I try to do a lot of reading, and basically, since 2019 I have been doing a fastidious job of keeping track of all the books I read on an Excel sheet. From 2019 to 2023 I have read 227 - this includes audiobooks, I generally do half and half. I write little reviews and give scores just to keep track (my virgo-]ness manifests the most concretely in this regard). I decided to review my reviews and decided the best thing to do would be to write a little post discussing my favorite books of the past 5 years, as well as the works.
Fiction
Nothing beats a good story, and the types of stories that I liked are semi-complex with lots of different narrators and themes. And if there is some type of non-traditional storytelling medium then that makes things only. However, there are some books on this list where realism is what I love the most. Additionally, I love it when a book exposes me to a new theory or concept, and then expands on that idea through fiction (for example Jurassic Park is a super entertaining novel that is focused around the concept of Chaos Theory). Anyway - here is my list:
A Visit From the Goon Squad - Jennifer Egan, 2011: A novel that centers around music. This book reads like an album, and I believe it is designed like one as well with the A-side and B-side structure, chapters that are akin to song titles, interweaving ideas, and musical notions. This book follows various characters ostensibly set in NYC, through the lens of time - lost time, nostalgia, the past, the future, etc. Basically, this is my type of book to a tee: variation of narrators and narration styles, themes of connectedness and nostalgia, and an overall “punk” ethos. I have a lot to say about this book, but it’s truly so good. Each chapter is told in its unique way - one where the narration is in the 2nd person, one that is a DFW parody, and the penultimate chapter is told in a very special way which I will not spoil here. I loved the characters and I loved the humor and the insights. It’s digestible and profound, and Egan lulls you into the same trap as some of the characters by the end - how do we recapture something that has already past? Top tier read.
House of Leaves - Mark Z. Danielewski 2000: I feel like this one is such a cliché pick but I genuinely think it’s a worldview-shifting reading experience. It goes through various layers of storytelling (the central plot is the description of a documentary that was found by this drug addict who then compiles the document) but the central story is that of a family who moves into a house where the measurements are bigger on the inside than on the outside - and from that moment it just gets spookier and spookier. I am fascinated by SPACE, and the book is an analysis of the horror of space, even using standard page layout as a means to convey the horror of space is so interesting. If you haven’t read this go to a book store and flip through the pages, you will be shocked. It’s a legitimately harrowing book, a proper labyrinth of a read, and something that changed how I view horror. There are definitely a lot of obstacles to get through when reading this book, for example, some “academic” sections and the truly self-indulgent footnotes - but the creativity of the story, storytelling, and physicality of the novel make it a dynamic read.
Jonathan Franzen - I read a lot of Johnathan Franzen in these 5 years. I read the Corrections, Freedom, and Crossroads, as well as his essay collection How to Be Alone and Farther Away. Thereby I can’t select a single book. But I think that all his books have central themes that are fully relatable: Family dysfunction, how one goes about living a good life, and what is the nature of freedom when we are constantly bound to others. Truly “Great American Novel” vibes. He documents his characters and their psychology with such realism you understand the decisions and non-decisions so well during their most crucial moments. The Corrections was the first Franzen novel I read and I laughed so much whilst reading, and it hit home at certain points but I think the whole Franzen catalog works well as a cohesive whole. The long novels give you keen insight into character psychology, and consequently, one’s inner workings.
Int. Chinatown – Charles Yu, 2020: This could be recency bias because I just read this in 2023, but this book was a full game-changer. It was the perfect storm of things I like: I love when a writer does something gimmicky with their novel and Erving Goffman’s Dramaturgy (the central theory behind this novel) is one of my favorite social theories. This book is this weird mixture of reality and not reality, talking about an Asian American man trying to find his way in US society while constantly being stereotyped - this experience is all conveyed metaphorically through the lens of him being an actor trying to get a role on a TV show, and the book itself is written as a TV show script. And it’s just wild. Yu traces the asian american experience from such a particular lens and was equally funny as it was heartfelt and sentimental. Captivating book.
Ghostwritten - David Mitchell, 1999: I am a David Mitchell completionist, and like Franzen, I read a lot of his books in this 5-year time frame (Ghost Written, Black Swan Green, 1000 Summers of Jacob De Zoet, Number 9 Dream, Utopia Avenue - Bone Clocks, Slade House, and Cloud Atlas were read pre-2018), but I think Ghost Written is my favorite of all these. Ghostwritten, like most David Mitchell books, links different characters across space and time through small and trivial connections - each action and brief encounter snowballing into world-changing events. Connectedness, variety in narration style, and humor make this book a very enjoyable read.
The Mezzanine - Nicholson Baker, 1988: One of the most unhinged and strange reading experiences of the past 5 years, and in a good way. Mezzanine such a short book (barely 100 pages) but so dense and weird. The whole book takes place during this guy's lunch break and details his inner thoughts regarding the most trivial processes such as straws, escalators, and hand-drying machines, in an excruciatingly detailed fashion. It feels almost like a wholesome American Psycho. But then at the end it has this almost “sweet” (bitter-disturbing-sweet maybe?) message where he makes a list of all the things he hopes he thinks about the most, and at the top of the list it’s the person he is in a relationship with - despite the reader being privy to the fact his thoughts are about the most banal day to day activities. I really liked this strange book.
Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino, 1972: This book will forever be my “I have Covid and have to self-isolate book”. This book is a fictionalized Marco Polo recounting all the cities he’s visited in his travel - but these cities are all surreal and magical in idiosyncratic ways. I read this book quickly in my self-isolation and loved the esoteric nature of the book, the fractal imagery of cities being diverse and varied all at once. I liked the structure a lot as well and the strange imagery took me to mystical places during my isolation. Will be a book that I reread.
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men - David Foster Wallace, 1999: DFW is similar to Franzen in that I have read a lot of his content during this period. He has the highest of highs but also the mid-est of middles. I found the Interviews here so fascinating/horrifying and they were genuinely the best “dialogue” I have encountered. It heavily inspired some of my creative writing during this period. The basic premise of these stories are one-sided interviews with horrible men (as the title alludes) - and this ranges from comedic awkward moments to some ghastly evil inner machinations of disturbed minds. I think his writing was so fascinating because he was exploring these dark masculine thought systems while also putting on a mask, as the author, and I think he reaches some pretty profound depths here, despite how disturbing a lot of it is. I think DFW does a lot of great things, but also tries out stuff that doesn’t necessarily pan out, which is the case with some of the other short stories here in this collection; the Interviews themselves are something that I think were exceptional. Although I generally don’t recommend this book unless you are already into DFW.
Her Body and Other Parties – Carmen Maria Marchado, 2017: This is the most recent book that I read on this list and I loved the Fever Dream short story collection. From playing on classic mythologies and stories to creating some proper ghouls, to creative storytelling styles, there is just a lot of stuff here that works for me. Especially Heinous, a fictionalized summary of every episode of Law and Order SVU, is something that at first confounded me but then drew me in as something incredible and fascinating. Definitely read this if you are into spooky short stories.
Of Kids and Parents - Emil Haki, 2002: this short little book is just a found drama of a father and son bar hopping in Prague talking about life, their relationship, and Czech history. It is simply a slice of these characters’ relationships and stories but it’s delivered in such an intimate way. This realist novel makes one think about familial relationships, cities, personal narratives linked with greater histories, and the will to change.
White Teeth - Zadie Smith, 2000: I feel like I fell out of favor with this thematically dense book over the years but it’s still solid with really fascinating themes of globalization, science, religion, love, relationships, and the nature vs. nurture duality. This book follows the interlocking lives of three families in turn of the century multicultural London and how the effects of colonialism and intergenerational trauma affect the youngest generation’s search for identity. Loved the whole “time is a circle and history repeats” theme behind the book, and there are moments I found hilarious. This is one of those books I wish I had read for a class and had to write an essay on it because I think the themes would be well explored in an academic setting.
The Hate U Give - Angie Thomas, 2017: This book was simply so good. The story follows a girl’s life after her friend is killed by a cop. I feel like YA never ranks too high for me, but this was excellent and an extremely relevant story. I felt intimately connected to the characters because they felt real and not cliches or overwritten - I thought the plot was powerful and thought-provoking, especially for a YA novel. Overall I was engaged throughout this whole story.
Honorable Mentions:
Lanark - it was the perfect book while living in Glasgow and it was weird in a quality way, but there was a lot to fault about it
Persepolis - a beautiful story, but just not putting it on the list because of the Graphic novel element,
Labyrinths - confounding and beautiful short stories with such idiosyncratic themes
Handmaid’s Tale - The best dystopian novel out there imo.
Non-Fiction -
I love reading something that changes how I view the world and society as a whole. Thereby the books that I read tend to follow the same things that I like in fiction - connectedness, complex histories, and deep social insight. I am fascinated by sociology, so books that tend to lean this way are the books that I fully invest in. So here are my fave Non-fiction books:
The New Jim Crow – Michelle Alexander, 2010: I don't know how I went through an undergrad sociology degree without reading this book and I only properly read it in 2020, but it really is that book that lives up to the full hype. It systemically unpacks the racial systems in the US, linking them to a cause-and-effect cycle of the prison industrial complex, and describes in detail how institutions have been used to oppress black folk since reconstruction. Every section of this book makes one realize how fucked up everything is; which ought to be the goal of any great sociological text. Truly a book everyone should read (in fact I think I am going to re-read this one)
For Space – Doreen Massey, 2005: In 2022 I had my first taste of human geographies through a course at The University of Glasgow and it changed the whole way that I think about the social world, literally adding a third dimension, space, to my thoughts about everything. I was applying the spacial to everything I knew. I compared reading this book to realizing something new about my sexuality; it was such a new paradigm of thought. New terms such as space/time, spatial negotiations, multiplicities of space, and history being bound by space/time infiltrated my mind. And the way Doreen was able to put so much of her personality into an academic text was profound. At one point she made me cry when using the new spacial terms and describing returning to her hometown. Genuinely a world-view changing book.
Man’s Search For Meaning – Viktor Frankle, 1959: This book was a powerful two-part book, the first was Frankle’s description of his time spent in a Nazi concentration camp. The second half was his analysis of his experience through the psychiatric lens of logotherapy. So very heavy. Lots of existential insights and the book itself is the truest example of how one can overcome horrible experiences. This book explored the core question of how can one find meaning in life when horrible things are happening. Essential as both an account of the horrors of the holocaust and for understanding human psychology.
Thinking in Systems – Donella Meadows, 2008: A good book is something that changes the way you think about things, and thinking in systems genuinely gives instructions for how one should think primarily systemically. This book uses the same logic for the biological entities, social systems, and natural processes - one needs to learn how everything is linked and part of a greater whole, resulting in feedback loops and self-affirming beliefs. And I found this invigorating. I enjoyed this one and it has heavily affected my thought patterns.
Sex at Dawn - Christopher Ryan, 2010: I’m a huge fan of these macrohistory type of books and I found this one so fascinating as it tried to explain the sociological/anthropological explanation for human sexuality as experienced by distant ancestors and then recontextualized that in why current social systems or sexually repressive. If you liked books like Sapiens then I would definitely recommend it. There are a lot of fascinating terms and ideas introduced in this book and it goes to show that the way our social systems are shaped today are not necessarily in accordance with the way we evolved and how our minds and bodies work. Again, a good book, especially one with a central theory like this, changes how one views the world and one’s place in it.
Race and Reunion - David Blight, 2001: This was a historical account of the civil war and the reconstruction period viewed through the racial lens (and considering the core issue of slavery, the main lens of the Civil War). Basically, anyone who doesn’t understand critical race theory should read this, because it details point by point how race was constructed and utilized by institutions of power during the reconstruction period of US history. There is a straight line from the topics in this book to The New Jim Crow. And this is an era of history that is systemically ignored and erased, making this a very very important book for understanding the current socio-historical context we live in in the US.
Nomadland - Jessica Bruder, 2017: When reading this book I thought: If I were ever to teach a sociology class I would use this book to explain all the core sociological ideas. This book took the structuralist approach to this group of nomadic people and discussed the exploitation of labor, what defines a sub-culture, social shifts, etc. The stories are told through a journalistic approach and they are personal and tragic. But underlying all this there is a lot of hope and beauty. Way better than the movie, mind you.
Pleasure Activism - adrienne maree brown, 2019: Again, a book with a lot of great soul-shifting concepts. The core idea of this book is that pleasure is something that should be valued and fought for, as pleasure is the most basic human right and what makes life worth living. It also discussed the concept of radical honesty, which is something that I try to use in my day-to-day practice. The format of this piece was brilliant as well - a collection of essays, interviews, academic papers, short stories, and poems, all centered around the core human experience of pleasure.
When They Call You A Terrorist - Patrisse Khan-Cullors and Asha Bandele 2018: This is the autobiography of one of the women who developed the black lives matter hashtag and I feel like it’s a must-read (maybe moreso than some of the other books in this section). A great story, movement, and message - and I think this really gives an explicitly personal narrative to this story of resistance and protest, and why it is necessary.
Coyote America - Dan Flores, 2017: While I’m a sucker for macro-histories, mirco-histories sometimes hit the hardest. This was a book all about the coyote and the role the coyote has played in American history; from being a trickster god to being perceived as a pest - ultimately this is the story of one species’s resiliency and beauty in the face of brutal odds and adversity. Completely changed the way I looked at this animal and it is wild how these animals have been systematically hunted during the past century. Flores suggested the animal should be the national animal, and after reading this I agreed.
Blitzed - Norman Ohler, 2016: This book was one of the wildest histories I’ve read, and it was a duality of horror and comedy. This book discussed systemic drug usage during the nazi regime and followed two thematic arcs - the first being how all of the Nazi military was effectively addicted to crystal meth (dubbed Pervatin) and how that contributed to their fighting prowess during the war and the second being Hitler’s addiction to various substances through near-daily injections and how that affected his health and mental condition. This book truly deteriorates and it shows how things such as drugs can play a whole hidden history behind the scenes.
Shout Outs: A Short History of Spaghetti with Tomato Sauce,
The Indian World of George Washington, I’m Glad my Mom Died, The Wretched of the Earth, Meet Me In The Bathroom
Worst Books
While I read a lot of great books in this five-year time, I also read a lot of bad books. The books in this section aren’t just bad as in boring but bad because they were awful, weird, and had generally terrible messages. They were actively bad books, and the process of reading them could more accurately be described as hate reading
Every Man’s Battle - Stephen Arterburn and Fred Stoeker, 2009: One of my favorite “strange” genres is reading books aimed at Christian audiences regarding sex/sexuality. Some examples of books I’ve read in this subgenre are The Purity Code, The Great Sex Rescue, and Gay Girl Good God. I find them insightful for identifying the “logic” of intolerance (e.g.twisted logic) and a weird insight into a culture I am not a part of. While most of the books I read are very much not good, this one by far takes the cake into pure psychopathia. An absolutely atrocious book written by atrocious people, these writers could very well be some of the Hideous Men that David Foster Wallace writes about. It feels like I stumbled upon a psychopath’s notebook, it feels evil reading this honestly. The basic concept behind “Every Man’s Battle” is that the Man is the center of the battle for trying to maintain sexual purity, in a world that is overly saturated by sexual imagery. But it’s clearly written by someone that’s so fucked up by insidious and misogynist church teachings. There are hilarious moments such as him crashing his car because he was staring at a jogger, his absolute hatred of Forest Gump because of how overly sexual it is, and this bizarre comparison “would you let a swimsuit model sit on your coffee table for a month? If not then why would you let her sit there in magazine cover form”; but the hilarity fades with disgust when you realize that this is an influential book and it is the psychology of evangelical sexuality. Just incredibly backwards views on sexuality, gender, power, and faith. The views on women, such as suggesting that they do not gain pleasure from sex, just give an insight into this insidious worldview. Heinous heinous stuff.
The Last Battle - C.S. Lewis, 1956: I read all the Narnia books in 2019, and this one was fucking weird. This is the final Narnia book and depicts the end of Narnia. I guess it’s supposed to be an allegory for revelation, but Puzzle and Shift are such bizarre villains and none of the characters we have come to love are present until the bizarre ending. It’s not fun Narnia shenanigans, but really dark. Spoiler alert regarding the ending: everyone from the whole series returns to Narnia because they die in the real world, but then they all visit the “real Narnia” which is heaven, and Aslan the lion reveals himself canonically be Jesus. Susan also gets left out and does not get to return to Narnia because she is obsessed with “nylons and boys” is just mean, C.S.
S. - Doug Dorst and JJ Abrams, 2013: The basic concept behind this book is that JJ Abrahms heard of House of Leaves and wanted to write a cool book like that. This book is multilayered: there is the book of S. called “Ship of Thesus” which was written by the fictional V.M. Straka; but the actual story of S. is the dialogue between two characters writing notes to each other in the margins of the novel. So it’s a book within a book. The concept is cool. But execution is not. The relationship between the characters is so forced, no two people would actually communicate like this. And the basic premise is that there are secrets in this book and that there is all this academic backing and obsession, which is cool, but “Ship of Thesus” actually kind of sucks as a book and it makes the obsession make not a lot of sense. There are all these codes, and hidden meanings, and other nonsense surely strewn throughout the pages, however, the story seems shallow, and therefore the obsession to properly enjoy this book is likely unwarranted.
The Circle - David Eggers, 2013: Being played off as 1984+Google this book was just frustrating because the protagonist was unlikeable and kinda dumb? I guess that’s kinda the point though? This book follows a woman’s rise through a company/cult and shows how easily she can be tricked and how evil these types of corporations can be. It’s not subtle and the plot is not special. To be honest I don’t remember much of this besides the feeling of constant frustration regarding the main character. And it’s because of this I am upset by how popular this book is.
Invisible Monsters (1999) and Damned (2011) - Chuck Palanuk: Man, I really don’t like Chuck that much. I found both these books so awful, mean, and cynical, with the most annoying narrators. I feel like both books were trying to be edgy for edgy sake - I don’t know the themes in these books, what messages they are trying to convey besides “we live in a society”, and found them unfunny. and it makes me think Palanuk is overrated.
Something Wicked This Way Comes - Ray Bradbury, 1962: This is a classic that I thought I would love: a satanic haunted carnival? Yeah that’s so cool. But the book just had such boomer energy with overly imagined language (I swear every other sentence had a simile). And the characters were such blank slates, I feel like they could be anyone (which is maybe the point, putting yourself in their shoes?). It was just so cheesy.
Nothing But Blackened Teeth - Cassandra Khaw, 2021: This is a short horror book that was simply not good. The premise is that there are a bunch of rich 20-somethings in a haunted Japanese house, and they die via demons. But the horror is abstract, the characters are edgy for edgy sake, and none of it felt like it had any consequence. To me it felt like the characters from Velma, everyone was just so mean to each other for no reason - and because of that it was honestly nice when they died.
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow - Gabrielle Zevin, 2022: This is like the Circle in that I can’t believe it is as popular as it was. Once again another successful marketing campaign. This book was about the lives of two video game makers who were lifelong friends (and I feel like friends can be applied loosely here because it was quite a toxic relationship. I loved the first 150 pages of this book, but after that it dragggged. The characters were mostly unlikable, and the friendship was awful, which is problematic considering the supposed theme of the book is friendship. Zevin also tries to touch on various social justice issues such as disability, queerness, gun violence, abortion, and domestic abuse, but they all come out of nowhere and are so shallowly included that it is clearly lip service progressivness rather than a proper exploration of these issues. And besides the first two games, the video games that are created by these characters are so lame and boring sounding that it was fully inconceivable that anyone would play them, let alone garner the popularity that they do eventually achieve in this world.
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes - Susan Collins, 2020: This is the prequel to the Hunger Games series. And here’s the thing - I LOVED the first two parts of this book. I thought it was so cool how we were seeing the other side of the Hunger Games, the backstage if you will. I think having Snow only observe the Hunger Games and never giving Lucy Gray a POV was so smart. Snow’s “fighting to maintain a sense of privilege” was an interesting dynamic. I was fully on board and engaged. But the 3rd part was soooo dumb that it ruined the story. Going from the capital to District 12 was silly, the love triangle with Billy Tope was forced and contrived (especially because it was the climax of tension), and I hated how Lucy Grey didn’t have any PTSD from the games, the way she regarded it was like coming back from a semester abroad. I’ve never read a book that nosedived so quickly.
How Fascism Works - Jason Stanley, 2018: I’m very against fascism, point blank. And I think what made this book “sell” is that if you didn’t like this book then one would think the opposite. The fundamental issue is that this book doesn’t really say anything or make any insightful points besides “Trump bad”. It has a very narrow and limited take on Fasism it seems - only referencing a handful of historical fascists from European countries and only beginning in the 1940s. This gives the impression that Fascism can only take highly specific forms. The book isn’t critical or insightful really and doesn’t explain “how fascism works”, rather it’s labeling Trump stuff as Fascist without giving a larger historical context. It’s shallow and frustrating because it just feeds into the echo chamber without doing any critical work or self-reflection - it’s so clearly biased. I’m sure my politics are similar to this writer's, however, this book clearly is designed to make people who are “anti-trump” feel superior rather than create a sense of self-reflection or healing. And I think that’s problematic because it only confirms to liberal readers what they think and won’t ever convince conservative readers any differently. All in all, this book just feels like a cheap cash grab that shallowly feeds into a liberal echo chamber.
Candy Freak - Steve Almond, 2004: I wouldn’t say this book was bad per se, however, it was a wild ride. This book is non-fiction book about a guy who loves candy and wants to explore “Candy Makers” in the US, and sociologically, and journalistically it’s pretty interesting how the big corporate candy companies kind of out-competitioned local candy makers, exposing the industry a bit. A classic tale of capitalism. But the way it was written was truly unhinged. The language this guy used to describe his candy infatuation was obsessive and perverse. A lot of the jokes did not land. And he used a lot of strange wording (for example, calling his mom the “Mother Unit” throughout the book), making this an extremely delirious and sometimes uncomfortable read. And the guy’s last name almond made it too good to be true.
Anyway, that’s my list. If you feel like there’s anything you think I’d like please let me know!
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