Readings
Recorded here since 2023
Below is a list I started compiling from 2023. Unless a book is very good or very bad, I don’t generally think of books as ‘good’ or ‘bad’. I read for many reasons, but at the very least I pick up books that seem to attempt an answer to a question I have, emotional or intellectual, so I genuinely get something almost out of every book I read—which is also why I hardly ever rate them on Goodreads anymore (except to give 5⭐ to my favourites): doing so feels too reductive. For instance, I might feel that a book on the whole is a 2/5, but I still might think that it has something valuable to say on a certain matter.
On a very basic level, I feel the need to record what I read, what I’m curious about, what I’m thinking and feeling in different phases of my life. At the same time, like any enthusiast, I feel the urge to nudge fellow readers towards the books I particularly enjoyed, and to that end I’ve asteri*-ed them here: whether it’s because the writer expresses themselves beautifully, transports me completely, tells me something about the world I didn’t know, or simply asks thought-provoking questions. Let me know if any of these books speak to you too. Feel free to send me book recommendations!
2026
Among Friends, Hal Ebbott (novel)*
Shortcomings, Adrian Tomine (comic)
Shift, #2 in the Wool Trilogy, by Hugh Howey (novel)
The Asset Class: How Private Equity Turned Capitalism Against Itself, by Hettie O’Brien (nonfiction)
Strangers and Intimates: The Rise and Fall of Private Life, by Tiffany Jenkins (nonfiction)*
Happiness and Love, Zoe Dubno (novel)
Archipelago, conversations with Édouard Glissant, by Hans Ulrich Obrist (nonfiction)
Hierarchies of Solidarity, Sinthujan Varatharajah & Moshtari Hilal (nonfiction; bilingual, also in German)
Mother Mary Comes to Me, Arundhati Roy (memoir)*
The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton (novel)*
Prima Facie, Suzie Miller (novel)
The Future of Travel, Daniel Maurer (nonfiction)
The Unrepentant, Sharmini Aphrodite (short story collection)
Trust, Hernan Diaz (novel)*
Mother Tongue, Hilda Hoy (memoir)
English in Berlin: Exclusions in a Cosmopolitan Society, Moshtari Hilal & Sinthujan Varatharajah (nonfiction; bilingual, also in German)
Eurotrash, Christian Kracht (novel, translated by Daniel Bowles)*
Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage, Belle Burden (memoir)
Berlin Now: The Rise of the City and the Fall of the Wall, Peter Schneider (nonfiction; translated by Sophie Schlondorff)
London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family’s Search for Truth, Patrick Radden Keefe (nonfiction)*
Giovanni’s Room, James Baldwin (novel)*
Inheritocracy: It’s Time to Talk About the Bank of Mum and Dad, Eliza Filby (nonfiction)
The Little Virtues, Natalia Ginzburg (essays)*
China Rich Girlfriend, Kevin Kwan (novel)
Rejection, Tony Tulathimutte (short stories)
All Consuming: Why We Eat the Way We Eat Now, Ruby Tandoh (nonfiction)
Good and Evil and Other Stories, Samanta Schweblin (short fiction)
2025
A Small Place, Jamaica Kincaid (nonfiction)*
Genocide, The Holocaust and Israel-Palestine, Omer Bartov (nonfiction)
The Wall Jumper, Peter Schneider (novel)*
Crudo, Olivia Laing (novel)
Flesh, David Szalay (novel)*
The Bright Sword, Lev Grossman (novel)
We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Shirley Jackson (novel)*
Walking on the Ceiling, Ayşegul Savaş (novel)
The Anthropologists, Ayşegul Savaş (novel)*
One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, Omar El Akkad (nonfic)
Poor Ghost!, Gabriel Flynn (novel)
Coventry, Rachel Cusk (essays)
Tremor, Teju Cole (novel)
Audition, Katie Kitamura (novel)
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, Olga Tokarczuk (novel)*
Not a Novel, Jenny Erpenbeck (essays)
Long Island Compromise, Taffy Brodesser-Akner (novel)
Perfection, Vincenzo Latronico (novel, translated by Sophie Hughes)*
The South, Tash Aw (novel)
The World After Gaza, Pankaj Mishra (nonfiction)
Kairos, Jenny Erpenbeck (novel, translated by Michael Hofmann; I’m attempting this in German too!)
Knife, Salman Rushdie (nonfiction)*
A Sabbatical in Leipzig, Adrian Duncan (novel)
Sister Snake, Amanda Lee Koe (novel)
2024
Small Things Like These, Claire Keegan (novel)
Malayland, Dina Zaman (nonfiction)
Intimacies, Katie Kitamura (novel)*
The Wood at Midwinter, Susanna Clarke (illustrated short story)
Living Things, Munir Hachemi (novel)
Why You Should Read Children’s Books, Even Though You Are So Old and Wise, Katherine Rundell (manifesto)*
Impossible Creatures, Katherine Rundell (novel)
No Judgement, Lauren Oyler (essays)
Intermezzo, Sally Rooney (novel)*
All Fours, Miranda July (novel)
Sidewalks, Valeria Luiselli (essays)
The Friend Zone Experiment, Zen Cho (novel)
The New Tourist: Waking up to the Power and Perils of Travel, Paige McClanahan (nonfiction)
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke (novel)*
No Meat Required: The Cultural History and Culinary Future of Plant-based Eating, Alicia Kennedy (nonfiction)
The List, Yomi Adegoke (novel)
Long Island, Colm Tóibín (novel, sequel to Brooklyn)
A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, in Which Four Russians Give a Masterclass on Writing, Reading, and Life, George Saunders (life manual via short fiction)*
The Storm We Made, Vanessa Chan (novel)
How to Hunger, Grace Chia (short fiction)*
The Great Reclamation, Rachel Heng (novel)*
The Secret Commonwealth, Philip Pullman (novel)
Elizabeth Costello, J.M. Coetzee (novel)*
The Lives of Animals, J.M. Coetzee (novel)*
Flawless: Lessons in Looks and Culture from the K-Beauty Capital, Elisa Hu (nonfiction)
Drifts, Kate Zambreno (novel)
The Memory Police, Yōko Ogawa (novel)
Trouble with Lichen, John Wyndham (novel)*
The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine, Rashid Khalidi (nonfiction)*
2023
Golden Apple of the Sun, Teju Cole (photobook)*
Language of War, Language of Peace, Raja Shehadeh (nonfiction)*
We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I, Raja Shehadeh (memoir)
I Want to Die But I Want to eat Tteokpokki, Baek Se-hee (memoir)
Stay True, Hua Hsu (memoir)*
The Women of Troy, Pat Barker (novel)*
Pandemic: Tracking Contagions, from Cholera to Ebola to Beyond, Sonia Shah (nonfiction)*
The Cost of Living, Deborah Levy (memoir; last of the ‘Living Autobiography’ trilogy)*
Tomorrow, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, Gabrielle Zevin (novel)*
Yellowface, R.F. Kuang (novel)
Matrix, Lauren Groff (novel)
What My Bones Know, Stephanie Foo (memoir)*
How Kyoto Breaks Your Heart, Florentyna Leow (memoir)
Sea of Tranquility, Emily St. John Mandel (novel)