Recent searches
Search options
I should start by talking about the kinds of #books I enjoy #Reading !
Usually, I swing between fantasy/science fiction, literary fiction, and non-fiction/essays. As you can imagine, there's a special place in my heart for literary SFF.
Prose is really important to me; beautifully written prose will draw me into a book like nothing else. Next comes good characterization - I want to care about the characters! Plot keeps me reading and I love strong themes as well.
About the only thing I'm not too fussed about is world-building, oddly enough for an SFF reader. I appreciate good world-building, but it's not strictly necessary for me to enjoy a book. I also don't really need a hard magic system or for a book to move at breakneck pace.
In no particular order, here are some standout #books for me from the past few years.
The Lions of Al-Rassan is the book that won me over for author Guy Gavriel Kay. The characters are memorable and likable, and as they slowly get to know each other and form tentative bonds, Kay then asks the question - can these new relationships survive the flames of war and of religious bigotry?
It's a bittersweet, melancholy work, set in an alternate Moorish Spain and tied together by Kay's superb prose.
After reading this book, I ended up seeking out most of Kay's other books and reading them all.
I also loved Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki.
A trans girl runs away (CW abuse, sex work, transphobia) to L.A. and finds refuge in a found family and her violin skills. Also there are aliens and demons. As you do.
What strikes me is the passion that Aoki poured into it, both in depicting life as a trans woman (Aoki is trans), and the fabric of Asian American and Latinx life in San Gabriel Valley.
When she describes the donut shop, the boba cafe, the streets and malls, the FOOD - I'm instantly transported. As an Asian American in CA, so much of this is achingly familiar.
But importantly, the heart of the book is the trans experience, having to map out the safe spaces, to avoid abuse, and to find the places where you truly belong.
If you need books to be neatly paced or to fit within neat genre lines, this is not for you. Some have complained about its whiplash between darkness and cheeriness. But if you can look past those, this book is highly recommended. #books
On the classic literary fiction side, 100 Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez) was a book that I meant to read for about twenty years, and when I finally got to it, I spend about half of it pretty engaged but also little bemused, and then subsequently, the other half of it in in awe.
This book is frequently cited as a pillar of both magical realism and 20th century Latin American literature, and it more than earns its reputation for those.
But what stuck with me most even now, months after I read it, was how vividly Garcia Marquez depicted solitude - the ways that people seek solitude, and just as importantly, the ways in which people inflict solitude on others, deliberately or accidentally. Because of this, I sincerely believe that anyone who reads this book and truly seeks to understand it will become a better person.