Do you ever struggle on bookstagram with having a book you want to talk about but not having a picture to go with it, or having a picture of a beautiful cover but not feeling particularly excited to talk about the disappointing story it held, but you make a post anyway that’s mediocre in one way or the other because it’s the only content you have and you have to post consistently to appease the algorithm?
Well, eff the algorithm! I stopped posting on bookstagram regularly and the world kept on spinning (still promptly updating my Stories with most of my current reads though!). It feels great not stressing about it anymore. Plus, I had my best reading month of the year, though that may just be a coincidence and better attributed to the fact that I finally read The Poppy War trilogy.
The Poppy War trilogy by RF Kuang // ★★★★★
Rin aces the nationwide exam to escape her village and attend an elite military academy. A historical military fantasy inspired by the Second Sino-Japanese War and Chinese Civil War.
I haven’t been this obsessed over a book all year! I started and finished the trilogy in June and reread the first book in July. Every time I try to talk about The Poppy War, I end up scrapping everything because it’s just a gush of nonsense and adoration, but I’ll try my best.
I loved Rin. She’s ambitious, drawn to power, vindictive. As Kuang said in an interview, “Rin represents [our] worst impulses,” and there’s something cathartic about giving into them in fiction. Forget romance, honour, or justice; give me revenge! I loved the boarding school drama, rivalries, and friendships; the high of academic achievement and the tough realisation that it means nothing in the real world, most especially when it comes to war. The war scenes were absolutely brutal, and even more horrific is that those scenes were hardly exaggerated from China’s forgotten holocaust. (For those who’ve finished the first book and are waffling over whether to continue, perhaps it’ll ease your mind to know that you’ve gotten through the most graphic part of the trilogy.)
The first book was my favourite of the bunch. Rin got a bit angsty in the next two but it’s been tough for her, so who am I to judge? I also read Kuang’s self-published collection The Drowning Faith (15 pages of scenes from Nezha’s POV), which–not gonna lie–wasn’t good (cringey romance that I’m glad was left out of the trilogy), but I couldn’t not read it!
Related: (spoilers for the trilogy)
- The history and mythology of The Poppy War trilogy via Read by Tiffany
- The Burning God analysis via Allegory of Words (third book)
The Only Plane in the Sky by Garrett M Graff // ★★★★.5
An oral history of 9/11.
I was 5 and living on the west coast. I don’t remember where I was on September 11th, and neither do I remember how I even learned about what happened on that day. For America, it was a turning point. There became a Before and an After. I only remembered the After. But Before, a terrorist attack was so unfathomable that people thought the first plane was the fault of an incompetent pilot, so unfathomable that even after knowing about the first two attacks, people at the Pentagon did not at first understand that the explosion on the west side of the building was a third plane.
Of course, the number of lives lost and injured is crushing. At the same time, it can be difficult to wrap your mind around that magnitude of devastation. But the individual accounts in this oral history gave a glimpse, telling not only the stories of those who were killed but also the stories of the numerous witnesses still living who were nonetheless impacted.
Columbine by Dave Cullen // ★★★★.5
The Columbine shooting was actually a failed bombing. It changed the way police respond to active shooters from securing the perimeter to rushing straight in. A decade after the tragic event, Cullen shared all this and more, investigating the psychology of the two perpetrators leading up to that day, what happened on that day, the controversies surrounding that day, the media response, and the resilience of the survivors and the community. This was not a case of two misunderstood loners seeking retribution, a narrative that the media was quick to latch onto all those years ago, but a case of a narcissistic psychopath filled with hate for the world colliding with a depressive seeking a way out. Even that seems a suspiciously neat portrait, but nevertheless the book did help provide a deeper understanding.
Everybody by Olivia Laing // (gifted)
A collection of essays on the struggle for bodily freedom, explored through many figures but particularly Wilhelm Reich, psychoanalyst and inventor of the orgone accumulator, which I surprisingly recognised from a meme. Reich’s reputation was shot when he claimed to be able to harness the healing powers of orgasmic energy with his machine, and while Laing recognises that his claims were extreme, she nevertheless explores his theory about the physicality of emotion and trauma.
While body politics is certainly a relevant topic, funneling it through Reich made it feel very niche. I was much more interested in exploring the topic through the other figures Laing brought up, such as Agnes Martin (“A Radiant Net”), Ana Mendieta (“In Harm’s Way”), and Nina Simone (“22nd Century”). That said, I do find the physicality of emotion and trauma intriguing, and am reminded that I’ve been meaning to read The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk for ages.
You’ve Reached Sam by Dustin Thao // (gifted)
Grieving her boyfriend Sam’s death, Julie calls him expecting to hear his voicemail, but instead, Sam picks up.
I loved the magical realism of the first chapter, which vaguely reminded me of the opening sequence in Up. I kept waiting for the story to zoom in from that montage but couldn’t help but feel that the characters were just going through the motions of some vague idea of love and grief. Here, Sam and Julie had this special if inexplicable second chance to say whatever was left unsaid by Sam’s untimely death, yet every phone conversation was barely a variation of “I love you,” “I miss you,” and “I don’t want to lose you,” ya know, to really hit home that these two were ~in love~. It felt like their love existed in a vacuum, but the more interesting parts of the story to me were the snippets we got of how grief touched the various people in Sam’s life besides Julie. I would have loved to further explore that aspect.
Another aspect I would have loved to further explore was the mystery of how the phone calls were possible. Instead, Sam’s seemingly arbitrary suspicions about the rules of the phone calls between him and Julie felt taken for granted. Even a simple trial and error approach to the phone calls would have added more suspense and felt more compelling.
One of the prettiest book covers of the year though. Maybe middle grade readers wouldn’t be so cynical about it.