Books of 2024

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. This is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett: for some reason it was a bit of a drag getting into the earlier stories of this collection of essays, the ones about writing were a bit of a bore/struggle. later on it became more interesting. it is not one of my favourites of hers. 

 

16. 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. 

 

17. 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. 

 

18. Too Much Happiness by Alice Munro: i'd been meaning to get into her books - then she died. when i checked my newest library (for i have signed onto several), there this was. from the first story what a killer. she writes dramatic devastation. 

 

19. The Bee Sting by Paul Murray: reminiscent of franzen, a story told by 4 members of a nuclear family, based in ireland, all with their own little harrowing stories to tell. (why am i saying 'harrowing' about every book this year?) it was another massive 950+ page book and i was just hurrying to finish (library due date fast approaching) towards the end, to its inevitable conclusion. 

 

20. Stay True by Hua Hsu: when this book came out and was hailed last year i wondered - the premise of the book seemed so small, so insubstantial, wow it must be written really well? and indeed it was. it made you feel what he felt, i felt intensely nostalgic for my own university days, the intensity of our friendships and shared memories, long lost relationships. 

 

21. I Have Some Questions For You by Rebecca Makkai: been meaning to read this for some time, finally found a physical copy of the book at a library!!! it was good to read a physical book for a change, to see pages turn in real time, seeing my progress. good read. keeps you hooked in. 

 

22. The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout: strout train continues - i'm almost there, almost near completion. this was also quite enjoyable - again there are plenty negative emotions and people hating each other and themselves but somehow it is bearable even those conflicts and resentments. towards the end, i did not want it to end.

 

23. An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro: this was a familiar tone - he writes these characters who are stuffy w a pretentious sense of humility at the beginning, only to slowly reveal their truly grandiose self regard and actually how misguided they were in retrospect. these stuff japanese or english characters, in this book, his first novel and remains of the day. i only have two more of his novels to read to complete the ishiguro set!

 

24. Butter by Asako Yuzuki: well this was a fascinating read, very captivating hooking you in from the get go. probably one of the better japanese books i've read, that's not so lightly written. all the descriptions of food - butter especially - got me hungering for them even mentaiko pasta - and the gender politics she delves into well that was also fascinating. how women treat men, how men treat women, the caring provided, all that and more... it was a tad long, the end felt dragged a little, but all in all a fun read.

 

25. Long Island by Colm Tóibín: sequel to brooklyn, this book took me right back there, relatively still vivid in my memory - was it because the film i remember the book so well? it was another readable lovely book. 

 

26. Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel: it came recommended by many, was blessedly short, and was actually quite a good engaging read, visceral description of a small tournament of young female boxers that let you in their minds and lives, albeit for a short while. it made me yearn to box. 

 

27. The God of the Woods by Liz Moore: this also came highly recommended by many critics and readers on pods, and i found it a deeply engrossing and propulsive read, lots of little red herrings to the central mystery, and i kept getting worried/annoyed that the poor and powerless will be framed and blamed, but thankfully the ending was not so bleak. enjoyed it a lot. 

 

28. Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout: i love strout! can we be friends? this was like the strout-universe reunion with all the characters from all her previous books making an appearance some more significantly than others. pain, love, in small and big ways. i love her wee cozy writing, subject is never twee even if how she writes them might be. 

 

29. The Fraud by Zadie Smith: i struggled with this mightily! especially the first half about the widow and her silly novelist cousin, it was like pulling teeth, the latter section with bogle was just slightly more interesting, but i just did not get it. this did not inspire me to read more zadie smith i can tell you that much. 

 

30. Intermezzo by Sally Rooney: my only second rooney, after quite loving 'normal people'. it was pretty good, a little repetitive in the beginning and middle dragging but a satisfying end.