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I declared this one of my best reads of 2023, even though I hadn’t quite finished it on December 31. But when I finally did a month later, I had no regrets about the choice. It’s a really phenomenal book — a brilliant examination of contemporary culture, but also a really impressively balanced blend ofContinueContinue reading “Doppelganger, Naomi Klein”

I’m not entirely sure if this is the best or the worst thing to read if you’re feeling depressed, but it is a remarkable book. If you’ve ever had that feeling, when looking out on airplane window, or from the top of a very very tall building, or a mountain, of a simultaneous detachment andContinueContinue reading “Orbital, Samantha Harvey”

I went through a phase where I read a lot of grief memoirs. I think it started because I had seen Sonyali Deraniyagala’s Wave recommended as one of the best books of the year, and picked it up without knowing anything about it. I read it in less than 24 hours, so gripping did IContinueContinue reading “Notes on Grief, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie”

Recently, I was a guest on the podcast Philosophy Talk, in an episode where they give out awards for the Best Movies of 2023. I was there to talk about Anatomy of a Fall, which I thought was an absolutely brilliant film. I managed to contrive a way to talk about what I think isContinueContinue reading “Anatomy of a Fall”

This is an unabashedly woo woo (or as a friend of mine puts it, “West coast”) book about unlocking your creative potential. Clearly, part of the project is to provide some therapy to people who might not be willing or able to go to actual therapy, so there’s a lot of stuff about working throughContinueContinue reading “The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron”

I always feel like a complete novice, reading poetry. I feel like I don’t know how to read it properly. It is hard for me to slow down and be present and focused on such a very small block of writing where everything is happening right there, unlike in a novel, where things unfold graduallyContinueContinue reading “Facts for Visitors, Srikanth Reddy”

This is slightly embarrassing to admit but: the targeted ads on insta showed me a sweater that I immediately coveted, an image of a cat biting someone’s hand. I put it on my Christmas list, and Santa kindly delivered it, but in the meantime, I also looked up more information about it, and located theContinueContinue reading “Junji Ito’s Cat Diary: Yon & Mu”

I probably wouldn’t have read this on my own, but my book club wanted to read it, so off I went. I had really mixed feelings about it while reading, and then the more we discussed it, the angrier I got. And then examining my anger, I turned into a cat chasing its own tail,ContinueContinue reading “This Other Eden, Paul Harding”

I have a strange relationship to Han Kang’s writing. I read The Vegetarian because so many people said it was amazing, and I really didn’t like it very much at all. Then, thinking it might be worth giving her another try, I listened to an audiobook of Human Acts, and thought it was really excellent.ContinueContinue reading “Greek Lessons, Han Kang, tr. Deborah Smith and Emily Yae Won”

I often do a Favorite Things I Read list and Best of Books Published This Year list, but this year it ended up making more sense to do just combine the two, because there was so much overlap. I was going to up it to a Top 12, but it turns out that PicStitch onlyContinueContinue reading “My Year of Reading, 2023”