Five books I keep inflicting on people

Apart from loving the premise of this story, I love that the title comes from the Scottish play of Shakespeare (Macbeth). The novel is about two really good friends, a boy and a girl who are brought together while admitted to the hospital at the same time, and their trying to get rid of their boredom through video games. They go on and live their lives, reconnect whilst in university (Harvard and MIT), and have another friend join their crew and make a wildly successful game themselves. Now that may sound boring, but the way it is written, you feel like you are a literal fly on the wall when things happen. It is a story, really, about how things just unfold because life keeps going, even if you don’t. 

'In Praise of Difficult Women' by Karen Karbo

I have been giving this as a recommendation to any girl who’d ask me what’s a great “girl” book. This book is non-fiction, laying out very, very brief stories of 29 women from Elizabeth Taylor to Edie Sedgwick, Nora Ephron (one of my favorites) to Carrie Fisher. The two ladies that grabbed my attention in particular are Kay Thompson and Vita Sackville-West. As a girl who’s been called “difficult” in so many instances in my life, this book let me know I was in the company of really, really fabulous ladies. Oh, the author also wrote a biography of Coco Chanel, who is unsurprisingly also mentioned in this book. 

'Salt: A World History' by Mark Kurlansky

This book blew my mind, even if it took me nearly a year to finish it. In my defense, I was going through another series, a trilogy, at the same time (which, hilariously, will be mentioned in just a bit). Okay, as aforementioned, I love being nosy about the background of interesting stuff. I love etymology, and stories of countries and empires, and, well, food. 

Now, on the surface and because it is just so common, why the heck does salt, of all things, justify a whole historical book? Ah, well, my friends, I think you have to read it. What I can tell you is that I never knew that Tabasco, which I love, was made that way (its beginnings are described in this book) and I was well chuffed when I learned that the origin of the word “Salary” is based on the Latin word for salt, which is “salarium.” I’m seeing on socials that this book is gaining traction again in the BookTok and Bookstagram communities, and I am happy more people are reading it. 

'Babel and The Poppy War' Trilogy by R.F. Kuang

Okay, so I may be cheating a wee bit with the listing (it’s four books, not one), but it is the same author. So this is the trilogy I was trying to get through whilst I was reading Salt.

When I say that I love these four books, I mean it. Babel just tickled my brain in a way that I haven’t been tickled in a while. The premise is absolutely amazing, and it is such a commentary on colonialism. It also made me dream of doing another master’s degree and finally getting my dream PhD in literature at Oxford. Keyword here: “dream,” which in some circles can be equated to “hallucination.” This was my first realization that I love dark academia. The words, the magic, the everything. 

The Poppy War Trilogy should come with a very serious trigger warning for the younger generation. This is a visceral, unflinching, and unapologetic story of a girl just going through it all in life. The trilogy is a loose parallelism to things that happened in the history of China, and one of the most unnerving is the rape of Nanking. The protagonist, Rin, is not lovable. She is not a quirky, alt-girl protagonist. She is an orphan, poor, and is just trying whatever avenue is available to her to get herself out of poverty. 

The common denominator of these books (and those that followed these) is its author and the way she can bend a sentence, specifically the ability to write about such heavy and ambitious concepts and topics without losing the ability to draw you in with her writing. 

I think I may have read everything she has written thus far, barring her latest offering Taipei Story. I think I need to put aside a whole weekend for that. 

'Persuasion' by Jane Austen

There is now a term in the reader communities on socials all about the “yearning” capability of certain books, and in the K- or C-dramas that are now slowly becoming part of the lexicon (I would argue it never left, but here we are). Well, this was the OG in yearning, miscommunication, and stiff upper lip. It is English, after all. And I will go so far as to say that this was the best of Austen, not Pride and Prejudice, or Sense and Sensibility, or even Emma. The famous quote, “You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope... I have loved none but you,” is an absolute masterclass of yearning, right? Austen wrote yearning like poetry!

I would also like to give a special mention to Mrs. Croft, Captain Wentworth’s “unconventional” sister. The quote, “I hate to hear you talk about all women as if they were fine ladies instead of rational creatures. None of us want to be in calm waters all our lives,” is hers, and that always stuck with me. As fiery as Elizabeth Bennet may be, I liked the quiet calm that Anne Elliot has, perhaps because I strive to be more like that.

I feel like I will be writing more of these book lists, with the hope that I get to find others that want to talk to me about them, or maybe just to tell me I’m an idiot and give me a better recommendation. For now, these are the choices that come into my head. Maybe I’ll write about the books I’m reading soon, seeing as I have been put on a reluctant book-buying ban. For now, I must tackle the ever-growing (which has now been stunted) TO BE READ pile (they say it’s more like a hallway, but really, tomayto, tomahto), as it won’t read itself.