Books I read in 2019, til the end of June

In 2018, I signed up to one of those reading challenges to complete 50 books. If I could have done it in any year, it would have been 2018 given the significant amount of free time I had. Somehow I didn't even get through five books. Instead I worked on an adult colouring book and some origami, and also tried to learn python.

Come 2019, I decided I should at least try. Also, I took a friend's advice on audiobooks and realised my library had a huge collection. So may be this year, I can read half that number.

June update: I have read 19 books in the first half of the year. If I keep that up, I might actually end up reading more than 50 this year. But we all know that's unlikely. Yet, I felt I need to publish now, lest the post is too long.

Here is me documenting it - the first half of the year:

1. Origin by Dan Brown (Jan): I wanted to start 2019 with some light reading. But this is beyond light, pointless. This book wasn't expected to be spectacular in terms of writing but this time it lacked even a basic plot. Large sections of the book were used to just build up to a plot scene which has little mystery to it. And ultimately the stark truth that will "change the world", "destroy all religions" has no merit to it. I'm guessing the author wanted to write something else and then decided he can't deal with trolls. Dan Brown tries to reconcile this plot hole through one of his characters saying that the final "reveal" was softer than the first "reveal" of this "truth".

2. Red Notice by Bill Browder (Jan): I don't read nonfiction normally, but a friend recommended and I didn't know it was non fiction! Nevertheless, this is very well told, like fiction. Browder manages to capture himself in the early days of his business as an arrogant American overachiever and yet emotionally captures Magnitsky's story and his crusade that follows.

3. A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler (Feb): It's story about the members of one family, among it's three generations. It's about ordinary, good people, who try to do the right thing but have their ordinary flaws. It's about their happinesses and their struggles with life. It's as spectacular as ordinary drama gets. I can't tell you why I like this book. I can't put a finger on it. And that's why I think, it comes down to the art of story telling. It's a lot more beautiful in its ordinariness than book 15, Ordinary People.

4. Stay with Me by Ayobami Adebayo (Feb): Every female character is strong and every male weak, in this book, and yet patriarchy triumphs in '80s Nigeria. It is the story of a couple and their want of a child. Like the democracy in the country, the children are conceived yet lost, while the couple hope and pray for the best.

5. And then there were none by Agatha Christie (Feb): Old school. I can imagine it was a ground breaking story in 1939 and I might have been impressed at 14. But I wasn't swept away by Christie at 14, nor now. So mindless a story, an explanatory epilogue is the longest chapter. (I know this will angry some of my loveliest friends. Apologies!)

6. Autumn by Ali Smith (Feb): It flows like clear spring water in some untouched Highlands brook. Yet enveloping this magic, art and rhyming words, is an uncomfortably divided country, post-Brexit and the sarcasm of public services failed by austerity. A portrait of our times! That little anecdote of a passport photo is so true, across the world!

7. My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante (Mar): A wonderful childhood female friendship beautifully unfolds through the pages of books. So honest that I felt the need to reach out to my own. The struggle to rise above your circumstances and the self discovery is truly relatable. This book is purely the joy of reading.

8. Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi (Mar): A spiritual saga of a girl born with ogbanje (Igbo spirit). A nearly autobiographical glimpse into multiple personalities, self destruction and sexual orientation, all with mystical surrealism and none of the Western scepticism.

9. My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite (Mar): The title is literal, narrated by Korede about her relationship with her sister, the beautiful Ayoola. Darkly funny and sort of crazy, this short book is captivating and brilliant. Even the tiniest characters are colourful.

10. Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie (May): eerily nostradamic, it's about a British Muslim family's suffocating struggle with the identity, the Britishness and the security, of the family but also of the country, and of the British Home Secretary from Pakistan. It's hauntingly surreal.

11. Hot Milk by Deborah Levy (May): I've read it but I'm not sure what it's about. It's about a woman with a degree in anthropology but working as a barista, who is shaped by her wheelchair bound mother on account of an imaginary illness, and her absentee father. Lost and drifting, I am as is the book.

12. Normal People by Sally Rooney (May):  A tenderly written coming-of-age story of two people through their high school and college years, set in Ireland. Words are direct and crisp, and a lot is left unsaid between the characters. But a lot of subtext lies in this unsaidness.

13. Milkman by Anna Burns (May):  A wonderful read, it's a serious tale of The Troubles but the barely 16yr old girl's troubles are nonetheless all too contemporary and unsettling. It casually highlights the 'us vs them' peppered with witty sarcasm and all kinds of digressions.

14. Circe by Madeline Miller (Jun): A refreshingly traditional tale, it's a sympathetic reimagination of a Greek "evil" temptress. But seems to draw parallels from a better done version - GRRM's Cersei - the harsh father, the scorn of society, the epic love for her child.

15. Ordinary People by Diane Evans (Jun): While young people in search of love are Normal (ref: book 12, Normal People), middle aged couples losing it and themselves, in the monotony of life with children and the bitterness of unfulfilled dreams are Ordinary. The author can get poetically beautiful even on something so drab it's like a soap opera. But the descriptions of areas in London are endearing and the one about a stabbing is heart wrenching.

16. Children Of Blood And Bone by Tomi Adeyemi (Jun): Three teenagers team up to bring back magic and turn diviners (chosen ones) into magic weilding maji, while the kosidan (muggle) king of Orisha hunts them. An old story (like Harry Potter and the likes) bit told anew and refreshingly woven with Yoruba culture, making it unique.

17. Harappa by Vineet Bajpai (Jun): The fascinating story kept me going in spite of the terrible writing style, which unfortunately is inspired by Dan Brown, who himself is a poor writer. I wish to complete the trilogy but I'm already exhausted wading through unnecessary prose.

18. Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng (Jun): What does it mean to be different? A man who hates being different and a woman who yearns to be just that, create a family which is constantly haunted by this question. They forget that everyone is different. The story is spooky that you think you know someone inside out and then you wonder if you knew them at all.

19. Pachinko by Min Jin Lee (Jun): it's an epic intergenerational story of Koreans through Japanese colonisation, WWII and the partition. The first of its kind that I read and yet it's so similar to much of the colonised world that it is relatable in spite of the foreignness. The title of pachinko doesn't capture the story though, unless I'm missing something.

...continuing my endeavour...
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