Commentary: Didn’t read any of Barack Obama’s best books of 2022? You’re not alone

I never felt more humbled this month — or was it ashamed? — than when Barack Obama posted the list of his favorite books from 2022. Or when writers for this newspaper listed their top books of the year. Or when any other critic or influencer shared their favorite tomes.

Because I didn’t read any of those books. Because I didn’t read any book in 2022.

Oh, I read plenty in 2022. As an editor, my job requires knowing things, and the best way to know enough to edit someone else’s writing is to read — often reports put together by bureaucrats or academics, with information buried in footnotes. So when someone asks, “What do you do for a living?” I like to say that I read, just not in the way most people think when they hear the word “read.”

And what kind of reading is that? The act of opening a book and finishing it, betraying a patient contemplation that marks a curious and thoughtful personality. Reading for pleasure. Reading for edification. The kind of reading that erudite people in my line of work do.

I didn’t do that in 2022.

My failure to keep up with the cultural moment didn’t involve just books. The “best of 2022” lists put together by film critics flew right over my head like light from a movie projector. The same goes for food, even though five of the eateries on The Times’ 101 Best Restaurants in L.A. list are within easy biking distance of my home in Alhambra.

An optimist would tell me to regard these year-end retrospectives as to-do lists when I emerge into the post-COVID world. Maybe so. But meanwhile, I refuse to feel bad about it. I did plenty in 2022, just surviving another year of the pandemic, adapting to a world that certainly doesn’t feel normal yet.

Here’s my year-end list of achievements when I could have been reading a good book:

Doom scrolling. I know, tapping on my phone for reliable information about this dangerous reality is so 2020. But the pandemic, the adjustments at home, the uncertainly — it isn’t over for parents raising young children, and my wife and I are raising three. In early 2020, the bedtime panic Google search was “child COVID symptoms”; the next year it was “is it safe to send kids to school before they’re vaccinated”; now it’s “RSV symptoms in kids.”

Alone in the dark, one negative thought begets another, and by 1 a.m. I’ve failed to fix climate change. How can anyone sleep — let alone read a whole book — after coming to the realization that we are the planet defending itself?

Watching reruns. This is done almost always before doom scrolling, and almost always in bed. Everyone calls this “binge watching,” so I’ll stick with the food metaphor. My guiltless pleasures are “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” and “Arrested Development,” often the same episodes over and over, plus the occasional Netflix true-crime series. If the films on those year-end lists are prix fixe feasts, then my mid-2000s comedies and whodunit documentaries are the microwaved nachos of screen fare.

Speaking of food …

Eating cold or microwaved food, often leftovers, and preferably something that suits my kids’ finicky tastes. Did I mention how microwaved nachos deliver comfort — Every. Single. Time? We’ll get around to the critics’ gastronomic picks. But not tonight.

The situation isn’t hopeless. Like a B-minus student, I started but did not finish my share of books this year, most recently the 2018 novel “The Overstory.” Plus, I’ve read enough in my life to have some stirring passages planted firmly in my heart. I find myself reaching for them in even the most mundane situations. Toni Morrison’s mesmerizing words about “the way the clouds love a mountain,” for instance, are on repeat in my head.

That bank of other people’s wisdom will eventually need replenishment. But in this not-quite-post-pandemic time, a lot of us still reach for whatever provides the most immediate, reliable escape. And sadly, many of us are too exhausted by 2022 to find much inspiration in our intelligentsia’s “best of” lists — including Barack Obama’s.

Well, at least I have my first new year’s resolution: Finish “The Overstory.”