I read four books the first week of November to keep myself from checking my phone for election results. One of those books was Pachinko, and that book completely derailed the TBR I had set for the rest of 2020. Now I’m obsessed with reading historical fiction set in East Asian countries under Japanese occupation. Give me How We Disappeared by Jing-Jing Lee (set in Singapore), give me Green Island by Shawna Yang Ryan (set in Taiwan).
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
★★★★★ // Goodreads // Reading buddy: Cindy, Epsita
There could only be a few winners and a lot of losers. And yet we played on, because we had hope that we might be the lucky ones.
A multigenerational historical fiction about Koreans in Japan from the Japanese annexation of Korea in 1910 to WWII, the Korean War, and beyond.
If you want to understand han—that untranslatable feeling of hope and suffering that every Korean knows—read this book. It’s about history, nationhood, identity, discrimination, survival, family, home. It also has an element of drama that would appeal to mainstream audiences, but the book also has so much to offer artistically as a literary work and educationally as a historical work.
Recommended if you enjoy multigenerational historical fiction like Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi, but also just recommended to anyone and everyone. One of my all-time faves.
Bestiary by K-Ming Chang
★★★★ // Goodreads
My mother always says that the story you believe depends on the body you’re in. What you believe will depend on the color of your hair, your word for god, how many times you’ve been born, your zip code, whether you have health insurance, what your first language is, and how many snakes you have known personally.
Mother tells Daughter a story of a tiger spirit, and soon afterward, Daughter awakes with a tiger’s tail. Following three generations of Taiwanese American women who each embody a myth.
I’ll be honest, I didn’t know what was going on most of the time and probably would have benefited from reading this story as a collection of short stories (which is how the idea for this book started, fun fact) but I was so caught up in the visceral language. Chang went above personification. The book was alive.
Recommended if you enjoy magical realism and are looking for poetic or experimental writing about mythology, queerness, and generational trauma.
Two Trees Make a Forest by Jessica J Lee
★★★★ // Goodreads
I find in the cedar forest a place where the old trees can span all our stories, where three human generations seem small. The forest stands despite us.
After discovering a collection of letters by her late grandfather, Lee travels to Taiwan in search of her family’s past. A memoir combining nature writing, geography, politics, history, and family.
I never thought I’d be patient enough to read nature writing, geography, politics, or history, but this book took me back to my February in Taiwan and it was exactly what I needed, somehow being a mode of both escapism and connection.
I ~acquired~ the ebook, but I’d like to get myself a physical copy to flip through whenever I’m feeling homesick for Taiwan.
Goodbye, Again by Jonny Sun
★★★★ // Goodreads // (Gifted)
And so in an effort to gain any sort of lasting sense of self, I try now to keep as many incomplete things on my screen as I can so I can show myself: This Is Who I Am Right Now.
A mixed format memoir of reflections and illustrations on anxiety, loneliness, productivity, happiness, and houseplants.
Goodbye, Again is for anxiety what Reasons to Stay Alive by Matt Haig is for depression, at least for me. (And in terms of a mixed format, Goodbye, Again and Reasons to Stay Alive are very similar.) But while Reasons to Stay Alive goes to really dark places (I mean, depression is a dark thing), Goodbye, Again was somehow wholesome. I related to Sun’s musings about happiness as not some grand thing and about that unsettled sense of self. He also inspired me to give myself another chance to keep a houseplant alive.
Barely Functional Adult by Meichi Ng
★★★★ // Goodreads // (Gifted)
But maybe this sense of feeling lost is necessary. Maybe feeling lost is what pushes us to keep exploring—it’s the ethereal song that awakens our curiosities and drives us to follow cows, discover hidden coves, and find remnants of good in a world that so often feels too dark and broken.
What do you call a graphic novel that also has paragraphs of writing? This book is that haha. About the struggles of adulting that anyone in their 20s can relate to.
I especially related to the parts about making friends, making conversation, and imposter syndrome, but the comics also covered first loves, heartbreak, therapy, and more. It approaches some heavy topics with dark humour, but cute. For a taste of it, check out @barelyfunctionaladult on Instagram! The book features all new comics.
A review in a word: #me!
All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung
★★★★ // Goodreads
We tell ourselves, and want others to tell us, that we’re going to be wonderful parents. That our children will be happy. That their suffering will be light—or at least, never a kind we cannot help them through. We have to believe these things, promise ourselves we’ll meet every challenge, or we’d never be brave enough to begin.
Memoir of a Korean adoptee raised by a white family in a sheltered Oregon town.
The beginning meandered a little but got easier to follow (more linear) once Chung began to seek her birth parents in order to know her medical history in preparation of her first pregnancy. The beginning was more a collection of anecdotes, which is understandable because I think that’s how many of us remember our childhoods. I didn’t really mind, but just a note for those fiction readers who seek more traditional storylines in their nonfiction.
Chung explores adoption, race, and family with so much nuance. It may be easier to believe adoption, racelessness, and family as incontrovertibly good, but life is more complicated than that.
The Reason I Jump by Naoki Higashida
★★★★ // Goodreads
Nature is as important as our own lives. The reason is that when we look at nature, we receive a sort of permission to be alive in this world, and our entire bodies get recharged. However often we’re ignored and pushed away by other people, nature will always give us a good big hug, here inside our hearts. The greenness of nature is the lives of plants and trees. Green is life. And that’s the reason we love to go out for walks.
Memoir of a 13yo boy with autism, plus some short stories sprinkled in between.
Whilst this memoir only reflects the experience of one boy with autism and certainly isn’t representative of all people with autism (despite questions answered with plural pronouns like “we” and “our”), what it shows universally is that there are fundamental ways in which people experience the world differently. So stick around for people, however difficult it is to understand each other. That alone can mean so much.
This book also made me think about how we often equate command of the English language—or, more generally, the ability to communicate in the conventional way—with intelligence. And that just isn’t true. Though Naoki has difficulty communicating, he experiences life vividly and has an enormous amount of empathy. A heartwarming read.
In Five Years by Rebecca Serle
★★★ // Goodreads
You mistake love. You think it has to have a future in order to matter, but it doesn’t. It’s the only thing that does not need to become at all. It matters only insofar as it exists. Here. Now. Love doesn’t require a future.
Type-A Manhattan lawyer Dannie Cohan is on track to achieve her five-year plan. One night she sees her life five years into the future then returns to her life. Four-and-a-half years later she meets the man from her vision. A story of love and friendship.
I wish this story focused less on the romance and more on the friendship because I felt that the love interests were boring personalities, the romance was bland, and the major conflict in the friendship wasn’t treated with enough care. However, it was a quick read and my anticipation of how the vision at the beginning of the book would play out in the end kept me intrigued, even if the end was unsatisfying.
A Court of Wings and Ruin by Sarah J Maas
★★★★★ // Goodreads // Reading buddy: Monica
It’s a rare person to face who they truly are and not run from it–not be broken by it.
The third and final book of A Court of Thorns and Roses! Technically there’s still A Court of Silver Flames after ACOWAR, but I think ACOSF is a spin-off, so I’ll allow myself to end my ACOTAR journey here.
ACOWAR was 700 pages of planning for battle, planning going awry, and battling. I don’t think I would have minded so much if the book wasn’t so long. More smut drama pls!!
So ya, not my fave (that award goes to A Court of Mist and Fury), but thank you for an entertaining journey SJM. 5 stars for that. (I tend to rate series as a whole.)
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
DNF-43% // Goodreads
Nora commits suicide and discovers a library that exists between life and death, holding stories of all the lives she could have lived.
I was so excited for this book when it was first announced, but the structure of the story became repetitive and felt contrived. Basically, every few chapters was Nora trying out another life, and as soon as she got uncomfortable in that life, she would come back to the library and try out a different one. There’s a lot you can say about regretting how life could have been, but this story was a bit simplistic, which isn’t necessarily bad, but it wasn’t stimulating enough for me to continue.
Haig’s Reasons to Stay Alive remains one of my all-time favourites.
If you’re interested in exploring parallel lives, I recommend the last story of Ted Chiang’s speculative fiction collection Exhalation and Blake Crouch’s Dark Matter, though they don’t deal with the subject of depression.
What books are you hoping to sneak in before 2020 is over?