reading
a list of books i've read (started june 2022)
- currently reading: human acts - han kang
- 03/23/24 girl town - casey nowak (re-read) funny moment when i opened the table of contents and saw there were 5 stories cuz i only remembered there being 3. the one with the robot boyfriend is still the best (it's not close).
- 03/13/24 the absolute at large - karel capek fun premise and setup, but as it develops the satire becomes increasingly unfocused, incoherent, ineffective. by the end it's just farce.
- 03/11/24 familiar face - michael deforge ✰ who else is depicting alienation, desire, digitally mediated life etc in such a whimsical and soul-stirring way...
- 03/10/24 neotenica - joon oluchi lee file under queer lit about "straight" people—a fun, stylish novella that, as one goodreads reviewer puts it, "occasionally overreaches."
- 03/01/24 the storyteller: tales out of loneliness - walter benjamin mm dunno what i expected but didn't have the patience for this. eyes glazed over and i skimmed a lot. maybe for a hardcore benjamin enthusiast who wants to read everything he wrote / don't mind sifting through a lot of disjointed odds and ends.
- 02/27/24 at dusk - hwang sok-yong lukewarm, mostly. it's not badly written or anything, it just feels.. not particularly original, in its themes, emotional notes... the soap opera twist. park minwoo's present-day narration
- (didn't finish) the posthumous memoirs of bras cubas - joaquim maria machao de assis just couldn't get into it at this moment in time. maybe one day. not in a rush tho.
- 02/07/24 terminal boredom - izumi suzuki similar and yet disappointing in comparison to hit parade of tears, which also had its share of clunkers but left a much better overall impression. i think i liked fewer than half the stories here, and while it's not entirely skippable, there just wasn't much to be excited over.
- 01/31/24 a scanner darkly - philip k dick ✰ about surveillance, drug addiction, psychosis, an atmosphere of paranoia and conspiracy that feels so endemic to american life, as much now as then. antihumanist and intensely personal, even sentimental. some rly beautiful, twisting writing, esp in the final third. my favorite of his so far, one of my favorite scifi novels in general, but to enjoy this you also have to endure the casual misogyny and racism of its characters. not a universal recommendation, but if you have the stomach for it, it leaves a deep impression.
- 01/23/24 the wrong end of the telescope - rabih alameddine ✰ beautiful, special book. i cried real tears. (the scene with the orangutan was maybe a little on the nose.) don't kill me but.. i was reminded of vonnegut. yes, maybe in general (the balance of humor, cruelty and tenderness; maybe the pacing reminded me of cat's cradle specifically), but definitely in specific moves: the way that the not-really-but-kind-of-authorial-self-insert character is written, and even how that character talks about different ideas he's had for books to write. anyway, yes, love this book—so capacious, and so timely. i borrowed it from the library but i'd like to get my own copy.
- 01/07/24 nineteen - ancco
- 01/07/24 woodcutters - thomas bernhard look at these people! they think they're so fucking important, but get this: they're not! they think they're so good at art, but no, actually their art is dogshit! old crank excoriates his former art world acquaintances, reaches terminal levels of haterdom..! ok, there's definitely more to this book than that. i appreciated the richness of the narration, its twists and repetitions and repetitions and contradictions.. however, i think, barring some few nice musings here n there, the "analyses" of people and society and art etc were often just not very compelling or interesting to me. considering how much this book is lauded, i was expecting to get more from or feel more about it? if this book is any indication i don't think i'm cut out to be a bernhard stan, wade through the mire for the parts i find worthwhile.
- 12/28/23 nevada - imogen binnie ✰ last book of 2023! 90 pgs in: unfortunately pretty relatable, as in, the narrator's processing of thoughts/emotions feels very familiar, but it's also a bit obnoxiously white at times. i probably would have fixated on this a lot if i read it 10 years ago. still might. after finishing: the narrative voice gets kind of grating after a while. the whole 2nd half, i didn't really enjoy. in another universe it was excised and edited down to be a standalone short story. but i understand what she was going for..?
- 11/28/23 chorus of mushrooms - hiromi goto hard for it not to feel a bit dated and corny now, but still has some magic to it! fond of, if not in love with.
- 11/19/23 stone fruit - lee lai ✰ lovely graphic novel about rough feelings. would recommend in general!
- (didn't finish) - korea's place in the sun: a modern history - bruce cumings will finish one day
- 10/07/23 moms - ma yeong-shin meh.
- 09/24/23 becoming japanese - leo ching important academic book for understanding how taiwanese identity was formed under japanese colonial rule. sort of want to reread this cuz i've struggled to articulate its arguments to ppl, but also it's fairly niche.
- 09/16/23 roaming - jillian and mariko tamaki fresh out of their first yr in college, two old friends and one newer friend take a trip to da big apple. their relationships w one another go in all sorts of directions... cute, a little heart breaking, beautifully drawn.
- 09/07/23 hit parade of tears - suzuki izumi ✰ one of my favorites in recent memory. takes surreal / supernatural premises but gives them an extremely down-to-earth treatment, where it's like, just good stories about bizarre shit happening to "normal" people.
- 09/06/23 haunting the korean diaspora: shame, secrecy, and the forgotten war - grace m cho ✰ probably a must-read for engaging with the korean war & the korean diaspora in the us. i fucking hate america.
- 08/28/23 the membranes - chi ta-wei (tr. ari heinrich) a little let down after how hyped up this was. like as a cultural object, cool! and it had good elements to it, but actually reading it left me cold. i remember feeling put off by the constant references?? idk.
- 08/19/23 a body beneath - michael deforge i'm so glad mdf kept at it, because i do not like his early stuff, and all his more recent stuff that i've read rules (starting w big kids from 2016). this book is his early stuff, and he even says in the intro that this stuff feels so bad in retrospect. part of that for me is it feels unrelentingly grotesque, meanspirited, mb misantrhopic? in a way that i can't fully get with, and his later work contains so much more than that (and also just love the directions his style has gone in since then).
- 08/17/23 palimpsest: documents from a korean adoption - lisa wool-rim sjöblom ✰
- 08/13/23 intimate empire: collaboration and colonial modernity in korea and japan - nayoung aimee kwon
- 07/28/23 under the black umbrella: voices from colonial korea, 1910-1945 - hildi kang
- 07/20/23 the drowned world - jg ballard
- 07/09/23 speedboat - renata adler
- 07/03/23 harrow - joy williams ✰ about ecological collapse. no shortage of good joy williams sentences here, though it's not lightning in a bottle like the changeling either. it's angry, bleak, funny in a bone-dry way. liked it but can't say i'm hungry for a reread.
- 06/21/23 exhalation - ted chiang uneven. can't think of one i liked unreservedly, but first (time travel) and last (parallel realities) were probably the best? the one about digital pets had its moments, but otherwise felt so unnecessarily bloated, so much musing.. i can appreciate trying to explore a concept as fully as possible, but the returns, eventually, diminish. (not to mention the very uncompelling relationship drama threaded into it.)
- 06/01/23 skye papers - jamika ajalon
- 05/30/23 pizza girl - jean kyoung frazier
- 05/19/23 vampires in the lemon grove - karen russell
- 05/09/23 the word for world is forest - ursula k. le guin
- 05/04/23 the museum of unconditional surrender - dubravka ugresic (tr. celia hawkesworth) ✰ very good.
- 05/03/23 time shelter - georgy gospodinov (tr. angela rodel)
- 04/19/23 the children's bible - lydia millet
- 04/14/23 one! hundred! demons! - lynda barry ✰
- 04/08/23 krapp's last tape - samuel beckett
- 03/31/23 the wall - marlen haushofer ✰
- 03/23/23 a country of ghosts - margaret killjoy ✰ big shoes to fill for someone writing explicitly anarchist spec fic, sometimes the characters in this book are straight up just like "you've never heard of anarchism? well here's what it means." in general though i must've enjoyed it (enough to have given it a star after finishing it, it seems) and it probably would be a good thing for some kid who has never heard of anarchism to read it. (also appreciate how the author goes over some of the book's shortcomings in the paratext.)
- 03/15/23 sorry to disrupt the peace - patrick cottrell ✰
- 03/02/23 annihilation - jeff vandermeer ✰ i get why this took off!
- 02/19/23 dear cyborgs - eugene lim ✰
- 02/13/23 city of illusions - ursula k. le guin ✰
- 02/07/23 planet of exile - ursula k. le guin ✰
- 02/02/23 rocannon's world - ursula k. le guin ✰
- 01/27/23 office of historical corrections - danielle evans ✰
- 01/17/23 matigari - ngũgĩ wa thiong'o ✰
- 01/11/23 activities of daily living - lisa hsiao chen ✰
- 01/01/23 heaven - mieko kawakami
- 12/30/22 kakukaku shikajika - akiko higashimura ✰
- 12/25/22 attrib and other stories - eley williams
- 12/15/22 bliss montage - ling ma
- 11/25/22 buried child - sam shepard
- 11/23/22 long live the tribe of fatherless girls - t kira madden ✰
- 11/09/22 the changeling - joy williams ✰
- 10/30/22 the defense - vladimir nabokov
- 10/25/22 voyage to arcturus - david lindsay ✰
- 10/08/22 locos - felipe alfau
- 10/01/22 things that fall from the sky - kevin brockmeier
- 09/29/22 prison memoirs of a japanese woman - kaneko fumiko ✰
- 09/04/22 otaku: japan's database animals - hiroki azuma
- 08/30/22 through the arc of the rain forest - karen tei yamashita ✰
- 08/17/22 scattered all over the earth - yoko tawada
- 08/11/22 do androids dream of electric sheep - philip k dick
- 08/07/22 sing to it - amy hempel
- 08/05/22 flowers of mold* - ha seong-nan (didn't finish)
- 08/01/22 the hole - hiroko oyamada
- 07/29/22 the housekeeper and the professor - yoko ogawa
- 07/27/22 laura dean keeps breaking up with me - m tamaki & r valero-o'connell
- 07/26/22 galapagos - kurt vonnegut ✰
- 07/24/22 lesser known monsters of the 21st century - kim fu ✰
- 07/16/22 boundless - jillian tamaki
- 07/17/22 tokyo tarareba girls - akiko higashimura ✰
- 07/13/22 the lonesome bodybuilder - yukiko motoya
- 07/08/22 the sirens of titan - kurt vonnegut ✰
- 07/04/22 tokyo ueno station - yu miri
- 07/02/22 the lathe of heaven - ursula le guin
- 06/30/22 weather - jenny offill ✰
- 06/28/22 supermutant magic academy - jillian tamaki ✰
- 06/24/22 convenience store woman - sayaka murata
- 06/18/22 the maze of transparencies - karen an-hwei lee
- 06/14/22 the factory* - hiroko oyamada (didnt finish)
- 06/12/22 search history - eugene lim ✰
- 06/03/22 there's no such thing as an easy job - kikuko tsumura
2023
2022