s t r a w b e r r y f i e l d s

1. Anatomy of a Fall: that poor dog. Why is the dog such a good actor? i could empathise with the woman, who some might think as unlikable.

2. The Zone of Interest: in a word (or two), aurally oppressive. extremely long opening sequence of just oppressive sound/music, playing all throughout, again with few further interludes of just music/sound. it's certainly cinematic. well made. it makes you think, it is on your mind for days after.

1. Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan: another short basically a novella. Brief and affecting.

2. Roman Stories by Jhumpa Lahiri: a book of shorts, yet another jhumpa but a little different. this time, about a bunch of disparate characters in rome, including 'locals', refugees and other expats/immigrants, as opposed to all those bengali migrant stories. darker. not sure i enjoyed as much. i could feel a distance. 

3. Tom Lake by Ann Patchett: she is a writer of the coziest of cozy fiction. she makes me feel all the things, nostalgia, love, youth, every little thing. love. 

4. The Trees by Percival Everett: it was an interesting premise that kinda went... a bit kooky and fantastical at the end.

5. Naomi Osaka by Ben Rothenberg: i've been following ben on twitter and his pod for years and years, and it's good to read his book on an athlete i like. do i feel i know her now? much better? not really. but it did let me feel the emotions of it all again. he writes well.

6. The Last Devil to Die by Richard Osman: his works are fine, but like it's mainstream stuff innit? why are some ppl so gushy about them i will never know. 

7. The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels by Janice Hallett: i tore through this, absolutely tore through it within few days, despite its hefty 650ish pages. similar to daisy and the six, its format is not prose, but composed of 'transcripts' of interviews/convos, emails and chat logs, so made it a fast read, content was intriguing and compelling and full of mystery. i couldn't wait to get back to reading it, kept thinking about it. kept also thinking of main character as the woman who does Cunk for some reason. really enjoyed it, highly recomended. only heard it about thru the nytimes book review pod, and i'm glad i took their recommendation on board.

8. Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa: it's a sorta typical quiet japanese novel. nothing too deep, just quiet and pleasant.

9. The Searcher by Tana French: i enjoyed this. the mood and setting was built perfectly, you could feel the atmosphere exactly to each detail. 

10. Beloved by Toni Morrison: it was of course a harrowing read. morbid, harrowing, kept seeing lupita nyong'o as the main character. took a while to get through it because of the harrowing nature of it, despite the compelling writing.

11. Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop by Hwang Bo-Reum: i kept reading this as 현암동 then realised via googling that it was in fact 휴남동 and for an (obvious) reason that is an important factor! this stayed with me a lot. it is simple, easy, cozy writing and content, but the (again very overt, no allusions at all) theme is one i'm familiar with and feeling painfully in my bones in day to day life also - the wish to break from work, the wish to escape the grind, and live a more joyful, restful, less hectic and stressful life. it is something i could empathise with too much perhaps. the book will forever be linked to madi diaz, whose music i was just getting into as i was reading this book. it is no high brow literature but one that resonated with me a lot.

12. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid: i gotta stop reading bloody best sellers! writing is just so all exposition, i felt this i did this she felt this - like who can NOT write this? yes there is a vaguely intriguing plot but stress on the vague. i regretted starting and felt resentful for having to - or being pushed to complete it just to reach the end, though that became obvious enough 2/3 in perhaps -_- 

13. No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood: it started very odd, all internet meme speak, no real coherent plot or prose, haphazard cocooned world, just obliquely talking about what happens online, virality etc. i was like, is this what i get for denouncing low brow shitty fiction? i miss normal traditional prose! but the second half became more like it, and oddly moving in a way, when she switches to talking about her sister's baby with a severer genetic condition/essentially terminal one. 

14. The Leftovers by Tom Perrotta: i really enjoyed this. compelling, compulsive read, i couldn't wait to keep reading, every arc was interesting. 

15. American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld: ooh i enjoyed this too. how she writes so well, making juicy fiction out of real life! who knew mrs bush was/may have been so interesting! it was a pretty hefty size (900+ pages on my e-book app) but again i was compelled to keep reading and loved it. 

16. Wednesday's Child by Yiyun Li: a book of short stories, couple of which were familiar (i think i have heard them from the new yorker fiction podcast, where she read them). lot about death and grief, sometimes heavy but not despairing.