In no particular order, these dozen titles made a strong impression on me with some of them making it into my ‘All-time Favourites’ shelf, an honour which the writers on this list will be delighted to know (or not).

Added To All-time Favourites

1. Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson

Set in a sleepy town in Idaho where life moves at snail’s pace, orphaned sisters Ruthie and Lucille find themselves under the guardianship of their eccentric and unconventional aunt, Sylvie. An erstwhile drifter, Sylvie adjusts to the responsibilities of parenthood for the sake of her nieces yet never graces them with the parental authority that society expects. Life is slow and the town brims with a current of loneliness; there is not much to do except to watch time flow and nature turn through the seasons. People either throb with the desire to escape or lull themselves into the quietness of life.

Ruthie and Lucille grow up in different ways – Ruthie embracing the isolation and periphery of her existence, and Lucille “rebelling” to blend in with the boundaries of a civilized and social life. As the choices of the sisters leads them to different paths in life, questions abound:

– What is the price of conformity in society?

– Does society grant women the freedom to be “strange” or “unusual”?

– Can someone else decide what is best for us?

– Should someone else have the power or authority to decide the same?

2. Dancer From The Dance by Andrew Holleran

Anthony Malone abandons his promising life as a lawyer to pursue what he has hidden from his family – his love of men. Walking into the decadence of the cruising scene in New York in the 1970s, throbbing (pun intended) with abandon, lust, and freedom, he finds himself under the wing of the wise-cracking, speed-addicted, worldly social butterfly drag queen, Sutherland, and slips into hedonism while maintaining a desire to find love.

Across saunas, discos, parks, beaches, and in seedy homes, passing from man to man, almost insatiable in his hunger, Malone loses sight of the transience of the scene and sees himself transform from an eager-eyed youth hopelessly chasing love to a jaded queer running away from life in the arms of the next person. Cut off from his family and old life, he has no option but to submerge himself so deeply into the scene that he forgets about life beyond it. We follow his Greek myth-esque descent into carnality as he numbs himself with inane sex.

A damning portrayal of the hollowness of the pursuit of chasing youth and beauty and how it can end up becoming a grasp at something fleeting and forever unattainable.

3. Mother Mary Comes To Me by Arundhati Roy

When this memoir was announced early this year, it was the first time that I pre-ordered something. I travelled halfway across the city to collect my copy the day after it was released, and callously abandoned what I was reading to pick this up. Arundhati Roy is a fabulous writer, and the opportunity to find out what made her the person that she is was a no-brainer bookish bait for me.

This is a fairly chronological retelling of Arundhati’s childhood, which acted as fodder for ‘The God of Small Things’. She takes us through life under her mercurial mother who is a complicated figure, to put it mildly. Mary Roy was a formidable woman in the eyes of society – an opinionated, headstrong divorcee who launched her own school and catapulted herself into financial independence with an iron fist. She was also pivotal in filing and winning a Supreme Court case that brought equal rights for Syrian Christian women in India on matters of inheritance. Yet, she had a notorious temper that cut her own children to pieces. The woman who taught the children of others how to stand up for themselves left no opportunity to remind her own of their numerous faults. What do we make of such a complex character?

This was undoubtedly one of the best books of the year, written at the confluence of memory, identity, and literature. I’m equally in awe that she became the person that she is despite the circumstances, and disappointed that she had to endure them in the first place.

4. Seascraper by Benjamin Wood

Thomas Flett lives a humble life in a small town with his mother in fictional Longferry, England. He earns his livelihood through the somewhat outdated and inconsistent practice of shanking – taking his horse to the sea, scraping for shrimps, and selling them to a local seller for a standardized price. This painstaking and monotonous life has aged him far beyond his twenty years, and to his dismay, it is the only thing that he foresees for his sustenance, the only skill he can bank upon to feed himself. Amidst this, he harbors a crush on his friend’s older sister, Joan, and unknown to his loved ones, wishes to become a folk musician.

One fateful day, he finds a stranger in his living room – a dynamic, enterprising man with a filmmaking background – who promises Thomas the fleeting glimpse of fame, art, and a life spent in the vicinity of the creative spirit. Shaken by this twist of fate, Thomas wonders if this is what his life had been building up to all along.

This book was one of my favourite reads this year and I loved its message – to always keep dreaming, no matter what life’s circumstances are, and to sing the song that lies within you, no matter how it sounds.

5. A Month In The Country by J.L. Carr

For the protagonist of this novella, Tom Birkin, a survivor of World War 1, the calm, blissful summer of 1920 that he spends in a sleepy, little village uncovering a hidden mural in a Church is a marked highlight. Written decades later, his reflections on the slow-paced life on Oxgodby is a lake of contentment that he can dip into to invigorate himself. What seems, and is indeed, a phase of time where “nothing happens to him”, is also with the gift of hindsight a period where he feels in sync with the currants of life – good health, sound mind, a job that keeps him occupied, no rush/hurry, and a balance between solitude and companionship. What is not to love?

This book sneaks up on you over time. I read it over the course of a languorous day spent in the company of friends where we alternated between sluggish chit-chat, sunbathing, and cooking a meal – all of which compounded the atmosphere of this story. I was in the headspace to appreciate a character appreciating the bubblegum stretchiness of time in a slow moving space where you are not responsible for much of what goes around you. I used to think that such days would not make for interesting content but I was sorely mistaken. I may have also found a talisman to guide myself in the years to come, “It is now or never; we must snatch at happiness as it flies.”

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Nearly Made It To The All-Time List

1. Confessions by Kanae Minato

Yuko is about to tell her students that she is retiring. It is her last lecture as a teacher. Her daughter, 4 year-old Manami, tragically died on school grounds. But this is no ordinary speech full of reflection and nostalgia. This is a clarion call to revenge, for she announces loud and clear that two of the students sitting in the room are responsible for this murder. And that she will not let them get away with it. She has a plan, and it has already been set into motion. Tick, tock, tick, tock.

This is both, a whodunit and whydunit, which was also wild yet fun. For once, it was so nice to not have a teacher presented as one of two stereotypes – a living angel free of any malice, or a sexual predator hurting her students. Yuko’s anger is valid. Her desire for revenge is valid. And even though I found myself conflicted that the target of her rage are two teenagers, it is soon apparent that the two little shits had it coming. If you are of the opinion that the law cannot always provide justice, then Yuko’s motivation will resonate with you. If you want a crisp, solid thriller with an edge to power through a day, pick this up.

2. Blankets by Craig Thompson

An impressive confluence of prose and art, sketched in black and white, set against an upbringing in a tiny, religious town, and expanded into the universality of formative life lessons about euphoric love, inevitable loss, and a leap towards adulthood across the bridge of doubt.

3. Engagement by Gun-Britt Sundstrom

Set in 1970s Sweden, ‘Engagement’ covers seven years of courtship between surly, unconventional Martina who meets the charming and traditional Gustav and falls into the familiar contours of a relationship. Sensing social pressure and the expectations from her and Gustav’s families nudging her towards a standard path of proposal -> marriage -> parenthood, Martina consciously aims to question every tenet upon which their companionship is built. Unwilling to give up her independence and fearful of being ‘owned’ within a patriarchal society, Martina struggles to accept being loved by Gustav who is aiming for the predictability of convention.

The story does really well in establishing Martina’s point-of-view as valid and not just an avoidantly attached person playing with someone’s heart. There are so many instances of the two hurting each other repeatedly, intentionally or otherwise, that exposes how tricky it is to love someone. In fact, the book dismantles the idea of a romance as anything but romantic. The big question of this book is – Can a relationship work when two people in love only want to be loved back in a very specific way? 

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Great For This Year But Will Lose Out Over Time

1. Djinn Patrol On The Purple Line by Deepa Anappara

In a basti in an unnamed Indian metropolitan city, Jai, a nine year old kid decides to investigate the kidnapping of a classmate. Armed with the knowledge of true crime TV series, he reluctantly enrolls his friends, Pari and Faiz, as his assistants, and the amateur crime fighting trio begins its journey. But they find themselves overwhelmed when a spate of kidnappings occur in the basti and an atmosphere of fear prevails.

Written to honour the many missing children that end up becoming statistics, the book does a good job of gut-punching you right as it ends. The apathy of authority figures to investigate a crime, the politicization of tragedy, the compulsion for the parents to continue to earn to bribe the authority into taking attention, the book captures all of it well. There is plenty of colloquial language that rings true to growing up here, ekdum number one.

2. Cold Enough For Snow by Jessica Au

A woman takes a trip to Japan with her mother whom she hasn’t seen in a while. It is clear that there is distance between the mother-daughter. The trip, while pleasant and smooth, limps with an air of unconveyed emotions. They do all the things that tourists do – walk around, eat new things, visit museums, but there is so much that is left unsaid. There is nothing jarring about the dynamic. They seem exactly like two people who want to communicate but lack a common language. They do not share hobbies or interests. The daughter, it seems, nudges the mother with a light amount of pressure to do the things that she wants. We do not know if the mother is keen or dead against it, as she concedes to the daughter’s wishes. Even in this fleeting stretch of time during which they are reunited, the daughter desires for what Amina Cain calls “together alone”, periods of solitude in the presence of a loved one. The pin-drop calmness of Japan spreads itself as a canopy, shading and shielding the duo.

Somewhere between a diary and a travelogue, this novella captures a flailing helplessness of wanting to connect with your parent with an acute awareness of time. I will hesitatingly admit that I saw a lot of myself in the unnamed narrator and her unintended (hopefully?) brusqueness. As still and understated as the writing was, it had a deep effect.

3. Bread of Angels by Patti Smith

In exquisite, lush prose, Patti Smith writes about her Dickensian childhood, of growing up a sickly child, surrounded by her younger siblings, content with living in a world of her creation, curious beyond her mother’s limits and questioning beyond the Church’s definitions of the otherworldly realms. The latter half of this memoir covers her ‘calling’ towards poetry and art, her marriage to the late Fred Smith, and reflections on the years where she had felt overwhelmed by the loss of her loved ones.

An unparalleled literary voice with a timbre that makes it seem like she is attuned to some otherworldly frequency of the universe. There’s the tendency to daydream, another to have an inner voice, and yet another to live in an alternate reality; Patti Smith writes as if she has access to all of them, that her consciousness is permeable, and she can flow from reality to that space at will. Admittedly, this book was somewhat scattered in places but I adore her and I will read anything that she publishes.

4. A Horse At Night by Amina Cain

Structured like free-flowing diary entries more than regimented essays, this is a slim collection of fragmented thoughts on the nature of reading, writing and how it connects to people’s interiority. It isn’t a classic ‘writers on writing’ per se but it has the cadence of a friend sharing their intellectual interpretation of being a reader and/or writer over a glass of wine. If you enjoy dense, in-depth explorations on the same topic, this will disappoint you. As thoroughly as I enjoyed it, I will admit that this book can appear to live on the surface and may seem trite in some of its revelations. But I loved many sentences and paragraphs and found it to be a mirror reflecting myself within. Also attached within is a lovely list of book recommendations, which is always a bonus when you read writers talking about books.

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Some thoughts on reading and reading challenges

I read 52 books this year as part of my annual reading challenge. My Goodreads informs me that the collective pages read averaged out to 289 pages per book, and that my annual rating was a 3.8/5, which seems excessive to me. You can’t rate books there in half-points, so it’s fair to assume that my actual rating would hover somewhere near a 3.5 (on a good day). The longest title was Anna Karenina clocking in close to 1000 pages, and the shortest was a 50 page essay from Andy Warhol called Fame. All well and dandy but it’s time to switch it up.

Back in 2016, I was disappointed with how little I had read, opting to channel my energy and disappointment with college into an endless, brain-numbing binge of TV shows, something that provided a dull dopamine hit along with the social currency of a conversation topic amongst my batchmates. Since then, I have been conscious about reading intentionally and diversely, ensuring that I read 50+ books every year. After doing it for 9 years, I feel that I have fulfilled that unsaid promise to myself and proven that I do, in fact, possess the attention span to read longform material. I think it’s time to switch to reading less quantitatively and pick up very particular titles. The idea of setting a goal of 52 books comes with the expectation of always having something handy to read, which is not a complaint per se. 

But I have observed that I tend to stick with books even when they are underwhelming only to see it add to my yearly total which isn’t helpful. Having read for nearly 2+ decades of my life, I have a fair understanding of my literary taste and I no longer wish to dampen my year with things that do not bring joy or satisfaction. I feel very strongly that books, no matter how brilliant or illuminating, should satisfy a fundamental requirement: they ought to be entertaining. If I am bored while plodding through an ‘intelligent’ book, it doesn’t pass muster. 

Which isn’t a declaration to read within confines, to only reach for something that I know I will love. A part of reading something new is the charm of the unpredictability of finding something that clicks with you. I tried to experiment with the Booker Prize list this year but it became abundantly clear to me that my taste was at direct odds with the panel’s. Which is fine, art being subjective and all that. But I intend to tamp down on the number of reads I shall attempt and see what happens next year.