Love a good end of year book list! I’m also a fan of any human heart, I reread it this year and enjoyed it just as much the second time. Will be adding the new confessions to my list. My book of the year is Bewilderment by Richard Powers, loved it.
The most recent three are very much 20th century writers but what writing.
One flew out of the Cuckoos nest by Ken Kesey.-Othering of the mentally ill under the supervision of starched Nurse Ratchet. The narrator’s stream of consciousness state clearly influenced by the author’s experience of psychedelics.
Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote. Crystalline prose.
The Inheritors- William Golding. A mob of Neanderthals meeting their doom in the form of Homo Sapiens. A reflection on another way of being that we have determinedly veered away from. Possibly one of the last century’s best novels?
Self improvement literature must wait for another life.
It is on my list but I do have to read some more current stuff first. I seem to unconsciously slide towards mid century writers just as I have a bias for music from certain decades and genres. It’s a big world out there but so tempting to only pick from the trees I know.
This was the first Golding I have read and now do I see what all the fuss was about.
I have two very different faves of the year. The first is Plantains and Our Becoming by Melania Luisa Marte. I've read and heard A LOT of poetry these past couple years as I get back into writing. Melania stood out because she's an amazing performer (her piece "Afro-Latina" was spotlighted by Instagram), and her poems bring a reality to concepts that get talked a lot but may not always be represented well: intersectionality, colonialism, generational trauma, and identity. I learned a lot from her poems.
For something completely different, I'm currently obsessed with Heaven Official's Blessing by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu . It's a Chinese fantasy webnovel that has been adapted into a comic and a cartoon. It's a queer romance with ghosts and gods, and I'm learning a lot about Chinese mythology, which very different from Western or even Egyptian.
Love a good end of year book list! I’m also a fan of any human heart, I reread it this year and enjoyed it just as much the second time. Will be adding the new confessions to my list. My book of the year is Bewilderment by Richard Powers, loved it.
The most recent three are very much 20th century writers but what writing.
One flew out of the Cuckoos nest by Ken Kesey.-Othering of the mentally ill under the supervision of starched Nurse Ratchet. The narrator’s stream of consciousness state clearly influenced by the author’s experience of psychedelics.
Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote. Crystalline prose.
The Inheritors- William Golding. A mob of Neanderthals meeting their doom in the form of Homo Sapiens. A reflection on another way of being that we have determinedly veered away from. Possibly one of the last century’s best novels?
Self improvement literature must wait for another life.
It is on my list but I do have to read some more current stuff first. I seem to unconsciously slide towards mid century writers just as I have a bias for music from certain decades and genres. It’s a big world out there but so tempting to only pick from the trees I know.
This was the first Golding I have read and now do I see what all the fuss was about.
I have two very different faves of the year. The first is Plantains and Our Becoming by Melania Luisa Marte. I've read and heard A LOT of poetry these past couple years as I get back into writing. Melania stood out because she's an amazing performer (her piece "Afro-Latina" was spotlighted by Instagram), and her poems bring a reality to concepts that get talked a lot but may not always be represented well: intersectionality, colonialism, generational trauma, and identity. I learned a lot from her poems.
For something completely different, I'm currently obsessed with Heaven Official's Blessing by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu . It's a Chinese fantasy webnovel that has been adapted into a comic and a cartoon. It's a queer romance with ghosts and gods, and I'm learning a lot about Chinese mythology, which very different from Western or even Egyptian.