The Best American Essays 2022 audiobook

A terrific collection! Rather heavy on heavy subjects, but I guess we're living through some pretty heavy times.

This year's guest editor, Alexander Chee, chose well. The essays in BAE 2022 represent the zeitgeist of the era, this year of global pandemic and a climate of fire and ice -- raging fires and melting ice. "Fire and Ice," by writer Barry Lopez's widow, Debra Gwartney, is one of my favorites among this year's selected 23 essays. Another favorite is "Between These Lives, Azeroth" by Tanner Akoni Laguatan. In Chee's introduction to the collection he says, "This anthology was almost an anthology of elegies." There is a strong elegiac vibe, yes, but the anthology is also a tribute to creative nonfiction, which celebrates stories by those of us who have lived. So, everybody. These are specific essays by individual voices, yet they shine light on universal truths.[Thanks to Mariner Books and NetGalley for an opportunity to read an advanced reader copy and share my opinion of this book.]

THE BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 2022 is a rich collection of highly personal writings--some intensely moving, all superbly written and clearly thoughtfully chosen. A wonderful place to find new authors to seek out and a terrific addition to the "Best American Essays" shelf. Highly recommended. Thanks to Mariner and to Netgalley for the opportunity and pleasure of an early read.

The Best American Essays series is one of my must reads every year, and the 2022 edition does not disappoint. Guest editor Alexander Chee has chosen a nuanced assortment of essays running the gamut of experiences, all achingly illustrating what it means to be human. Two of my favorites were unexpected surprises, the contemporary female essayists Melissa Febos with "The Wild, Sublime Body" and Elissa's Washuta's "Drinking Story." Chee does an outstanding job of finding up and coming writers alongside the seasoned. Chee summons Susan Sontag in his introduction as he beckons "Welcome to my party" and what a party it is. I'm the guest who doesn't want to leave.

This was an impactful group of essays by some very talented authors.

This one was a journey for me. I chose to read it because I knew a bunch of essays from 2022 would be challenging for me - a 50 year old, white, cis, het man. I want to see how people are talking and thinking about their experience today. It came as no surprise that the essayists were talking about identity: gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and race. What cumulatively surprised me more and more with each essay as I read was how many words were devoted to graphic accounts of violence and trauma bound up in the experience of identity. Stretches of the book landed on me as a competition among the essayists to describe the most lurid account of alcoholism, mental illness, grief, beatings, betrayals, sexual abuse, or self-harm. What I came to realize is that the form of a collection of essays pulled from their original context is the reason for this effect - appearing originally alongside other, very different content in outlets like The New Yorker, N+1, or Wired, they must have created a very different impression on a reader. Through birth and circumstance, I have the good fortune not to relate to most of the traumatic experience described in The Best American Essays of 2022 - I was there to learn how people in America think and write about their experience today and I got that and appreciate it. My favorite is Vauhini Vara's Ghosts, where the author explores OpenAI's GPT3 by co-writing an account of her grief over the loss of her sister at a very young age to cancer with the generative AI algorithm. The results were fascinating and sometimes genuinely moving.

Standouts:"Fire and Ice""Ghosts""The Wrong Jason Brown""Between These Lives, Azeroth""China Brain""Among Men""My Gentile Region""Anatomy of a Botched Assimilation"

When I saw that this year’s Best American Essays’s editor is Alexander Chee, an author beloved in my household, I knew that I had to have it on my shelf. This book is a collection of the best essays that were published last year. It’s a truly stunning selection, with some brilliant examples of the most original, creative writing in the genre. The essays vary in length, but what connects all of them is the emotional punch that they pack - there were a few essays that moved me to tears and that doesn’t happen often with nonfiction. It is a collection though, so there were also essays that didn’t awe me, which is why I can’t give this book 5 stars. Still, overall it’s definitely a must read for any nonfiction or essay enthusiast!

The Best American Essays 2022, edited by Alexander Chee, is an excellent collection of essays that speak to many of the things we all experience in life, but through distinctly personal lenses.Because essays are personal accounts from very specific perspectives, I think readers are more likely to have a greater preference for or against certain ones as compared to short stories. A couple of these moved me quite deeply while a couple were just good reads (which isn't a bad thing).I use such collections for times when I have limited time and don't want to try to get back into a longer work but I do want to read. These essays do very well for this, probably even better than most short story collections, because I find myself thinking about the essay as well as the essayist once I have finished. In this way it stays with me even when I have returned to whatever demands my time.For anyone who enjoys the essay form I would highly recommend this collection. There wasn't quite the variety I would have expected but the quality is certainly here.Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.

This year's edition of The Best American Essays is a solid collection. Every essay selected by Alexander Chee is great on both a technical, writing level as well as on a narrative and thoughtfulness level. With most "Best American" collections there's always two or three essays/article/short stories that make me question the editor's judgement, but that did not happen here. The one downside is that, though all the essays were great, very few were standouts IMO (possibly a factor of all of them being wonderful). I tend to prefer essays that braid personal narrative with some topic where reporting is involved. As such, the standouts for me were the essays that did this, like Ryan Bradley's "The Lost List" and Jung Hae Chae's "The Gye..." I also thought Vauhini Vara's piece, "Ghosts," used GPT-3 in a way that is completely original and added depth one wouldn't expect from an AI language model.

In this collection edited by Alexander Chee, I found familiar names and unfamiliar names. I liked that. Images have stayed with me, Justin Torres' gold necklace in "It Had to be Gold," the house fire in Debra Gwarthy's "Fire and Ice," one of my favorites. Another favorite was Calvin Gimpelevich's "Among Men." Gimpelevich began transitioning in order to authenticate himself and live as a man, but it was through transitioning that he realized "that this particular manhood was Jewish." As a Jewish woman who raised three sons, I understood that distinction and was happy to see it realized. Loved this collection. I will return to these essays again and again.

So many of these essays were sticky (in the best way). I can't get them out of my head and wanted to re-read each as soon as I had finished. Unafraid to explore the expansiveness of their creativity and yet still humble, these authors held nothing sacred and treated everything as holy. The content matter was often painfully vulnerable, but they did not let grief and violence rule their stories even when those forces were at their center. Inspired me to write better than I have in a while. As Alexander Chee foreshadowed in the introduction, what a party indeed.

Alexander Chee's voice comes through in his selections and they really are a great bunch. I'm definitely going to be trying to read more by the featured authors. "The Wrong James Brown" and "If You Ever Find Yourself" hit hard for me. The essays bring something to each other and form discussions on culture, race, class, disability, and death. It feels like each essay has at least one companion in the collection.

I really loved Alexander Chee's choices and his focus on big narratives. Some standout essays: Fire and Ice by Debra GwartneyGhosts by Vauhini VaraBaby Yeah by Anthony Veasna SoThe Gye, the No-Name Hair Salon, the Coup d'Etat and the Small Dreamers by Jung Hae ChaeHer Kind by Naomi JacksonMy Gentle Region by Gary ShteyngartThe Lost List by Gary Bradley

This collection felt especially timely and timeless as I read it. Given the year, I thought it would have more essays directly about covid. It didn't. And yet, it was clear to see how the context of covid provoked questions of community, connection, identify, isolation. What we lose and how we live after loss. Grateful for this collection.