Welcome to the first issue of Recommended Reading! I am so grateful to all of you for subscribing and so excited to be kicking this off for real and seeing where it takes us.
In future issues, I’ll draw largely from what I’ve been reading in the time since I sent out the previous newsletter, but for this inaugural issue I thought I would look back on all the books I’ve read thus far in 2020 and pull out some standout favorites. Social isolation has meant that I’ve read more than ever this year, so it was a little hard to winnow my list down, and this issue is therefore a little longer than will be typical — consider it a kickoff bonus!
Cheers,
Zaneta
What I’ve been reading
Reading Gideon the Ninth was the most fun I’ve had all year and yes, in these quarantimes the bar is very low, but that shouldn’t take anything away from how good this book is. It’s so good and also so hard to explain. It’s a closed circle mystery about odd-couple necromancers in space with truly original worldbuilding, a sprawling cast of standout characters and a narrator — Gideon — who is one of the most entertaining voices I’ve read in a long time. Please just read it. And then read it’s sequel Harrow the Ninth, a very different but still fantastic book, and contact me immediately so we can speculate about what might happen in the final book of the series, Alecto the Ninth, which comes out next year.
I didn’t expect Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close by Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman to be a book I wouldn’t be able to put down or stop thinking about after I’d finished it. Sow and Friedman co-host the hit podcast Call Your Girlfriend but you don’t need to know anything about either of them to get a lot out of this book which is not just an honest and funny, account of the ups and downs of their own friendship, but also a thesis on the power and importance of meaningful platonic relationships. In these times where we’re all separated from friends, it was a deeply reassuring read that also left me with some useful tips and lessons on how to prioritize and nurture my own friendships (which, if you’re interested in, you should also check out Rachel Miller’s The Art of Showing Up).
Megha Majumdar’s debut novel A Burning does not pull any punches. It’s not a long novel but it’s weighty, painting a vivid picture of contemporary India through the perspective of three characters whose lives become entangled into a web of violence, politics, and tragedy. At the center of the novel is a young Muslim woman named Jivan, who is is falsely accused of collaborating with a terrorist after posting a careless comment on social media and whose imprisonment and trial drive the plot of the book forward. The fact that what happens to Jivan is so plausible in modern India, and indeed the wider world, is what makes the novel so compelling and given the recent arrest of Umar Khalid, it’s perhaps more timely than ever.
Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson is the story of a young woman hired to take care of two children who burst into flames when they’re upset. It’s a bizarre premise but one that Wilson grounds in so much matter-of-fact detail that it soon ceases to be the weirdest part of a book that’s at once biting and sincere, a wry and thoughtful tale of growing up, found families, and dubious friendships.
Alicia Elliott’s collection of essays, A Mind Spread Out on the Ground, is probably the most powerful and heartfelt book I’ve read this year. There have been a lot of incredible essay collections by women released recently, and Elliott’s deserves to be ranked among the very best of them for her beautiful and thoughtful exploration of a multitude of topics such as love, poverty, mental health, legacy, and oppression rooted in her experience growing up between Indigenous and white communities.
I spent the first ten years of my life living in Oman so I was really excited about Jokha Alharthi’s Celestial Bodies, the first book by a female Omani author to be translated into English and the first novel originally written in Arabic to ever win the Man Booker International Prize. You don’t have to have any connection to Oman to be drawn into Alharthi’s imaginative family saga, which follows three sisters: Mayya, who marries into a rich family after a heartbreak; Asma, who marries for duty; and Khawla, who rejects all suitors as she waits for the return of her beloved from Canada. Filled with dynamic characters from every level of Omani society, it’s an encompassing portrait that, as the chair of the Booker Prize noted, “starts in a room and ends in a world.”
Lindsay Ellis’s debut Axiom’s End is in many ways a straightforward first-contact novel filled with excellently plotted adventures and some great action sequences, but what sets it apart is how it responds to the question of how to make sense of what we don’t understand. Set in 2007, it’s a captivating alternate history that seems eerily plausible due to it’s deft realism. The book has been compared to Stranger Things and Transformers, but what it reminded me of the most was Arrival in the way that centers the idea of connection and looks at the gradual learning of an alien civilization from both the human and alien perspective.
I really love N.K. Jeminsin and I really love New York City so it’s probably not that surprising that I loved The City We Became, an urban fantasy novel that’s the first in Jeminsin’s new Great Cities series. In it, a group of diverse New Yorkers — avatars of the different boroughs — must come together to fend off an eldritch city-eating evil that threatens the soul of the city. It’s an imaginative and unique story but also one that’s rooted in Jeminsin’s love and knowledge of her city, and which ultimately serves as a celebration of the power and enduring spirit of its people. The book’s villain may be more fantastical than the coronavirus, but it’s still an excellent rebuttal to all those who are bemoaning “the death of New York” right now.
Shorter reads
If you’re looking for a quicker read, here are some poems, articles and essays I’ve enjoyed lately:
This account, which translates and shares lesser known stories, art and ideas from the subcontinent has become one of my favorite follows on Instagram. I felt like this poem, “Real Kinship,” by the 15th century Telugu poet Madiki Singanna was the perfect invocation for issue one of this newsletter.
It’s aggressively on-theme, but I’ve really enjoyed the Atlantic’s ongoing Friendship Files series where each installment features an interview with two or more friends that explores the history and significance of their relationship. Some of my particular favorites have been this piece on four Dutch teens on a study-at-sea program who were forced by the pandemic to sail home and this story about how four men named Paul O’Sullivan found each other on Facebook and formed a band.
I learned so much from this incredibly well-researched Atlas Obscura piece about the foods of the Bengal Famine of 1943, how British colonial policy starved millions of Bengalis, and why food histories don't concern themselves with stories of hunger.
In this excerpt from How We Go Home: Voices from Indigenous North America, Jasilyn Charger, a Land Defender and community organizer youth advocate for the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe tells the story of being at the historic Standing Rock protests and her own journey to activism. It’s a powerful story and I’m looking forward to reading the full collection when it comes out next month.
I really enjoyed this wide-ranging, thoughtful profile of Michaela Coel by Durga Chew Bose. I’ve been a fan of Coel’s work since she was by far and away the most interesting guest on a chat show that I happened to get free tickets to watch live, and I’m convinced she’s one of the most unique and interesting voices making art right now. If you haven’t already, definitely watch I May Destroy You and this profile of Michaela by E. Alex Jung from earlier this year is also absolutely worth a read.
Subscriber recommendations
This week’s personalized recommendations are for Lily, who is looking for a book that’s “Sweeping, beautiful prose, historical, witty.” With that in mind, my top picks for Lily are:
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee is the absolute definition of an epic, sweeping historical read. It follows four generations of a Korean family and the struggles they face as they fight to control their destiny as immigrants in 20th-century Japan. Despite the scale of the novel, the varied characters are also clearly and fully realized. You never stand the chance of losing track of who’s who, as can happen in other similarly sprawling books. The style is simple but incredibly moving and I can guarantee that you’ll be swept up into the story with very little effort.
I think Akwaeke Emezi is undoubtedly one of the most talented and unique voices in fiction and would recommend both their debut Freshwater and their most recent release The Death of Vivek Oji unreservedly. Both novels are deeply personal and draw from the author’s lgbo and Tamil roots to build stories that are achingly tender and raw. Freshwater, a semi-autobiographical coming-of-age story, is more tightly focused compared to The Death of Vivek Oji, which is a murder-mystery more focused on the life of its title character. However, both are concerned with similar questions of selfhood and embodiment and bring the same care and beauty to their treatment of characters who are rarely centered in fiction.
I’ve always enjoyed Zadie Smith’s work, but I think Swing Time might be some of her best writing. The plot of the novel is filled with twists and turns as it follows two young brown girls from North West London who meet in a community dance class and end up on very different paths. Yet, the power in the book comes from the way in which Smith weaves the intimate with the global throughout, bringing in questions about international aid and social mobility alongside reflections on relativity, identity and belonging.
As a reminder, I’ll be sharing curated reading recommendations for a random subscriber every issue so if you’d like to put your name in the draw, please fill out this quick form!
I want to hear from you!
If you decide to read anything I’ve recommended — let me know what you think! And if you have any thoughts or feedback on this issue, or reading recommendations you’d like to share with me, I’d love to hear those too. Feel free to comment below or email me directly at zanetapereira@hotmail.com
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Soooo many good recommendations, not sure whether to bookmark the page, star the newsletter, or some version of both :)