• Check out the relaunch of our general collection, with classic designs and new ones by our very own Pissog!

Media Books

I'm back with more good stuff.

The Alchemist — Paulo Coelho

I read this among the ones in the previous post, I just forgot about mentioning it. It's a short book about having faith in yourself and looking at the positive side of things, but not in a corny way. Recommended.

Flowers for Algernon — Daniel Keyes

This one was a ride. I went from detached to sad to glad to vengeful and then back to sad again. It's a novel where a mentally disabled man goes under a special surgery that gives him a super brain. But while you can acquire knowledge fast, you can't learn how to deal with your emotions quickly. Plus, the surgery was highly experimental.

The results don't stick, and his brain regresses back to its original state after a while. The novel is written as a diary. It shows how intelligence wrecks the character emotionally. He knows lots about every scientific subject. But he doesn't know anything about himself. Read this book.

The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea — Yukio Mishima

This is a novel about respect. The respect a boy loses for the sailor he admires because he manages to know him beyond his on-the-job daily life. The respect he loses for his mother because of her (in his eyes) debauchery. The respect he craves from his friends.

World Cup Wishes — Eshkol Nevo

This is a mediocre book that I wish I dropped. It's not terrible, but it's not great either. There are so many great books out there for which I don't have time. At least it reinforced the notion of having to drop books I dislike. I can't even tell you much about it. It's about friendship in difficult times. But that's about it. I don't recommend it.

Slaughterhouse Five — Kurt Vonnegut

This is where World Cup Wishes came in handy. I dropped this one about 1/3rd into it. It was that bad.

A Confederacy of Dunces — John Kennedy Toole

This is a literary masterpiece. Read it. It's hilarious and depressing. Grand and humble. Wholesome and cruel. All at the same time. It follows the deeds of Ignatius Reilly, a huge man who lives with his mother. The mother incurs into a big debt and forces Ignatius to look for a job to pay it off.

But Ignatius has a very specific worldview. He's full of himself and extremely out of place. Thus, despite his master's degree, he struggles to find a job. And when he does, all sorts of things happen because of his personality. Every word he says, every action he does makes sense and doesn't at the same time.

He sends an angry letter to his job's main customer calling him a person with a "blighted worldview". And that, should he complain again, he'll "feel the sting of the lash across your pitiful shoulders". He then tries his luck as an hot-dogs vendor.

There are other excellent characters in it like Burma Jones and Miss Trixie. All of them are absurd in their own way. But in the end, they are all dunces trying to hold Ignatius back. Or that's what he'd tell you anyway.

100% read this. Easily one of the best novels I've ever read. It's up there with Nabokov's Lolita, Dumas' The Count of Montecristo, and Camus' The Stranger.
 
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Phew, I've got a pretty large backlog of books thanks to exams and stuff.

Currently finishing up Brandon Sanderson's Warbreaker (huge fan of this guy; love all his books!) and moving onto Elantris (almost finished all Cosmere books!), Dune, Wheel of Time (already read first book a while back; wasn't too into it but decided to pick it up again at the recommendation of many people), Powder Mage (read books 1-2 already) for some more whimsical reads.

One other book I recently read and quite liked was Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist. It's a pretty big departure from what I normally enjoy, and I only read it because it was required for a class, but I actually ended up enjoying it quite a lot! Feels good to expand my horizons since I almost always read just fantasy with the occasional foray into non fiction. I'm not really sure what other sort of books I might like, though.
 
I've been getting back into books this year and I'm currently reading several titles.

- The Easy Life In Kamusari by Shion Miura
A pleasant slice of life novel about a man working at a saw mill in rural Japan. There are no real stakes, but it's a comfortable read. I'm looking forward to reading other books by this author.

- The Way Spring Arrives
This is a sci-fi and fantasy short story collection by several Chinese writers. There's also an essay for some reason. The quality varies wildly. I liked the first story and disliked the other two I read. The rest might be better, so I intend to keep going.

- Woman in The Dunes by Kobo Abe
A novel about an etymologist getting lost in a desert. He decides to stay and help dig a ditch in order for a village to not sink. The book is nihilistic and has a disturbing scene that wouldn't go over well if it were published now. The translation and prose are superb though.
 
Rain Moon said:
Phew, I've got a pretty large backlog of books thanks to exams and stuff.

Currently finishing up Brandon Sanderson's Warbreaker (huge fan of this guy; love all his books!) and moving onto Elantris (almost finished all Cosmere books!), Dune, Wheel of Time (already read first book a while back; wasn't too into it but decided to pick it up again at the recommendation of many people), Powder Mage (read books 1-2 already) for some more whimsical reads.

One other book I recently read and quite liked was Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist. It's a pretty big departure from what I normally enjoy, and I only read it because it was required for a class, but I actually ended up enjoying it quite a lot! Feels good to expand my horizons since I almost always read just fantasy with the occasional foray into non fiction. I'm not really sure what other sort of books I might like, though.
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Curious, did you end up enjoying the later Wheel of Time books? I read the first book largely due to my liking for Brandon Sanderson's novels (and the fact that he finished the series) and found it to be pretty bland, basically just a retread of Lord of the Rings that didn't add anything much of worth to the mixture. I'd be interested to hear if it does end up becoming better later on though since it sounds like you feel similarly.
 
Fishin said:
Curious, did you end up enjoying the later Wheel of Time books? I read the first book largely due to my liking for Brandon Sanderson's novels (and the fact that he finished the series) and found it to be pretty bland, basically just a retread of Lord of the Rings that didn't add anything much of worth to the mixture. I'd be interested to hear if it does end up becoming better later on though since it sounds like you feel similarly.
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I've been super busy with a bunch of other stuff so I haven't had too much time for reading. Book 1 was kind of meh, as you said, however I quite enjoyed books 2 and 3, enough to go and buy the next 3 for myself to read. Can't speak on the late late books because I haven't read them myself, but yes. I think there's definitely a very big improvement just between books 1-3. It's hard to compete with good old Brando Sando but I am enjoying them nonetheless.
 
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It’s one of my favorite times all year, the Ithaca New York Friends of the Library Sale, seriously recommended checking it out, twice a year in fall and spring. Always a good time, always a line out the door in the morning. It’s awesome! I’ll send my haul later.
 
Read almost all of Tell Me I'm Worthless by Alison Rumfitt in one sitting. It's a gripping haunted house horror novel set in Brighton, variations on the themes of being gay and living in a dystopian political economy. A rare pleasure, this is one for the reader who likes a little bit of everything and isn't faint/squeamish of anything. I really cannot gush enough about this one, there is a haunted Morrisey poster lol... content warning sexual violence though.

Also finished:

Love and Limerence- This is a nonfiction narrative of one academic's research into the experience of being in love. Had been on my list for a long time, the vivid transcriptions of people's first hand experiences make for engaging reading. Another fascinating section pulls back the veil on misogyny and sexual violence/abuse in clinical practice and psych theory.

The Sea Around Us- Rachel Carson summarizes what is known about the sea at the time of writing (1950ish). I had wanted to return to her after seeing many public scientists fail to communicate well throughout this pandemic as she is quite a good teacher. Many foundational theories in biology and geology have been revised since the book was written; it is still a smooth and pleasant read.

I started but did not finish:

The Dance of Anger- A self-help sort of book about anger and how to harness it and not let it shut you down, I may return to it, but I found it unnecessary for myself.

The Long Twentieth Century- I found this one dense although still quite followable it is just I have to be very motivated as sometimes they will just introduce some well-known analysis of a historical event that is really complicated for a layperson like myself so it takes a long time to read even small sections.
 
I am still in the process of reading “The Chain” in all honesty it started from me seeing what my friend was reading stealing when she wasn’t looking and reading it before class started and it immediately brings you into the action, it was super hard to put it down when my professor started lecturing us
(I stole it again to read a little more)
“The Chain” is about well to say the least The Chain which is an organization that forces parents to kidnap other children, so their own child is released that had been previously captured by another parent, you see the cycle? But the gripping part is that when one of the main characters try’s to like contact the police and tell somebody, there’s always a previous chain agent there to stop her
God it’s sooo good, I can’t wait to finish it. It’s really down to earth and doesn’t sugar coat jack shit it’s just real horrible stuff happening, written in a super good interesting way that makes you want to keep reading. I would definitely recommend it!

(EDIT: I should’ve prefaced with this, there are some serious topics in the book, like violence, kidnapping, and drugs. So if you don’t like that stuff I would not recommend)
 
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Writing in here because I have read 16 books in 2022. Mentioning a few here.

Fantasy/Science Fiction
Dune - Frank Herbert (3.5/5)
I think most people know of Dune, and I started reading this book because I heard about the movie. Dune is set in a futuristic technologically advanced world which after the Butlerian Jihad (the bloody war between Man and Machines) has eliminated all computers and passed a decree declaring "Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a man's mind". Since there are no computers, the essential working of the galaxy is still medieval and feudal with heavy reliance on men and their dallying around. Lots of thriller potential right there. Men with superhuman analytical abilities called Mentatshave taken the place of Computers. On the other hand, we have the Bene Gesserit, an ancient school of mental and physical training for female students (it gives them superhuman intuitive powers) who follow a selective breeding program which makes them feared and mistrusted through the Imperium. Their desired end product of this breeding program is the Kwisatz Haderach, a superman who’ll be able to glimpse into the future. This is only the world setting, the plot involves politics and more, but due to the first half being on the back of the book (there is literally a big spoiler on the back) I didn't enjoy reading the first half. The last 100 pages were great. I don't know if I'll pick up the sequels, I first want to watch the movie.

We Hunt the Flame - Hafsah Faizal (4/5)
During my search for an arabic inspired fantasy fiction book, I stumbled upon We Hunt the Flame. Zafira is the Hunter, disguising herself as a man when she braves the cursed forest of the Arz to feed her people. Nasir is the Prince of Death, assassinating those foolish enough to defy his autocratic father, the sultan. If Zafira was exposed as a girl, all of her achievements would be rejected; if Nasir displayed his compassion, his father would punish him in the most brutal of ways. War is brewing, and the Arz sweeps closer with each passing day, engulfing the land in shadow... I am currently reading the sequel to this book. I liked the characters and the worldbuildign was okay, but it seemed dragged out at some points...

Midnight Library - Matt Haig (4/5)
Loved it. A woman visits all the "what ifs" in her life after dying. Like for example, what if I had married my crush, what if I had continued playing with my band, what if I had never quit my sports career. It's good. Feels more like literary fiction though.

I ALSO READ HARRY POTTER 1, 2 AND 3 and will read the rest in 2023. I am late to the party, it is so much fun.

Self-help/Psychology/Philosophy
Atomic Habits - James Clear (5/5)
I LOVED THIS, it is in the self help genre and it basically helps you with creating healthy habits for yourself. This book learned me that I often procrastinate because I am delaying failure. Big realisation. It's just the right amount of pages and the writing style is so nice. Love it to bits and it is in my favourite books ever hall of fame.

Deep Work - Cal Newport (5/5)
I'm a Cal Newport fan xD. Love this book about reaching pinnacles of the human mind by concentrating deeply, and how to cut out distractions. Hall of faaaame.

12 Rules for Life - Jordan B. Peterson (4.5/5)
I know Peterson is a bigger figure because next to writing he gives lectures and he used to be a teacher. I read this book because I hoped it would give me some new insights, and yes it did. I highlighted many sentences. Getting through this book took me a long time because I had to pause and reconsider my LIFE after some of the rules. I love that it brought me new thoughts and perspectives on life. This one is also going on my Hall of fame shelf and I sometimes pick it up to read some of the highlighted parts.

Surrounded by Idiots - Thomas Erikson (3.5/5)
People say you can not just divide people into 4 personality types. I definitely know a few people in my life that are red though!!! It really helped me understand some people better. It is especially good if you work in an organisation. It was a fun read! only 250 ish pages.

Literary Fiction
Homegoing - Yaa Gyasi (4/5)
Last year, I had read a few books that were set in an east asian country, written by East Asian authors, so that I get to know about culture and setting of that country. This year I decided to try out books written by black writers. Homegoing was great. you follow the story of a family tree and their journey from Africa to America in different generations, first as slaves and then as free people, still struggling to catch up with society and scarred by their past. There is a helpful depiction of the family tree as well. Beautiful.

Open Water - Caleb Azuman Nelson (2.5/5)
Two young people meet at a pub in South East London. Both are Black British, both won scholarships to private schools where they struggled to belong, both are now artists - he a photographer, she a dancer, trying to make their mark in a city that by turns celebrates and rejects them. They fall in love. The book was written in a dramatic style. It definitely wasn't my favorite read... I didn't like the writing style.

Honorable mentions:
On Earth Were Briefly Gorgeous - Ocean Vuong (2.5/5) Literary Fiction
I'm Glad My Mom Died - Jennette McCurdy (4.5/5) Memoir

♡ PS: If anyone wants to connect on Goodreads, I would love to be friends on there and see what you read. ♡
 
Haven't read a book in years because of work, university and many personal responsibilities. Read mangas and comics instead, as they go faster and you can read a chapter a week. Got a book store gift card and will buy myself house of leaves and maybe the Jeanette McCurdy book
 
Build Your House Around My Body- Violet Kupersmith

A book so good that I worry that my recent praise for other books in this thread could even distract from this book's achievements. Kupersmith weaves a deftly plotted ghost story that glosses ~70 years of Vietnamese history going back to the French colonization, through the Japanese invasion of Indochina and war with America, and into the present day. The author's metaphors are each so perfect that I cannot do justice to them w mere mentions though as an example: in one striking passage at the outset, the main character Winnie longs to be transformed into something or someone else as a strangler fig transforms its host tree. Narratives of possession and body swapping make commentaries on legacies of colonialism, which drives the plot, connecting each character substantively through its haunting. There is a shade of Murakami-like confusion in the ending, which leaves characters permanently at home in new bodies (perhaps signals some type of hopefulness in diaspora that seems distant and perhaps impossible at the start of the novel, at least for Winnie). The novel is quite perfect, perfect metaphors, perfect pacing, perfect landscape writing, Melville like imagery of the rubber plantation etc, no tedium. I give it the myzozoa 100% satisfaction guarantee. While it is a quick read, it is better savored as it is just so deserving of drawn out engagement.


The Origins of Iris- Beth Lewis

This novel follows Iris, a white lesbian woman fleeing an abusive relationship. It interrogates ideas about choice, and freedom, and depersonalization in abusive relationships. Iris has an abusive relationship with her father, and then with her wife. One day, following a traumatic twist in in her marriage that I will not reveal (this twist is imo the weakest part of the book, almost as if an unneeded plot device, but some would say it is central to the ambivalence that permeates the novel) she flees to a cabin in the middle of nowhere. Once there, she becomes trapped in space and time with another version of herself that made different choices at certain key moments. The novel is successful and self-aware in overcoming its clunky set-up to wind up being a sort of inversion of Walden where the narrator has more clarity before their isolative period than after. I will warn you it does have an ending that denies the reader closure, which could be expected in a novel which goes so deeply into an experience of ambivalence. While quite engaging, well-paced, and constructed, the metaphors in this novel are as clunky as the set-up: describing seeing her future wife Claude, for the first time, Iris says something like 'She hit me like a freight train', and of course later Claude hits her... Anyway, if you are looking for a nice gay book to read or gift to someone you could do worse than this. I read it in about 5 hours on a NOC shift as it is very quick paced.

will be back w N.K Jemison The Broken Earth Trilogy.
 
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Wassup. I only managed to crank out 19 books this year; two of which I didn't finish all the way through. That said, this is pretty good for me! Decided to do my end-of-the-year rankings. Here it is:
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I hate shitting on books since they are so much more personalized pieces of art than movies/videogames but... I have to. Promises & Pomegranates may very well be the worst book I've read... Lol. Look, it's essentially porn, honestly. I know smut isn't anything new but like let's call it for what it is. I only read it because my girlfriend and I did a blind book reading together, and she picked this. We tore it to shreds. The plot is nonexistent and the characters are insufferable. The smut isn't even good! The Truants is equally as bizarre, with a baffling plot and equally as insufferable characters. Atleast this book is interesting if framed as really really juicy gossip. I may co-opt the plot as events that happened to a "friend of mine" next time I'm out to dinner with someone and need to baffle them with the craziest tea known to man. That doesn't mean the book is good, though.

D tier is what I call the "mid non-fiction tier." This year I spent a lot of time reading non-fiction books in a vain attempt to relive the experience of reading Paul Tough's The Years That Matter Most; which I highly, highly, HIIIIGHLY recommend. These three in particular disappoint because they are a bit too meandering and kinda just boring. Freakonomics especially so. In fact, the lack of any cohesion is something the authors pretty much state in the introduction to the book itself. I liked the Social Animal well enough but can't really remember anything particularly illuminating from it. The Premonitions Bureau wins out in this category because the subject matter is the most interesting, but all I really remember from this book is powering through it just to finish it because I was bored and wanted to move on.

It might surprise some to see Cormac McCarthy that low, but to be quite honest I found Blood Meridian to be incredibly, incredibly, incredibly, incredibly, incredibly, increeeeddiiiibbbllyyyyy boring. All the characters are shallow and the plot is nonexistent. A couple of dirty idiots wander around in the desert for 300 pages. The prose is good and there are some great lines in there but oh my goooooood was it so fucking boring. I'm sure many will accuse me of missing the point or whatever but I guess symbolism and themes are lost on me when I just don't care about anything that is happening.

The Anthropocene Reviewed beats out the other mid-non-fictions because it atleast has quite a personal touch. This feels like reading John Green's personal journal, which is nice, even if the book goes no where and ultimatly amounts to not much more than Green's ramblings.

I loved Bram Stoker's Dracula and read it through Dracula Daily, which I highly recommend. For some reason I connected to these characters on much deeper level than any in the other books I've read. They are the characters I most consider to be my friends, and I would die for all of them.

Lies My Teacher Told Me wins out in the non-fiction category despite it being one of the two books I didn't finish this year (A Court of Silver Flames being the other). This book had some really eye-opening shit, and is especially relevant to me, a Social Studies teacher. Highly recommend it if you are American or interested in American history.

The Top 5 was the hardest to order for me. We Had to Remove Your Post was nearly a perfect book; a simple idea executed perfectly, tackling extremely relevant themes related to anxiety, work-related stress, the internet and relationships in general. It is also very very short, so I recommend taking a trip to B&N for lunch and cranking that shit out in the cafe. American Gods was the first book I finished this year and held the #1 spot for most of the year. It's possible its suffering from the reverse of recency bias, since I read it during a time that feels like eons ago. I really enjoyed being in the world of this book, even if it felt like it went off on big tangents during the middle. The ending was also a bit anti-climatic.

The Mask of the Sorcerer might be one of the best fantasies ever written, and it's hard to leave it at just the bronze. I can not do it justice in this post alone. If you like old-school fantasies, DEFINITELY check this out. It has a world that feels really fresh and a main character that is impossible to hate. It's a big story full of ancient gods and ancient magic and yet is also extremely personal. I love how this book makes magic feel so magical.... it's terrifying and mystifying and mysterious. Please someone else read this I want to talk about it with another human being.

I ate The Way of Kings up so voraciously. This book taught me that page numbers mean nothing. It took me like 400000 years to finish Blood Meridian which is only just over 400 and yet I finished Way of Kings' 1200+ pages in like a week. I couldn't put this down and when I finally finished I thought for sure it would be the #1... but I think The Lies of Locke Lamora overtakes it for me. I love the Camorr so much as a setting, and this book took my expectations and knocked me over the head with 'em.

Looking forward to 2023!!!! I have a lot of books sitting on my shelf that I can't wait to read.
 
From the past couple months-

Alice Isn't Dead- This is a horror book originally or partially a podcast. The premise, as best I can recall, is that the protagonist's wife has been missing for months but begins appearing on the news broadcasts at various disaster events (crime scenes, natural disaster). In investigating these appearances her wife, the protagonist, stumbles upon a cosmic struggle between good and evil that has been animating dark tensions in American politics. I felt this book was well written, paced, and readable. With interesting enough characters. I read it quickly and the themes and ideas felt familiar and satisfying within the horror genre, with an enjoyable if not necessarily mind-blowing build up. Affectively, the characters in the book grapple with the anxiety primarily and that is perhaps the experience that the book makes the most comments about. I think the text is at the minimum rote wrt its idea of anxiety, where anxiety is like a bystander effect to be overcome, after which justice will be achieved by those who overcame their anxiety and spoke up. Still, there is a critique of 'anxiety on behalf of another person' 'we need to protect the women and children' type security/protective discourses in the context of the protagonist's relationship to Alice. The book's most interesting commentary is perhaps related to the 'forgotten' locations, the places that are 'merely' 'on the way' to other places, that it foregrounds. I did appreciate the creepy portrayal of America's roads, and the horror here is drawn up well..., but I think people who have tracked across America's roads more than I have would like it more. If you're looking for an airplane book this is a safe bet for 8 hours, I don't mean this insultingly or like super pretentiously, but my mind was not blown, it was entertaining though.

In The Dream House- This is the only Carmen Maria Machado I've read. This is a memoir about an abusive relationship she was in during graduate school. She goes into the ways abuse is built into everyday myths we carry with us about relationships, i.e, how abuse is naturalized and enabled. She points out that most of the things the woman who abused her did were actually legal. Looks at elements of abusive relationships present in folktales and well known plays and pop songs. Finally, she looks at the legal history of the first American court room treatments of abuse in lesbian relationships. The author plays a bit with genre to really paint an immersive picture of what abuse can look like. I also really enjoyed her talking about all the places in the PNW she visited while writing the book, which she mentions. Highly recommend for a creative non-fiction piece.

The Price of Salt- aka Carol- This novel was mentioned in In the Dream House, which is how I came to read it. It is a 1950s story of a lesbian romance that actually has a non-tragic ending. It got made into a Cate Blanchett Rooney Mara film called 'Carol' which pretty much 100% recreates the main storyline and dialogue of the novel with no important deviations, highly recommend the movie. In the book, Therese's longing for Carol is even more palpable and the eventual reciprocation is even more satisfying. This to me is really a familiar and common story about two woman who fall in love but must overcome the forces of a marriage and the judgement and persecution of society in order to finally be together. Patricia Highsmith writes Therese and Carol falling in love so beautifully, I really enjoyed. There is an interesting undercurrent in the novel where 'controlling' behavior (what a partner drinks, eats, wears, using financial imbalances, etc) is sort of taken as natural in both straight and gay relationships, as if to underline that there is no special escape from power dynamics even in queer relationships.
 
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Recently finished 12 rules for life by Dr Jordan Peterson. 'Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today' was the fourth rule and it 100% resonates and probably the one I'd be working on before anything else.
 
Best books I've read recently:
  • Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin, a novel about the rise of prominence of 2 indie game developers in the middle 80s who used to be childhood friends. It explores love, grief, and how art interacts with the real world by offering an alternative to it, while using the infant game industry as frame.
  • The lost weekend by Charles Jackson, a novel centered around Don Birnam's struggle with alcoholism. As someone who has had his share of alcohol-fueled issues I found it extremely relatable. The way the narrator shows how Don's brain operates exposes alcohol's hijacking of our neural processes perfectly. I read it right after I had decided to quit the substance, which is why I felt it was special.
  • Uprooted by Naomi Novik, an old-school fantasy novel about a young girl becoming a powerful wizard's apprentice. Shadows saunter around the cursed forest's edges and abduct people who then get trapped inside cursed trees that use the trapped people's life force to grow cursed fruits. The curse is expanding throughout the entire world while the nearby kingdoms are on the verge of war.
I'm currently reading Stendhal's The charterhouse of Parma and Mercadini's The woman who laughed at God.
 
Books I read this year (so far) & what I thought:
The Traitor Baru Cormorant - One of my favorite protagonists bc she is written like she's a villain. I loved the book's commitment to the bit.

Project Hail Mary - A really technical Sci-Fi survival story. There is always something going wrong so it creates a tight feedback loop and a lot of tension to watch him solve the problems. I loved it and it rekindled my passion for reading.

The Decagon House Murders - Mystery is extremely popular in Japan and this book is partly responsible. Had fun solving (unsuccessfully) with friends.

Nicholson: A Biography - For the first half of my life I knew this guy as "the guy in dril's avatar" so it was cool to see he was also an actor.

Bangkok Tattoo - The narrator is a Thai man who shits on white people. I liked the narrative voice.

The Power of Darkness - This book contains my favorite short story, about a virginia creeper (plant) that kills people. Strongly recommend this story, other stories are fine.

Prisoners of Geography - Geography for baby.

Ladyboys: The Secret World of Thailand's Third Gender - They fascinate me.

Hogfather - I never liked Terry Pratchett as a kid because I thought he wasn't serious. I like him now because I understand he's extremely serious.

Travels With Charley - I loved Winter of Our Discontent, and this book was a lot worse, but still decent.

Lolita - Unstoppable. Very painful to read. Nabokov shits on Doestoyevsky, saying that he's too enamored with psychological realism, but I found myself relating extremely strongly to Humbert, even though I'm NOT a pedophile. Strong recommend, if you can handle it.

House of Leaves - This book is "literary horror" and it's famous for that. It's also written like a maze, in that you have to follow footnotes recursively, hold pages upside down, and try to interpret a story that asks a lot of questions without returning a lot of answers. What I didn't expect is how effectively it satirizes academia. Strong recommend.
 
All the books in this post can fit somewhere under the heading of lgbtq ocean horror lit. It just happened that way, I don't plan it. Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield was released in America as I was getting around to long-time fixtures on my to read list Melissa Broder's The Pisces and Rivers Solomon's The Deep.


The Deep by Rivers Solomon-

The premise of The Deep is that pregnant slaves thrown overboard during the Transatlantic Slave Trade survived as mer-people and establish a civilization under the sea, called the Wajinru. Wajinru society has a The Giver-type political structure where one person is charged with remembering and containing the whole history of the Wajinru. This person, called the Historian, is the protagonist of the novel. This role comes with a cost, the Historian is isolated with the pain and literal weight of the memories of every single Wajinru both alive and from the past. This often makes her physically ill and renders her weak, as the mind is a powerful organ and exerts profound somatic effects on our physiology.

Every few decades, however, the Historian gathers all of the Wajinru and guides them through remembering their history, allowing themselves to temporarily (a few days maybe) let go of the memories and remind the rest of the Wajinru of their histories and identities, after which they will forget again and the memories are returned to their vessel, the Historian.

It all becomes too much for the Historian, and at the outset of the novel she is sure that the process of guiding the Wajinru through the memories, letting them go, and then taking the memories back will kill her. And so she flees. And that's the set-up, which I found to be quite captivating, it really motivated me to read the novel.

Perhaps some readers w a mainstream politics (this book is published by NPR lol btw) will just blast through this book and pat themselves on the back or w.e, but I have to say the strong exposition lead to a somewhat muddled message and plot arc:

First, a big part of the novel involves the Historian healing and regaining her strength while living as a captive...which is a bit dissonant with the claim this novel makes to be able to speak about or make comments on the experiences of the ancestors of slaves. IMO.

Second, the Historian has a human love interest who turns out to be the last descendent of the society from which the very first pregnant slave to birth Wajinru was from. The revelation of the historical connection is written as cathartic or as being somehow transformative, but I see sort of narrative as somewhat in need of interrogation. To me, an anti-Zionist Jew, this idea that you belong somewhere or with someone because of something that happened 100s of years ago appears slightly too similar to a Zionist saying I should live in Israel or feel some connection and/or entitlement to it because some Jewish people lived there 2000 yrs ago. Now, this book is of course a different context, and it is an interesting question drawn out by the novel, but it for me it comes w some alarm bells. And when I discussed this w a Palestinian friend of mine they also pointed this out, so I don't think this is just me being overly harsh.

The Pisces by Melissa Broder- I love Melissa Broder so much, I just have to say.
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The Pisces tells the story of an aspiring literature grad student who just can't fill the void inside her. At the outset, her academic career is falling apart as is her romantic relationship w another academic. She flees from Arizona to Venice Beach (Barbie movie enjoyers, that Venice Beach) to dog sit for her sister. While living in Venice, she meets and falls in love w a merman who swims near the shore at night.

The novel explores the seemingly insatiable craving some of us experience to be loved and the desperate things such people do to find it. The story is told w Broder's typical incredible sense of humor and trademark Melville-ian descriptions of moods/affects. I also LOVED that one of the main devices is a therapeutic processing group for women that the protagonist attends, it really worked for me, made me relate to the main character, and also was just so hilarious in a super realistic way. If you have some reservations about finding love, connection, and meaning in contemporary life, I think The Pisces will be a really fun read for you.

Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield- This novel relates a story about a woman who's wife goes on an expedition to the bottom of the sea. Something goes wrong and the expedition returns much later than expected, and Leah, the protagonist's wife, returns changed and 'wrong'. Interestingly, it came out in America right as that billionaire's submarine implosion was in the news cycle. The novel mainly focuses on the love and loss experienced by the protagonist as she finds she cannot relate to her changed wife. Many passages invoke her memories of courtship and the time before she returned from the bottom of the sea. Fundamentally, this novel is not a story about overcoming something, so much as it is about letting go of something. As one review I read points out, a central question of the novel is what happens when one person in a relationship is fundamentally a different person now than the one they were when the 2 fell in love: the Ship of Theseus of romantic attachment...

Armfield's writing captures the pain and sense of foreboding Leah's wife experiences and successfully evokes feelings of unease, suspense, body horror, anxiety, all that fun horror genre stuff. It's really quite masterfully plodded considering there is almost no actual 'events' in the novel. Very little really happens or gets explained, and not to spoil it, but there is no closure in the ending either. Nonetheless, I was pretty enthralled the whole time, the mystery really build and builds drawing you into it, but then leaves the reader to sit with the protagonist's feelings rather than tie everything off neatly. I will definitely re-read or return at some point, but I wouldn't recommend it if you're not a fan of ambiguous endings.


I will be back soon w at least book one of NK Jemisin's The Fifth Season trilogy, and possibly all of it. I am hoping to finish book one within the next day and I will probably complete the trilogy before moving down on my list.
 
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Wings of Fire The Flames of Hope
All right so I've had somewhat of a pleasant history with the Wings of Fire series.
Whilst I had initially spotted the books in my library, it took my sister to borrow the first Wings of Fire book because I had come off on the assumption it was not suited for me (I was horribly, horribly wrong).
So I stole the book off my sister (like all good big brothers do), and read it.
Let's just say I was hooked.
Wings of Fire as a whole is interesting because I have zero clue who the target audience is. The books are fairly tame in nature, but the extent of violence is certainly not something younger kids would be reading, the first book alone takes about 7 pages in the freaking prologue to not only stab someone through their skull, but also dragon murder about 8 seconds later.
My honest opinion is that it's written for somewhere like the Percy Jackson age demographic, old enough to understand the violence and feel somewhat scared of it, but not too old to be swinging into something like
uh
God of War (yes I did use a video game as an example I'm sorry).
Anyways, the books were extremely cool. Arc 1 defied the "prophecy" trope by establishing that the prophecy was a lie...
until in the last book they make it REAL.
Arc 2 introduced characters that are stupidly loveable, like c'mon Moonwatcher gang rise up
and Arc 3 threw at us a NEW continent with different dragons and an entirely different society to Pyrrhia's social system
So what do I have to say about Flames of Hope?
Disappointment.
Luna was the protagonist, and she was
interesting.
Problem is Luna seemed somewhat rooted in the "This is fine" mindset, which she was stated to have the opposite
Ok so what? A character doesn't think they "should", but NaRrAtIvE dIsOnEnCe (plus Tui would basically be writing from a Sundew-like personality, which she already did)
But by the midway point in the book Luna seems to drop this
eh it's fine
But the main criticism I have with the book is that the MAIN CHARACTER OF THE BOOK STAYS IN THE SAME PLACE FOR a good 30% of it.
See, Luna is captured by the main villain, the Breath of Evil.
The Breath of Evil is actually 3 villains in one.
The first is a plant that's a weed that grows super fast and takes over all animals BAR Dragons.
The second is an evil asshole human (Cottonmouth), who is mad at Dragons for the plant's near eradication and is eerily set on making everything his.
The third is the tiny little dragon who has pretty strong Leafspeak, and is tragically killed in the weirdest murder suicide I've seen since...
since never actually, that's peak.
Blah blah evil asshole human uses the plant to enter their dead bodies so that it becomes supercharged, evil asshole human has full control, tiny leafspeak dragon lets the plant be supercharged, and the plant spreads faster then Grass exposed to water
Ok wow that's cool
TOO BAD that the main character is essentially forced into being in their domain for an extended period of time
It would have been ok if Luna did more
but it sorta leads up to this and while it had a different sort of tension to Arcs 1 and 2
I felt it made for a lackluster ending
Still, for what it's worth, this book is an okay read
Wasn't like I had to force myself to read it again, but I just found it annoying that most of the conflict felt a little too behind the scenes and not enough from Lunas perspective.
Still a better love story then Twilight though.
 
Best books I've read since my last post:
  • Light from uncommon stars by Rika Aoki, a novel about a transgender violinist recruited by an half-demon to fulfill said demon's Faustian bargain. It explores themes of self-acceptance, love, and going beyond surface appearance.
  • Last words from Montmartre by Qiu Miaojin, an epistolary novel that explores the tension between love, its end, and the subsequent paint.
  • The curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold, a fantasy novel set about how the protagonist ends up saving the reign of Chalion on the brink of destruction caused by a corrupting curse thanks to intercession from the Gods. It's a novel that explores keeping secrets for other people's good, theology, faith, and corruption.
  • History of a pleasure seeker by Richard Mason, a novel about lust and ways to exploit it to get what you want. It also features a strong contrast between platonic love and desire.
 
I often found it hard to want to devote my time to reading when I'm still in college and, in theory, the last thing I wanted to reward myself with for doing my reading was... well, more reading. Not sure if any other people in school right now can relate to this, but what it does mean either way is that I really haven't read anything for fun in quite some time. This isn't to say I didn't enjoy reading various books while I'm here, of course. Sometimes what's happened is that we'll read something in class, and I'll enjoy it enough to where I want to read the rest of the series it's a part of or consider looking more into those specific authors. I'm both ashamed and excited to admit this, but it only took me until the 2022-23 school year (you know, just the first 20 years of my life, no big deal) to finally pick up interest in The Lord of The Rings on account of the famous series being featured in a selected topics in literature course I was in... spring semester, I think?

I'll probably go back to reading those within the coming months if I can, like, actually remember to get off my lazy butt and read, but aside from taking longer on The Fellowship of The Ring than I had intended (the initial plan was to read this in the spring and The Two Towers over the summer, but safe to say I completely forgot about this plan for a while), the only other books I've read in my free time were this oddly specific manga-inspired novel series about a group of Christian high schoolers, of all things. I'm not going to recommend this here since this doesn't seem like the kind of thing most of you would be interested in (I'd like to avoid forcing my Christian beliefs onto other people if possible), but in the off chance you know the series I'm talking about, I felt naturally drawn to check these out since... well, just look at it. It's a series with cool manga-esque artwork about high schoolers building a time machine. Feels like something I could have written myself, and for a specific target audience I think this is an underrated gem to look into.
 
Some of the better books I've read this year:
Times Square Red, Times Square Blue by Delaney. Half memoir/half essay about the seedier parts of times square in the 60s-70s, I found it pretty interesting. Worth reading if you liked the Midnight Cowboy movie.

Journey to the End of the Night by Celine. A good book to read if you are feeling down imo, idk the best way to describe it but it is very well written and engaging so would recommend giving it a try. It follows around a unsuccessful medical student (later doctor) as he goes from place to place after WWI. Not as depressing as people say, definitely funny at some parts - a bit like Catch-22.

Ocean Sea by Baricco - idk where I got this recommended from but well written book about the people who are staying at a remote italian hotel and how they reconcile with who they were before. Emotional without being over the top.

The Rings of Saturn by Sebald - a book that explores themes of decay through a walk around england - has some interesting asides.

The Leopard - di Lampedusa - decay and decline of a Sicilian noble - good read.

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead - Tokarczuk - A series of Murders take place in a remote polish village that seem to be result of nature taking revenge (in the eyes of the astrology obsessed main character). Didn't like the ending. I realize it sounds like the James Patterson novel but it reads differently - much more mystical.

The Memory Police - Ogawa - what it sounds like, the "memory police" have the power to make the citizens forget things like snow, birds, etc. Follows a writer as things increasingly disappear from her life.

The English Patient - Ondaatje - good, deals with memory and regret as a canadian nurse stays at an abandoned hospital with a badly burned patient who can't remember anything after the second world war. Also in italy.

The Spy who Came in From the Cold - le Carre - Classic spy novel about a washed-up spy Leamas. A more true to life portrayal of british spies during the cold war - le Carre worked for british intelligence at the time of the novel. The plot can be hard to follow the first time so take it slow and don't be afraid to go back.

The Magic Mountain - Mann - follows Hans Castorp as he visits his cousin in a TB sanatorium, and as he gets trapped there. A lot of good characters and interesting writing on the nature of sickness, life, politics, time etc. in the eve of WWI. Definately a slow book (i prob read 3-4 shorter books between starting and finishing the novel). If either hans or settembrini bother you - don't bother they are present a lot.

A Country Doctor's Notebook - Bulgakov - collection of short stories in the life of country doctor in Russia. Interesting if you like the topic.

A Wild Sheep Chase - Murakami - either you love or hate murakami, good place to start reading him imo if you haven't (the other would probably be Kafka on the Shore). About an translator/advertiser who is contacted by a secret society after making an ad with the picture of certain sheep.

I'm pretty bad at writing about books so if any of these sound remotely interesting would recommend looking into them - they are all worth reading and are better than my description.
 
Best books I've read this year:

-Persuasion by Jane Austen: I also read Pride and Prejudice this year, but I think I prefer this one.

-Mary Poppins by P.L. Travers: Very cute and cozy book. It's very episodic which I particularly like.

-Brave New World by Aldous Huxley: Incredible book.

-The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill: Cute, cozy, whimsical.

-When Marnie Was There by Joan G. Robinson: This one was a reread. When I read it in 2021 it became my favorite book and now it still is. It's about a girl called Anna that was quite depressed living with her foster parents so she goes to Norfolk, where she finds a house across the marsh and later a mysterious girl called Marnie. It's a very cute story and I love the way the author describes the beach, the plants, the birds and everything. Studio Ghibli also made a movie with the same name and it's pretty great.

-Caminhos Cruzados (Crossed Paths) by Erico Verissimo: It's a brazilian novel, it depicts a bunch of characters in a span of 5 days. There isn't an ongoing story but it shows the life and struggles of brazilian people in a really nice and real way.

-Livro de Mágoas (This Sorrow That Lifts Me Up) by Florbela Espanca: It's a poem book with 33 poems in which the main themes are sorrow and loneliness. The best book, that wasn't a reread, that I read this year.

It's also my first time posting here :)
 
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