I've always loved fiction for as long as I can remember. To me, characters, albeit imaginary ones, speak more truth than the surface-level information and knowledge I get from most nonfiction books. As a kid I fell in love with them while trying to improve my English. I started reading more because I heard that reading improves your linguistic abilities. Then as I grew up, and I don't know if it's just me, it seems like people respect you more if you read more nonfiction than mere literature, as it implies you've acquired more real-world, practical and applicable knowledge rather than just reading for pleasure. I gave in to that impression and gradually lost interest in books at all.
This year, however, has been the year that I embraced my true self. I made a simple goal of reading 12 books of any kind to fall in love with books again, and I ended up with 99% fiction. As I said, reading was one way I take pleasure, and I find great joy in watching stories unfold and journeying with particular characters as they go through highs and lows in order to experience change. Like a cup of good tea, it's been a way for me to unwind and loosen the tangled thoughts in my head. It takes my mind off myself and watching how another character as flawed as I am faces his or her challenges. I'm glad I've taken the plunge into worlds that only exist in the mind once again, because as Einstein famously said, imagination is more important than knowledge. Reading into characters deeply has made me a more considerate and empathetic person than I was a year ago.
Here are the pieces of literature (plus one nonfiction) I've read this year, listed in reading chronological order:
The Bookseller by Cynthia Swanson
This book was a great companion as I enter the married life. The protagonist, Kitty, invites you to ask yourself the question all 30-something women eventually ask themselves: A content single life, with great friendship and a satisfying career, or a happily married life with beautiful kids, minus the friendship and career part? If you choose the first you'll dream about the latter, and vice versa. Which one is your dream life? Because you can't have it all, and though Kitty' story took place way before Facebook and Instagram was around, this book shows even if a woman appears to live such picture-perfect life, there are pieces in the dream you'd wish you don't have to live with.
All Marketers Are Liars: The Power of Telling Authentic Stories in a Low-Trust World by Seth Godin
Is there a book Seth pens that isn't remarkable? Though the overall message is simple - that story sells and that authenticity is key, Seth explains how in today's multilayered, Internet-driven, well-connected world, ripping people off just doesn't cut it anymore. You don't just tell but actually live your story. It's your job now as a marketer to earn your buyer's trust, to gain access to their worldviews, to show how you can change their lives for the better, and to keep tweaking what you have to offer until it feels as natural as humanly possible. The tools, position, and authority of a storyteller are already in your hands. It's all in how you frame your story.
13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl by Mona Awad
To any girl who's suffered body image issues of any form, this one hits it home. Lizzie/Liz/Beth/Elizabeth a.k.a. the fat girl continues to reinvent herself in various body sizes throughout the book, from being the invisible one in her teenage years all the way through her outwardly happy adulthood, captured in 13 painfully graphic vignettes. From dealing with the double standard she had to face from her mother to her marriage problems in spite of being with a loving husband, Awad perfectly illustrates culture's obsession with image and how it's directly warping the minds of young women. It's precisely because our sense of self-worth as a woman has become so attached to physical appearance that I've grown uncomfortable commenting anything about women's shape or size objectively, not even my own, but that's a story for another day.
The Remedy by Suzanne Young
Lord knows how much I love this book ohmygawd I can't even. This is probably the best book (and series) I impulsively gotten myself into. At the time I bought this, I was suffering a depression relapse right after a traumatic circumstance took place. They were some of the worst episodes, even after a couple of years in remission. This book is about that - repressing all your natural feelings and forcing yourself to become somebody you're not. It's the first of the two prequels of the Program series, which I wasn't familiar with until I got this book. In this duology, which you can read as standalones btw, our heroine is Quinlan, who gets paid living as someone else for a couple of weeks until people get over their pain and grief over the loss of their loved one. They call people like her closers, people who provide closure to the dead chapters of their lives. But how do you prevent losing yourself along the way when your whole life is but a sum of so many other identities?
The Epidemic by Suzanne Young
Following The Remedy is The Epidemic, where Quinn started off having just learned that her entire life was a lie. Tons of betrayals later, her initial intention was only to find out who she truly was, but with so many people spiraling down into their darkholes and quickly killing themselves before her eyes, every step of her way becomes a painful discovery of the terrifying world that awaits. It's a whole messed-up world full of pain and sorrow, which gets creepier but eerily realistic later on in the Program series, where it's morally acceptable to erase targeted memories to control the suicide contagion. But when you're as crushed as the characters in the book, you can see how difficult it is just to imagine living a full life again, and you'll do anything, anything that remotely resembles the very thing you've loved and lost. Sooo good.
Counting by 7s by Holly Goldberg Sloan
The minute I finished reading this book, I immediately moved it to my ALL-TIME FAVORITE shelf. I actually cried at one point because it's so moving. The good news is, they're making a film out of it!!! Quvenzhane Wallis, who starred in the most recent adaptation of Annie (2014), is rumored to be playing the coveted role as Willow Chance. Stripped off her geniosity, her habit of counting by 7s and a penchant for gardening and medicine, Willow is just a 12-year-old girl who longs to connect with others but only gets it from her adoptive parents, both of whom died in a car crash early on in the book. For any girl it's hard enough to lose your parents twice, but this girl is so weird, so brave, so endearing and most important of all, so honest about her grief that she changed the course of the lives of those around her. By the end of the book, Sloan has totally redefined what being a family is all about.
The Program by Suzanne Young
Enter the new world run by The Program (after events of The Remedy and The Epidemic), the only proven cure to depression and America's closest answer to decreasing the suicide epidemic. They are always watching your every movement, and the briefest sign of helplessness could send you to their facility, where memories that left you bitter are going to be erased and fractions of your life will be gone forever. After losing her brother and best friends, Sloane isn't going to show the slightest bit of grief. Try as she might, all hell breaks loose when they took the one person she can be herself with. Each chapter was so suspenseful, once you pick up the story you won't stop.
Playing with the Grown-Ups by Sophie Dahl
If you're looking for a stylish read with a sprinkle of drama, this is the one. It's a coming-of-age story running simultaneously with the slow, gradual descent of another coming-of-age story - that of Kitty and that of Marina, her exceptionally beautiful mother, respectively. I could feel for Kitty the entire time, her sincere admiration for her mother during her childhood in the English countryside to the confusion what with the sudden adoption of various lifestyles, I could just imagine Kitty's major readjustments whenever Marina dragged her from place to place on a whim. As her reckless mother goes through strings of suitors, Kitty follows her example until normal teenage life becomes unmanageable. Toward the end you'll witness the perfect exhibit for bad parenting, having learned the burdens an undersupervised 16-year-old girl had to carry around all her life, and her commendable courage to rise above it all and finally decides to grow up.
The Treatment by Suzanne Young
If you have the choice to retrieve the very memories that brought you to a downward spiral, memories that cause bad dreams and develop lifelong trauma, would you retrieve them? This notion is central to the plot following Sloane and James's messy escape from the Program. Though they made it out, huge chunks of their memories are still missing. But there's one thing that could answer all their questions, one pill that, amidst all the lies and secrets surrounding them, could piece every memory together to make sense of who they really are today: The Treatment. Problem is, you could die if you aren't mentally strong to begin with, and that there's only one dose. It's both a tragic love story and a major reawakening of medical ethics.
The Recovery by Suzanne Young
I installed the Kobo app on my phone just to buy this 50-page novella. I grew curious about the backstory of this one character that annoys the hell out of me throughout the series, and because of this book I've been able to empathize with him. It's basically his redemption journey months following the aftermath of The Program. If you've ever felt like you don't deserve forgiveness for the bizarre things you've done in the past, Realm, the hero of this book, shows that the people around you may be kinder and more merciful than you think.
Maybe Not by Colleen Hoover
I only learned this is a sequel to Hoover's bestselling "Maybe Someday" after finishing the novella, so I was reading it as a standalone. It was only 130 pages long, pure brain candy if you're looking for modern romance slash quickie. Fairly predictable plot between a broke boy who frustrates me with his overconfidence and an annoyingly stubborn girl who loves yelling at people, doesn't trust anyone, and guaranteed to get on your nerves. Girl moves in as a temporary roommate and guy instantly gets a hard-on. Guy and girl had lots of sex, lots and lots of it, and then love blossoms.
The Fifth Gospel by Ian Caldwell
This is the book that got me into papal fiction. Bought it because I knew it was about the famous Shroud of Turin, and I wanted to learn more about it, so I was expecting Dan Brown-esque thriller, but got myself more. In fact it was nothing like Robert Langdon. This is ultimately a story about family, love, sacrifice, forgiveness and redemption that is core to the Christian message. The Andreou brothers, like their father, yearn to heal the Roman-Orthodox schism once and for all, and they jumped at the opportunity when their mutual friend Ugo Nogara rediscovered the Diatessaron, world's first gospel harmony and considered a canonical text for up to two centuries BCE. The brilliance of this novel lies in its relevant subplots scoping from the personal to the universal that are carefully interwoven with theological truths. Caldwell provided little room for loopholes and have strictly adhered to the facts and background information, so dense yet easy-to-follow that you don't need to know anything about Catholicism at all to enjoy this book.
Miracle at the Higher Grounds Cafe by Max Lucado
Ever faced the direst of life circumstances that you think the world is conspiring against you? Well, that's what I was thinking when I grabbed this book. I was looking for a character development I could pattern myself into, only to be reminded by Lucado that our Heavenly Father is still under control. This book follows Chelsea Chambers' quest to make it out on her own during a "trial separation" from her NFL superstar husband. She decided to reopen her granny's old-fashioned coffee shop, and by the looks of it, her situation seemed impossible. With the entire family savings account the husband spent plus the discovery of $86,000 debt her mother left behind, it's going to take a miracle just to pay the bills and feed her two kids. Let me just retract a bit here - even for a believer, I feel this book contains too many miracles for me to handle. I cannot imagine experiencing such focused attention from the Creator of the universe if it happened to me, though to be fair Chelsea's story was told in multiple perspectives (including from heaven's viewpoint), so her situation made sense. Then again, no eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no human mind has conceived the things God plans for those who love him.
What books have you read this year?
Currently reading:
The World According to Anna by Jostein Gaarder
Love, Stace
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