Its a tricky book to explain. Basically, it’s a metaphorical novel originally published in Korean about a battered woman named Yeong-hye and her decision not to eat meat. Her family, her husband, and the world at large don’t understand her decision and attempt to force her to eat meat — sometimes by violently force-feeding her. As time goes on, she removes herself from normal life and attempts to live like a plant, not speaking, refusing food, and spending time naked in direct sunlight. By the end of the novel, she is near death and gets placed in a series of psychiatric and general hospitals, where everyone is baffled by her decisions and concerned for her wellbeing.

It’s a crazy plot for a novel, but this story isn’t really about being vegetarian, or about these characters. It’s about agency. The story is told in three sections, narrated by Yeong-hye’s husband, brother-in-law, and sister. Notably, we barely get any of Yeong-hye’s perspective: she lacks even the agency to tell her own story. We learn about the men in the novel through their narrative sections. They are impulsive, self-absorbed, abusive, and incapable of understanding Yeong-hye and her sister. They suffer from an abundance of agency that allows them to be cruel, detached people. (I saw one review saying that the book is just a man-hating revenge fantasy, but I disagree. I think it’s meant to criticize the patriarchy through exaggerated caricatures of each gender.) Unlike the men’s sections, the final section narrated by Yeong-hye’s sister displays a turbulent yet empathetic inner life of which the other characters are completely unaware.

In that final section, we learn that Yeong-hye isn’t the only crazy person in the family. Her sister is mentally unstable as well, but she hides it better, and stays afloat because she has a son to take care of. The women mirror each other in their darkness and obsession with being consumed by pain, but only Yeong-hye is treated as an insane person by society. Throughout the novel, both women are described as “inscrutable.” Whether their emotions are really hard to read or not (these sections are narrated by their unobservant husbands, so…), the book reminds the reader that people’s inner lives do not always match their outward appearance. Maybe Yeong-hye is more honest and sane than everyone else because she actually succumbs to her impulses and allows her internal desires to become external.

I saw one reviewer say the vegetarianism is symbolic of any choice that women make that others don’t understand. Her choice not to eat meat is incomprehensible and unimportant to everyone around her, but it’s the most important thing in Yeong-hye’s life. It’s like choosing not to have children, choosing to keep working after marriage and children, or any other choice women make that deviates from the norm. Yeong-hye is ridiculed, abused, and torn to pieces for living her life outside of the expectations placed upon her. It’s a simple metaphor for the judgement women face every day.

Books that take metaphors to the extreme always interest me and The Vegetarian was no exception. I’m usually a little wary of books with summaries on the back page that call them “kafkaesque,” because I’m scared it will be the most pretentious thing I’ve ever read, but this was super readable. My only issue is that I wish the ending had been more complete, but with arty books like this one, I know endings are rarely straightforward. I liked the style of the translation and the plot kept me engaged enough to read the whole thing basically in one sitting.

There was one paragraph that stood out to me in particular:

“The feeling that she had never really lived in this world caught her by surprise. It was a fact. She had never lived. Even as a child, as far back as she could remember, she had done nothing but endure. She had believed in her own inherent goodness, her humanity, and lived accordingly, never causing anyone harm. Her devotion to doing things the right way had been unflagging, all her success had depended on it, and she would have gone on like that indefinitely. She didn’t understand why, but faced with those decaying buildings and straggling grasses, she was nothing but a child who had never lived.”

Every once in a while, when I feel my craziest with anxious thoughts, I absolutely relate to that paragraph. I sometimes feel like I was in survival mode for a good portion of my childhood and adolescence, and only started living like other people do in the past few years.

The descriptions of mental health and dreams in this book are vivid but very real. They remind me of the most outlandish thoughts a person can have. Like Yeong-hye, I have intense dreams (not as bad as hers, though, obviously) that have the power to affect me during the day, long after I’ve woken up. Internal issues like dreams can place a barrier between your inner world and those of the people around you, and this book captured that feeling well.

Overall, Han Kang absolutely deserved the Nobel Prize in Literature. This is a fantastic novel. I highly recommend — as long as you’re okay with some really graphic scenes.

“The self as perfected brand, the self as digital avatar, the self as data mine, the self as idealized body, the self as racist and anti-Semitic projection, the child as mirror of the self, the self as eternal victim.”

She connects all of these “selves” to the idea of doppelgangers, and how her literary doppelganger, Naomi Wolf, became a right-wing leader. But before I get into the real meat of the book, I want to highlight a couple quotes that stuck with me.

“As Richard Seymour writes in his blistering 2019 dissection of social media, The Twittering Machine, we think we are interacting — writing and singing and dancing and talking — with one another, ‘our friends, professional colleagues, celebrities, politicians, royals, terrorists, porn actors — anyone we like. We are not interacting with them, however, but with the machine. We write to it, and it passes on the message for us, after keeping a record of the data’.”

This paragraph crosses my mind at least twenty times a day. Every time I send a text, I think about the fact that I’m not really speaking to anyone directly, but to a phone. (I know, duh — but it’s easy to forget.) It makes me think twice about the things that I say and the way that I say them.

Recently, news broke that the U.S. did not allow a French scientist into the country because of anti-Trump text messages in her phone. When I read about it, my first thought was of this quote. As Klein explains, the right isn’t wrong about the fact that we are being surveilled at unprecedented levels. (They are wrong about how and why, but the panic is valid!) We really are being observed in ways that we don’t yet understand.

The U.S. has denied that critical messages are the reason the scientist was detained, but their story is different from France’s story. I am suspicious, and at the very least, disheartened. I’ll be keeping a close eye on stories like that one.

Another pattern Klein describes in her book is the pipeline between the extreme radical right and extreme health movements.

“The very idea that humans can and should be "optimized" lends itself to a fascistic worldview — because if your food is extra-clean, it can easily mean other people's food is extra-dirty. If you are safe because your immune system is strong, it can flip to mean others are unsafe because they are weak. If you are optimized, others are, by definition, suboptimal. Defective. Next door to disposable.”

I think about this quote a lot, too. On TikTok, a woman went viral for saying that “being healthy is not a moral action,” and it reminded me of Klein. There is definitely a superiority ingrained in some health content online, and we have to be vigilant not to let that ideology affect our beliefs.

I take the quote as a reminder that my successes are not evidence of other people’s failures, and that other people’s successes are not evidence of my failures. We are all in different circumstances. My health and accomplishments are not because of hard work alone, but a combination of effort and luck.

What the book is really about, though, is misinformation and partisanship in the U.S. and Canada.

“As my investigation has worn on, this is the form of doppelganger that increasingly preoccupies me: the fascist clown state that is the ever-present twin of liberal Western democracies, perpetually threatening to engulf us in its fires of selective belonging and ferocious despising.”

She uses the phrase “Shadow Lands” to describe the corrupt systems that keep our lives going — exploitation in poor countries, abuses of power from the rich, and the original sin of colonialism. She reminds the reader that these systems have not been left in the past, as we would like to think, but rather continue to support wealthy countries today.

She quotes Daisy Hildyard from her 2017 book, The Second Body:

“You are stuck in your body right here, but in a technical way you could be said to be in India and Iraq, you are in the sky causing storms, and you are in the sea herding whales towards the beach. You probably don't feel your body in those places: it is as if you have two distinct bodies. You have an individual body in which you exist, eat, sleep and go about your day-to-day life. You also have a second body which has an impact on foreign countries and on whales... a body which is not so solid as the other one, but much larger.”

I love this idea. It’s depressing, of course, but I think it is a fantastic way to conceptualize the impact we have on the world around us.

Hildyard’s idea can be taken one step further, when we think about the lack of choice we have in the existence of our second body. The second self is there despite us ignoring it, or wishing it away, and we have to try to reduce the damage it does on our behalf.

At the end of the book, Klein addresses what we can actually do in the face of so many problems.

“It will not be enough to protect "our" people; we will need to have the stamina of true solidarity, which defines "our people" as "all people." This kind of universalism is hard. There are so many perfectly good reasons for people on the broadly defined left to be fed up, angry, and disappointed with one another, and to latch onto those disappointments to rationalize splintering into smaller and smaller groups.”

“Vertigo invades when the world we thought we knew no longer holds. The known world is crumbling. That's okay. It was an edifice stitched together with denial and disavowal, with unseeing and un-knowing, with mirrors and shadows. It needed to crash. Now, in the rubble, we can make something more reliable, more worthy of our trust, more able to survive the coming shocks.”

I wish she were a bit more specific. When she uses vague language like “building in the rubble” to talk about solutions, after using so much specific language to describe the problems, I feel a bit hopeless. The questions are so clear but the answers are so opaque.

What does having “the stamina of true solidarity” actually look like as a 20-year-old college student? I want to write her a letter and say: “Naomi! You’ve written a book about everything wrong with the world, but you didn’t tell me what to do! What do I do!?”

But Klein does not have the answers. She is trapped in the same situation that we are. She does have some advice — she tells us to work together, to move past disagreements, to build community above all — and I will keep on trying to do those things. I will continue to volunteer at nonprofits in my college town, email my representatives, and go to protests. And read Klein’s books.

“We must attempt, with great urgency, to imagine a world that does not require Shadow Lands, that is not predicated on sacrificial people and sacrificial ecologies and sacrificial continents. More than imagine it, we must begin, at once, to build it.”

I wanted to end on this quote, because I think it is an excellent summary of the challenges we face as we try to be ethical members of our world. But it feels so abstract.

I want to end this post with my own call to action. As we read books like Klein’s, I think we have to do more than just nod in agreement. We have to figure out how to apply her calls to action to our lives. What actual, in-person efforts can we get involved in? If we don’t take action, the books serve no purpose.

• Death in the Andes by Mario Vargas Llosa

This was the first Spanish-to-English translation I’ve read that retained some of the original Spanish syntax and grammar. I need to read up on Peruvian history to understand all of its metaphor, and I can’t decide if I love or hate his style of writing dialogue, but it was a great read overall!

• Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen

Wow. This one has been on my TBR forever. Excellent analysis of mental health facilities and the idea of sanity. Loved it.

• I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman

Whew! I wanted this book to give me answers so badly, but instead it just broke my heart. Ugh. As one reviewer put it, "It is a minute account of a nightmare." Strange, weird, and undeniably beautiful.

• The Housemaid by Freida McFadden

Excellent! I love a good, readable mystery that keeps me flipping the pages.

• Educated by Tara Westover

A recommendation from my mom. It made me wonder if (and hope that) I would have been as compassionate as Tara’s roommate who took care of her in college, instead of taking her ignorance for prejudice. Also made me think about nature versus nurture and how I would move through the world differently if I had come from a different environment.

• The Safekeep Yael van der Wouden

SO good. I did not expect the twist at all. I loved it, then it blew my mind and I loved it even more. It goes beyond a novel about interpersonal relationships and becomes an examination of responsibility, guilt, and legacies of trauma.

• The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

I expected to cry and be appalled by the content of this book. It was even more heartbreaking than I expected, and really made me reflect on what a disservice the American school system does us by sugarcoating the Reconstruction era. Hoping to watch the movie soon.

• The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides

Lost some of its steam towards the end, but still a fun read.

• The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn

Ripped through this in two days so it gets a rave review from me! Absolute page-turner. I had a blast.

Doppelganger post coming soon!

PSA: Sorry if anyone has already seen this exact list on my book Instagram or book TikTok. My bad.

1. Book that I finished in a single sitting because I had no other choice and it took over an entire Saturday (My roommate Sarah can confirm):

   Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

2. Book I loved but once I got halfway through I realized I had already read it a few years ago:

   Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware

3. Book that reminded me why I love nonfiction actually:

   Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe

4. Book that made me want to watch the movie version but as of writing this I still haven’t seen it:

   Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann

5. Book that took me a million years to read but ended up being worth it (Did NOT feel the same way about Intermezzo.):

   Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney

6. Book that I think about at least once a month (Thank you Sarah):

   The Red Tent by Anita Diamont

7. Book that actually changed my life — but seriously, it was the impetus for a big life decision (Aaand thank you Abbie):

   Sunburn by Chloe Michelle Howarth

8. Book that made me start annotating for the first time in many, many years:

   Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin

9. Book that made me stop being pretentious about not reading fantasy:

   Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros

Excited to read more next year!! My goals are to read more books purely for fun, take my time with everything I read, and try out my Kindle. I’m sure I’ll be keeping anyone who reads this blog updated.

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

What song best encapsulates this book?

“Think” by Aretha Franklin (Sunja singing it about Hansu).

Did I sigh loudly after reading the last page?

Yes! But maybe because the third part of the book dragged and I was glad to be done.

If an Emily Henry book is a 1 and A Little Life is a 10, how sad is this book?

8.5

In a good way or a bad way?

In a great way. If nothing else, this book is beautiful.

Have I been recommending it to people?

Not really.

What did I rate it on Goodreads? 

Three stars.

Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin

What song best encapsulates this book?

“Goodbye, My Danish Sweetheart” by Mitski

Did I sigh loudly after reading the last page?

Yes! I never annotate books but I annotated this one thoroughly.

If an Emily Henry book is a 1 and A Little Life is a 10, how sad is this book?

Aw man. Probably a 7. Rough one but beautiful one.

In a good way or a bad way?

Good.

Have I been recommending it to people?

Very much so.

What did I rate it on Goodreads? 

Five stars and I left this review: “It broke my heart into pieces and changed me for the better. Beautiful, beautiful book about reality, impermanence, love, sex, hatred, denial, and life. Wow. Wow!!!!”

Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe

What song best encapsulates this book?

“Black Smoke Rising” by Greta Van Fleet

Did I sigh loudly after reading the last page?

No, but not because it wasn’t excellent — it just wasn’t that type of book.

If an Emily Henry book is a 1 and A Little Life is a 10, how sad is this book?

7

In a good way or a bad way?

Neither, somehow.

Have I been recommending it to people?

No, but only because my friends usually don’t like nonfiction history stuff.

What did I rate it on Goodreads? 

Five stars!

Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells

What song best encapsulates this book?

“My Fun” by Suki Waterhouse

Did I sigh loudly after reading the last page?

Yes and I shed a tear.

If an Emily Henry book is a 1 and A Little Life is a 10, how sad is this book?

2

In a good way or a bad way?

Good way! It’s a sweet, hopeful story about forgiveness and love.

Have I been recommending it to people?

No, but it was my book club book this month.

What did I rate it on Goodreads? 

Five stars.

Was it awesome? Yes!

Am I still thinking about it now? Very much so.

One of the best books I’ve ever read? Yes.

Better writing or better plot? Better writing.

Rating: Five stars.

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

Was it awesome? Pretty awesome.

Am I still thinking about it now? Not really…

One of the best books I’ve ever read? No.

Better writing or better plot? Better writing.

Rating: Three stars.

The Red Tent by Anita Diamant

Was it awesome? Unbelievably awesome.

Am I still thinking about it now? Every day!

One of the best books I’ve ever read? Yes.

Better writing or better plot? Both!

Rating: Five stars!

Dense, rich novel about Nigeria and its class divide. I do not know anything about Nigeria, and as we know, I love using books to learn about places, so I loved this! The characters felt real and the heartbreaking moments made me tear up. I didn’t love the pacing, and the ending was not my favorite, so I’m taking off a star. Overall though, it was immersive and a memorable story.

Rating: Four stars

2. Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney

Sally Rooney is one example of a modern, popular author that totally deserves the hype she receives. She strikes a chord with young women that few other authors can right now. Before this book, Conversations With Friends was my favorite over Normal People (Sorry, controversial), but this novel is her best one yet! The book flips between letters between two women and descriptions of their daily lives. The letters are long, full of existential thoughts about life and relationships, but they articulated some thoughts that I hadn’t been able to put into words. Its title says it all: Is there a beautiful world out there? Can we find it through meaningful human connection? How?

Rating: Five stars

3. A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid

I tore through this book one day during a shift at work at the host stand. It is about the island of Antigua, and how the island is an example of colonialism and its impact. I enjoyed it, but it is one of several books (Passing being another) that I wish I had read in a class where I could learn about its context and discuss it. Maybe I’ll revisit it someday with more information.

Rating: Four stars

4. American Spy by Lauren Wilkinson

This one was right up my alley! Something about a spy plot always gets me. Every time. I liked this book’s style and locations, but honestly, something about the ending felt flat to me. I think it it seemed too rushed. Hopefully it’s just the first part of a bigger story — I’ll have to look into it.

Rating: Three stars

5. Five Total Strangers by Natalie D. Richards

I had a weird experience reading this novel. I started and finished it on a long plane ride, and the entire book is about travel mishaps, so off the bat I was a little nervous. The dialogue was mediocre, the plot was a letdown, and I would not have finished it if I had access to wifi.

Rating: One star

6. Shiner by Amy Jo Burns

Shiner reminded me strongly of the type of book I read as a kid. It’s about a strange girl, living a strange, almost magical life, in a rural place. I used to love reading books about weird girls in weird places. The plot kept me thoroughly invested, and the characters felt like something out of mythology. I don’t know how to describe it besides saying it is just a well-planned, well-written story. I highly recommend this book to anyone who appreciates a solid novel.

Rating: Five stars

To remind myself of what’s important, I’ve put a Walt Whitman poem up on my wall and here is a bit of it:

To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,
Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same,
Every foot of the interior swarms with the same.

To me the sea is a continual miracle,
The fishes that swim—the rocks—the motion of the waves—the
        ships with men in them,
What stranger miracles are there?

With that new spirit, of course, comes more ambition — and more reading! I’ve decided to let myself give up on books that aren’t interesting me, and stick to books that remind me why I read in the first place.

Starting with…

1. Earth by John Boyne

The sequel to Water, this book was about an athlete accused of sexual assault. I liked Boyne’s style here just as much as I did with Water. Similar to the first book, Earth focuses on the people affected by and related to monsters, not the monsters themselves. It is a good reminder that there are two — or more — sides to every story. It had a satisfying, well-earned ending, and I enjoyed the read overall. (Thanks Mrs. Mason!)

Rating: Four stars

2. Absolution by Alice McDermott

This historical fiction is another untold story of someone affected by a catastrophe — but this time, the catastrophe is a war, not a person. It focuses on the wives of the men stationed in Saigon during the Vietnam War. I’ve always considered the Vietnam War one of my historical blind spots, so I was excited to read this book and learn a little more about it. The book is written as a letter from an older woman to a younger woman that lived in Saigon at the same time, and the prose and characters were lovely. I enjoyed the honest depiction of female friendships. Overall, it was a touching, beautiful book about womanhood, marriage, and the passing of time.

Rating: Five stars

3. The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen

I was so excited to read this!! I love espionage and secret agents and all those kinds of things. It was absolutely excellent. The book reminded me a little bit of 1984 and of some journalistic nonfiction stuff I’ve read. It was my second Vietnam War book in a row, which gave me an interesting perspective on it. It was long, and very dense, but a unique story. I’m really turning into a history buff with all of these books and my history podcast obsession. Please send me any recommendations for historical books!

Rating: Five stars

4. Beach Read by Emily Henry

I haven’t read a romance novel in a really, really long time. I usually stay away from romance, because I lose interest somewhere in the middle, but I hear so much about Emily Henry that I had to give this a shot. I ended up liking it. I wasn’t super invested in the characters themselves but I needed to know what the ending was! Might have to pick up some other recent romance books and give them a shot.

Rating: Three stars

More books to come!

In June, I mostly read when I was on a break from work, or by the ocean, or in my living room in the early morning. I’ve been feeling like my mind is very messy lately, but some of those moments spent reading cleaned it up.

Here is what I read and absorbed this month:

1. The Sellout by Paul Beatty

I bought this book online after seeing it at a bookstore in Delaware. The premise sounds crazy at first glance: a Black man reinstates slavery and segregation in his hometown. I didn’t know what to expect, but the book turned out to be a hilarious, biting satire of modern racism in America. It is set in Southern California and its setting plays a big role in the plot, so I enjoyed the familiarity of some of Beatty’s niche references. I liked the book overall and I thought it was an important read, but I’m not sure I really enjoy satire as a genre very much.

Rating: Four stars

2. Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann

I have wanted to read this book since I watched the Oscars this year and found out what this story was all about. It did not let me down. Grann is a fantastic storyteller and journalist! This was even better than The Wager — and I loved that book. I never knew about the Osage murders or considered how the FBI came to be, but it is a remarkable, deeply tragic story. I need to watch the movie and see how they managed to handle the darkness of this book’s subject matter on screen. Beautiful book.

Rating: Five stars

3. James by Percival Everett

This book is a reimagining of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of a slave named James. Everett does not shy away from the horror of slavery, but inserts moments of comedy that make the story even more compelling. James’ commentary on the absurdity of the times he lives in is fantastic, and some of Everett’s choices were nothing short of genius. I’ve never read Huckleberry Finn, but I thought the book was brilliant. If I ever do read it, I know I’ll have this version in the back of my mind.

Rating: Five stars

4. Water by John Boyne

This short novel was fantastic. It follows a woman who has moved to a remote island to escape and recover from her former life, but doesn’t tell us what she is escaping from until the middle of the story. The main character is relatable and her life is absolutely heartbreaking. I was shocked that the author is a man, because he writes from a female perspective so well! The plot deals with themes of guilt, complicity, and love with raw honesty. It is the first in a series named after the elements, so I am now reading Earth and so far enjoying it just as much!

Rating: Five stars

Looking forward to my next few summer reads!

I’m breaking from my typical one-book one-post format to make this blog more manageable. My new plan is to do a monthly WIRTM (What I Read This Month) for my lovely friends and family that read these posts.

Here we go:

1. The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

This one has been on my radar for a long time. All I knew before reading the book was that it was immensely popular and had something to do with mah jong. It is a collection of life lessons through an examination of eight first-generation Chinese-American women and their mother-daughter relationships. Some chapters almost reminded me of the children’s series Dear America, because Tan told their childhood stories through such a captivating lens it was like I was reading a diary. As a girl who is close with her mother, I found a lot to resonate with in the modern sections of the book. Although it primarily highlights specific immigrant experiences, I felt that many of the moments in the book are universal to mother-daughter relationships everywhere. I never regret reading something that teaches me more about someone else’s culture — and how it overlaps with my experiences. Beautiful, important book.

Rating: Five stars!

2. The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann

Fantastic book! This is a true crime/historical nonfiction/journalistic book about the shipwreck of The Wager in 1740. I devoured the whole thing in a couple days. Grann incorporated testimony and logs from the sailors to chronicle the entire disaster as a cohesive narrative. It is hard to believe that human beings could act so cruelly when put in dire situations, and at times I was reminded of Lord of the Flies or Patrick Radden Keefe’s Rogues. It was a thrilling story, but it also put some things in perspective for me. It made me think about the fact that just a few generations ago, the world was unrecognizable. I can’t imagine being forced to endure what the men on The Wager went through. I highly recommend this book. You will be thinking about it for days.

Rating: Five stars!!

3. A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

I’m not sure how to feel about this one. It won the Pulitzer Prize, so I know it must have resonated with somebody, but the structure didn’t work for me. Every chapter is from a new perspective of someone involved in the main characters’ lives. I liked that the book was able to tell a variety of contemporary stories and cover a wide range of people, but I didn’t feel like I had enough time in just one chapter to connect with any of the characters. Despite the structure, I found some chapters beautiful, and it was an interesting kaleidoscope of the human condition. I admire the realism and honesty of Egan’s web of people, but the execution lost me.

Rating: Three stars.

4. Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou

I have always loved mysteries, so it’s no surprise that I’ve grown to love journalistic nonfiction too. As a suspense addict, books about real crimes and scandals being exposed are like my favorite fiction come to life. I watched an HBO documentary a few years ago about Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos, and thought it was an insane story — she made the front page of Forbes for an invention that didn’t work. Earlier this month, I came across this book about the scandal, and had to pick it up. Carreyrou did a fantastic job with the story. He explained the tech stuff well and maintained an easy-to-follow narrative. I enjoyed how he included his own role in the story and how Theranos fought him in the creation of this book. Fantastic.

Rating: Five stars!

Currently reading another David Grann journalistic nonfiction — Killers of the Flower Moon. (Shoutout Matt for letting me borrow it.) Updates coming soon!

The Idiot is a Bildungsroman novel about a girl at Harvard studying linguistics who becomes embroiled in a strange relationship that leads her to a job in Hungary. It is an absurdist book about her thoughts and feelings, even — and especially — when they don’t make sense.

For the first half of the book, I was completely sold. I loved Selin’s perspective on everything, and really resonated with some of the specific, uncomfortable emotions that she articulates. She cares a lot about language and communication, as do I, so her perspectives on some things were very familiar to me.

I described the book to my friend as a series of disconnected observations about the world for readers to pick and choose from. I resonated strongly with some, and others seemed completely incomprehensible. Batuman did a great job writing about the atmosphere of the strange, in-between moments of life.

She describes social situations with odd pairings of people, confusing conversations, and the irritating, mundane parts of work and school. Some of her fish-out-of-water moments were very relatable to me, and felt very specific to being a college freshman in a new place.

Later in the book, Selin becomes a newcomer to a brand new location again when she studies in Hungary. This time around, her disorientation was annoying more than it was relatable.

The book lost me with Selin’s relationship with Ivan. I don’t know if it was just too different than anything I’ve ever experienced, or if I was just frustrated with how she handled it, but I didn’t enjoy it at all.

As the book went on, it became increasingly focused on Ivan, especially after she moved to Hungary, and the book lost its observational charm for me. I needed a resolution, or a change, but it felt very stagnant.

I understood the commentary that unrequited love is confusing, and that Ivan’s rejection of Selin would change her forever, but I just quite simply did not like it.

After a while, the book just made me feel like everything in the world, even in my own life, was random and absurd. Selin’s voice started to irritate me, and her perspective started to seem annoyingly naive. Besides that, the plot was boring me to tears.

The book had some fantastic moments and pieces of dialogue that make me incredibly grateful to have read it, but some pages felt like a colossal task to get through.

Honestly though, overall, I really enjoyed the style of this book. I’ll be keeping Selin in mind when I write my own characters and try to accurately describe how they think and operate. I just wish the book had lingered a little longer in Boston, and a little less on Ivan.

The Woman Destroyed was originally published in 1967 as La Femme rompue. As the title introduces, it is about women in crisis — dealing with broken marriages, lack of purpose, and old age. The situations De Beauvoir’s characters find themselves in are common, but that everyday quality somehow makes its women more compelling.

The book includes three stories. “The Age of Discretion” is about a woman facing old age and an estranged son, “The Monologue” is about a woman abandoned by her family, and “The Woman Destroyed” is about a woman dealing with her cruel husband’s affair.

The stories are raw depictions of the inner workings of the female mind. I found much of the book intensely relatable, even while disagreeing with or disliking some of the characters. De Beauvoir shines an honest light on aspects of womanhood that go overlooked.

My favorite of the three was the very first story. I liked the protagonist as a character, and although she was controlling, irrational and a terrible mother-in-law, I related to her crisis and the way that she defined the world.

The main struggle of the protagonist is her lost sense of purpose and her tense relationship with her son. Her latest book is a failure and her son has rejected her plans for his life. Both conflicts affect her relationship with her husband.

It is the only story of the book with somewhat of a happy ending — after miscommunications on both sides, the woman and her husband reconcile their issues. I loved the line where they come back together:

“I had recovered the Andre I had never lost and that I never should lose.”

The story discusses aging and loss, and how women can lose their sense of purpose when we get older. For 1967, De Beauvoir’s perspective on female independence and self-worth was very new.

Her characters have interests and opinions beyond the men in their lives, but continue to be devoted wives. With this book, she emphasizes that women are forced to center their lives around men, and demonstrates how that can go terribly wrong.

With the middle story, De Beauvoir pushes the limits of her female characters. The protagonist of this story is crude, unlikable, and spiraling. Honestly, it was refreshing to see a woman pushed to the brink and allowed to be insane, because women in media are allowed to lose it much less than their male counterparts.

The prose in this section was markedly different than the other two stories. It was made up of sentence fragments, run-on sentences, and nonsensical anecdotes. Her style created a rushed, insane atmosphere and really characterized the main character as a woman on the edge.

“I have weapons I’ll use them he’ll come back to me I shan’t go on rotting all alone in this dump with those people on the next floor who trample me underfoot and the ones next door who wake me every morning with their radio … All those fat cows have a man to protect them and kids to wait on them and me nothing”

The last story is the longest and most memorable of the three. It is written as a series of diary entries.

In the story, a woman named Monique discovers that her husband of many years is having an affair, and allows him to continue it in the hopes that it fizzles out. It does not fizzle out, and she ends the book alone and devastated.

I was incredibly frustrated by Monique. I wanted her to leave her husband about 100 different times while reading, but I understood why she didn’t. I felt like I was on the phone with a friend making a bad decision that I couldn’t talk her out of making.

This story really affected me. While reading, I felt like I was Monique, and I closed the book feeling lost and sad. The emotional power of the book, even when translated from its original language, speaks to De Beauvoir’s power as a writer.

I wonder what it would look like if somebody chronicled what goes on in my mind when I’m dealing with something. Would I seem unlikable and cruel, like some of De Beauvoir’s characters, or would I be sympathetic?

Feminist literature like The Woman Destroyed always makes a strong impression on me. There is something remarkable about the universality of womanhood, and how stories from more than 50 years ago can continue to resonate today.

The Fraud is three books in one: a historical fiction about author William Ainsfield, a chronicle of the Tichborne case from the 1860s, and a story about abolition in London. It is mostly told from the perspective of Eliza Touchet, Ainsfield’s cousin and an abolitionist with interest in the Tichborne case.

I asked for this book for Christmas, and I was so excited to read it that I put it on a “top ten” book recommendation list for work. Unfortunately, it did not live up to my expectations.

The main issue is that the three stories are disjointed. All three are interesting in their own right, but they do not blend together well. Mrs. Touchet is a compelling character for the first couple hundred pages, but her story loses steam and her ending is cliche and weak.

With almost 500 pages, the big twists and reveals are too little, too late. Smith tries to weave the stories together, but keeping the ending and beginning in the same place, with 100 pages in an entirely new setting makes the narrative awkward. Every component of the book is weaker by the end than it was at the start.

Smith also complicates the story by jamming together historical accuracy and fiction too haphazardly. She takes some parts verbatim from 1860s transcripts, which makes the story read strangely when read next to her fictionalized perspective.

This book, when looked at in its entirety, doesn’t work for me. However, when you zoom in on specific scenes and lines, it’s fantastic.

One thing that Smith does very well is characterization. I loved her characters in On Beauty, and her characters in The Fraud are equally great.

There are a few quotes from the book that I really enjoyed. Her cultural commentary is always spot-on, and her characters’ observations on life are poignant and beautiful.

“Eliza listened along with them, but felt that she alone truly heard the man, pierced as she was by a new awareness, a subterranean insight. A person is a bottomless thing! She might rush the stage to proclaim it: A person is a bottomless thing!”

I loved this quote. Beautiful sentiment, beautifully put. Quotes like this one keep the book interesting, but aren’t enough to carry the plot through all hundreds of pages.

All in all, this book was a letdown. I might read White Teeth soon or another earlier Smith book to cleanse my palate and remind myself how much of a genius she is. I hope her next book is more like her past work.

Song of Achilles is a retelling of the Greek myth of Achilles as a love story told from the perspective of his lover, Patroclus. It is a long, dramatic book — like most mythology — but with a distinctly modern voice.

I have heard about this book a million times, but never considered reading it. I don’t have the interest in Greek mythology that a lot of teenage book lovers (probably former Percy Jackson kids) seem to have.

I ran out of books last weekend after trying in vain to read a series of translated Russian short stories and some very dense Kafka, and landed on Song of Achilles as a way out of my slump.

I surprised myself by thoroughly enjoying this book. I haven’t read a love story in a long time, and this one was written with passion and tenderness. Achilles and Patroclus are written believably, and Miller creates an Ancient Greece that readers can picture clearly.

Although the book is notable for its lovely writing alone, it is one of the only mainstream YA romances I know that depicts a queer relationship. There have been more queer stories in recent years, but the genre as a whole still adheres to heteronormative stereotypes.

Miller describes the challenges Achilles and Patroclus face as a gay couple, but does not rely on that aspect more than she should. She writes about the process of falling in love as a teenager with the pain and awkwardness it requires, and takes the reader along with the characters as the relationship grows.

Patroclus’ love for Achilles is so intense that it would be annoying and unbelievable if written by a different author, but Miller makes it a touching story of true love. She combines myth with reality well, to the point that the central relationship transcends its ancient setting.

Reading this book reminded me that I do love romance novels, and that I need to make time to read more of them. Despite my first assumptions, Song of Achilles was engrossing, heartbreaking and memorable.

Carrie is Stephen King’s first big hit, and it tells the story of a girl with telekinetic powers raised by an abusively religious mother. It is the type of book you can’t stop reading once you start, and an impressive look at King’s early writing.

I liked this book right from the start. King does an excellent job with the psyches of his characters, making them exaggerated but still interesting and believable.

Sue Snell, in particular, is the bedrock of the entire story. She’s a moral compass for the rest of the characters, but unwittingly causes the main disaster of the book. The tragic irony of her storyline really stuck with me.

Carrie herself is fascinating. Trapped in an abusive household and bullied at school, she is incredibly pitiable, and King emphasizes that quality with her inner monologue running throughout the book. Her reign of terror is awful, but almost understandable after King’s deep analysis of what she has been through.

The moment of the book that stands out to me most is the eye of the storm, when Carrie and Tommy are at the prom before disaster strikes. King’s description of the perfect, shining moment in Carrie’s life is heartbreaking, because the reader knows things are about to go terribly wrong.

Although the beginning is good, King’s genius starts after the chaos happens at the prom. He has a way of describing characters in crisis that feels palpable and frightening to read about.

His choice to include testimonials, telegrams and court cases add to the atmosphere of the second half of the book. The abrupt tonal shifts between police telegrams and sobbing victims trying to stay alive is jarring — but incredible — to read.

Carrie’s disaster becomes not just just a shocking isolated incident, but the object of scientific study. There is a fascinating combination of perspectives on the same moment, both of scientists looking back and Carrie and her peers looking forward.

The disconnect between the future and the past creates tension for the reader, because they are learning about the fate of the characters before the characters have any clue what’s going to happen.

With some sections of this story, it is very clear that this is King’s first book. He doesn’t really understand periods, but major scenes in the book revolve around them.

His pacing is iffy sometimes, and some of his characters are too exaggerated, but with a story this insane I think it still works. The core of the story is made up of just a few violent, memorable images, and the rest of the story serves to support those.

Overall, this book had the same effect on me as the rest of King’s books: I just want to keep reading them over and over.

Pigs In Heaven is the sequel to The Bean Trees, one of Kingsolver’s first critically acclaimed books. I read this one before The Bean Trees by accident, but it can be read as a standalone story about a Cherokee child and her white adopted mother, and whether she belongs with her new family or her tribe.

Kingsolver deftly approaches the legal issue of the book with compassion for every character. Rather than shying away from contradictions and intricacies of the emotions involved, she focuses on them.

I really admire Kingsolver’s characterization. She knows how to write witty people without making them impossibly funny, and she lets her characters have honest, human thoughts during important moments without ruining those moments.

At its core, this is a book about family — both chosen and biological — and what family means to us. The novel touches on the idea of a family without men multiple times, and as someone who was raised in a family without men, that idea resonated with me.

I texted my mom and my sister a picture of the page when I got to this section of dialogue:

“‘Seems like we’re doomed to be a family with no men in it.’

‘Could be worse, you could have a family with no women in it, like I grew up in.’

‘Now that’s true, that would be worse.’”

The various mother-daughter relationships in the book are all based around a deep, intrinsic connection. The daughters are independent but committed to the people they love. It’s beautiful.

Although it celebrates mothers and daughters, the book also makes a commentary that traditional Western ideas of family and community are flawed. Kingsolver explains, both explicitly and through her plot, the Cherokee approach to family in Heaven, Oklahoma.

She describes the idea that family is not just your immediate relatives, but your entire community. After reading about the love and warmth in the tribe, small nuclear family units feel ridiculous. Why would we restrict the love in our lives to just the people that live in our house?

I had one really strange experience with this book that had nothing to do with its plot — the characters’ names kept mirroring names of people in my life! One of my best friend’s unusual last names, Thibodeau, showed up, as well as my boyfriend’s last name. I started thinking I had gotten trapped in a parallel reality.

Whether the book sent me to a parallel universe or not, I thoroughly enjoyed this read. Any book that serves as a reminder of how much I love my family is a good one.

The Art Thief is a true story about one of the most successful art thieves of all time, a man named Stéphane Breitwieser. What makes Breitwieser interesting is his outlook on his thefts — he considers himself an “art liberator,” not a thief.

The psychological component of this book sets it apart from other journalistic nonfiction. It is simultaneously a psychological study of Breitweiser and a crime thriller describing his crimes. By weaving in testimonies from psychologists and court transcripts, Michael Finkel adds a deeper layer to Breitweiser’s story.

At the same time, though, he maintains the suspense and intrigue of the heists themselves. He describes the delicate details of each operation, down to the number of screws in a display case and the exact scope of a security camera.

With Finkel’s excellent journalistic prose, the book is reminiscent of The Mastermind by Evan Ratliff and any work by Patrick Radden Keefe. At times, Breitwieser feels like a character from a Mission Impossible movie, with no remorse for his crimes.

Part of the allure of Breitwieser’s story is its Bonnie and Clyde element. During his years of near-constant stealing, his girlfriend Anne-Catherine Kleinklaus was his accomplice.

Using home videos and recorded correspondence, Finkel describes their complicated relationship and its potentially problematic dynamics. He doesn’t jump to any conclusions about them, but carefully characterizes the differences between the pair.

The full title of the book is The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession, and that’s exactly what it is. By combining the personal and dangerous components of Breitwieser’s life, Finkel writes a narrative that every true crime fan should read.

Secluded Cabin Sleeps Six is a very modern thriller about DNA testing, crime, and family drama. I had low expectations of the book after the first couple chapters, but it ended up surprising me.

The prose and the style of the book were not very interesting or poetic, but something else about the book kept me reading. I read 300 pages of the book in one day, so it must not be as mediocre as I thought it was.

The suspense of the book kept me reading. I really just wanted to know what was going to happen next. I wasn’t impressed by any major literary prowess or beauty in the book, but I was taken with the suspense.

I had a professor last semester who was adamant about the dangers of reading consumptively versus reading critically. I think, though, that some books can be read consumptively with no harm. This is one of them.

Some books can just be a fun, quick read, and nothing more. I’ve been focused lately on reading books that are considered classics or have some huge amount of critical acclaim, but this book was a reminder to also read purely for fun!

I’ll try to read more books that remind me why I love reading in the first place. I think I will have to make it one of my goals for 2024.

The Awakening is Chopin’s most famous work about a woman in her 20s in late nineteenth-century Louisiana. With marital infidelity and female independence contrary to old-fashioned social norms, Chopin’s subject matter was scandalous at the time of publishing.

I read this novel as a really unique type of coming of age story. As a woman about to turn 29, Edna Pontellier “comes to life” during a summer spent by the coast. She realizes that she is trapped in a life she doesn’t want and that she doesn’t fit her role as the picture-perfect wife and mother.

I was struck by her sense of an “inner self” versus her “outer self.” She maintains a strong, vivid inner world of self expression through her painting. Her conviction on her inner life is intriguing, and made me think about my own inner self and how much of it I choose to share with the world.

Edna’s pursuits when she is left alone are very interesting to me as a modern reader, especially her lack of emphasis on perfection. She paints, but not especially well, she flirts with men she meets, and she spends days at home just ruminating.

She doesn’t seem concerned with being excellent at what she does, but finds happiness in just being independent and alive.

The universality of that feeling of freedom resonated with me. I feel like I’ve felt the exact feeling she described when I wake up early on a weekend with nothing to do and listen to music in my kitchen.

Chopin also describes the process of coming of age with specific detail. She describes the beginning of an inner world as a struggle every human being goes through. What a beautiful concept!

“The beginning of things, of a world especially, is necessarily vague, tangled, chaotic, and exceedingly disturbing. How few of us ever emerge from such a beginning! How many souls perish in its tumult!”

This passage is part of my favorite page of the book. Chopin describes mysterious inner feelings with evocative prose that really makes the reader feel what she feels.

I wrote a final paper for an English class recently about how Chopin writes female characters that are imperfect, and allows them to be. She doesn’t judge them for their immoral behavior or infidelity, but writes them as if they were men.

The Awakening was a great example of this. Edna can be cruel and inconsiderate, but Chopin allows for nuance in her character. Yes, she cheats, but Chopin shows us why she cheats.

In a patriarchal world where sexism demonstrates its presence differently every year, female independence takes various forms. This book, however, has remained popular and necessary because of its ability to make female independence universal.

The Awakening is a powerful, universal story about struggling to realize your place in the world. I’m sure I will read it again soon.