greenland glacier due to human-caused climate change are of the most stunning, vivid pieces of narrative nonfiction I have ever read. I promise you, this profound, moving, absolute masterpiece will change the way you see the world around you. -seth
Marc Hamer spent 30 years working as a professional molecatcher in Wales (no joke) but as it turns out, he should’ve been writing all that time. This book is a true nonfiction gem – Hamer is poetic, graceful, & profound in his descriptions of catching (and killing) these strange velvety creatures who tear up Welsh fields. More than that, he has an extraordinary eye for observation & a remarkable gift for putting those observations to page in a gorgeous, wondrous way. A quiet, beautiful book and a lovely meditation on the natural world around us & how we all interact. -seth
I grew up in New England and spent part of every childhood summer on Cape Cod, so this book captures a special place for me personally. But it is a gorgeously written mediation on the natural history of the Cape, its dunes, tides, wildlife, waves, water, and its people. They say that between natural erosion & human-caused climate change, the entire Cape will be swallowed by the ocean in the next 6000 years. Finch brings all of the Cape’s majestic fragility to life in these pages as an ode to this landscape that holds such a quiet, beautiful resonance to anyone who’s spent any time there. And it will make those who have not been there ache to visit. -seth
A fascinating, meticulously researched, & highly readable “revisionist history” of the US shown through the lens of the territories and colonies that have been at the outlying edges of the American empire. And despite what our history books have always told us, it is and has always been an empire, bent on cultural domination and capitalism. I’ve lost count of how many times I was completely shocked upon learning of some horrifying political policy I’ve long been oblivious to. Native Alaskan internment camps? Decades of pre-WWII government sanctioned war in the Philippines? Horrific medical testing in Puerto Rico? If you’re like me, shamefully unaware of much of American empire building history there is out there, Immerwhar will open your eyes wide. An absolutely riveting history that feels like an especially necessary historical perspective primer for any thoughtful citizen living in today’s America. -sm
Such a great, weird book for a great, weird project. Apparently, when you steal rocks from the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona, you inevitably feel terrible about it and citing bad luck brought on by the theft, you return the stolen rocks to their source, along with an accompanying letter of apology. Ryan Thompson and Phil Orr beautifully documented both the letters from the park's "conscience letter archive" as well as photographed some of the gorgeous returned rocks from the "conscience pile" for this curious volume. Wonderful. -sm
The Peace of Wild Things
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
I had a moment early in reading The Overstory where I paused & realized that this was one of those great, resonant books that come along only so often in a reader’s life. The multiple narratives to this intertwine like the roots of an old redwood grove in magnificent, surprising ways – with trees being the one connective thread to all. A story for the ages that cries out for humanity to take note of the destruction of the planet’s forests & how integral to our own health & happiness they truly are. Read it slowly, soak it all in, consider this incredible invisible world that that the storyteller is inviting you into. An absolutely stunning novel. -Seth
Sometimes a book just speaks for itself – you're going to have to come into the store and open this beauty up to see for yourself, internet friend. Filled with fascinating capsules about 80 different tree species from all over the world paired with stunning artwork by Lucille Clerc. For instance, did you know that the upas tree (yes, Upas is also a tree) has a toxic sap used for poison darts in Malaysia? (Cashews are also toxic until the seed is steamed open.) Or that our ubiquitous jacarandas are from Argentina? And that the quinine tree is the national tree of Peru & Ecuador? Well, all this knowledge and more could be yours! -seth
A strange, almost magical tall-tale about a giant Swedish immigrant who comes to the West in the 1850’s in search of a better life. Hakan accidentally arrives in SF alone & spends his youth trying to reach his brother in NYC. He instead wanders the desolate landscape of the American West, weirdly growing into a giant & encountering all manner of Homerian characters – a brothel madam with rotten teeth, a murderous sheriff, a magnanimous vintner, a naturalist searching for the missing link. All in all, this is a sad tale of the lonely life of the immigrant and a parable for the modern plight of those attempting to cross today’s southern border or seek political refuge from afar. A polarizing novel that was the 2nd selection of The Catapult Book Club & a 2018 Pulitzer finalist. -sm
Mostly through the lens of literature, I’ve always had a fascination for the ancient pathways that course across the landscape. (I also read a lot while I walk.) That faded trail that runs between the hedges, the dusty track over the distant hilltops, old seaway routes, & a pathway that disappears with the rising tide. Macfarlane has written an elegant, gorgeous, truly wonderful meditation on walking those old paths – mostly through Britain – mixing in geology, cartography, literature, & the philosophy of “walking as a reconnoitre inwards & the subtle ways in which we are shaped by the landscapes through which we move.” -seth
It seems that half of Northern California is named for Alexander von Humboldt, but I knew absolutely nothing about him before I read this fantastic, illuminating biography - the best nonfiction book I've read in several years. The most famous naturalist in his day, Humboldt had a profound influence on the likes of Muir, Thoreau, Darwin, Goethe, and Simon Bolivar. He was the first scientist to hypothesize that human activity has an effect on Earth's climate and spent his entire life on the then-radical idea that all of the natural world is one interconnected web. Super-famous in the 1800's, how he is not well-known today is baffling. An immensely important figure in science, ecology, and environmentalism whose work resonates anew in today's charged political climate. -Seth
Dare I say it? Could this be my favorite book of all time? I've read and re-read my dogeared, annotated copy over and over again, only to be surprised and delighted each time anew. Cloud Atlas is just the tip of the David Mitchell iceberg, mind you - each one of his books is a piece in a gigantic puzzle he is spending his entire writing life crafting, with characters floating through multiple books, revealing more and more about themselves each time. I read this for the first time in 2004 and I can still remember what it felt like when I saw all the blocks dropping into place like it was some strange, disassembled magical puzzle filled with fictions-within-fictions, false leads, multiple writing styles, and absolutely unforgettable characters. It's unlike anything else you've been reading, I'm fairly sure of that. Time to read it again! -Seth
A remarkable, beautiful, emotive book that will reduce you to tears (on more than one occasion) and make you hug your loved ones all the closer. Aren’t those the sort of things we want out of a good story, after all? A book that you can’t wait to return to, to read again for the first time. I can’t stress it enough – go to this book, read it, love it, pass it along. Repeat. -Seth