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It's the first day of December! You know what that means - it's time to start #AdventOfBooks again
I did this last year, where I made a post every day 1-24 December about a book I'd read and enjoyed within the last couple of years.
You can find last year's list here: https://eupolicy.social/deck/@stenhaastrup/111506568985109497
(Well most of it - I broke the thread along the way)
Making these posts forced me to reflect on my reading, and try to understand what it was about each book that I liked, and for that reason alone it's definitely been worth doing! Connecting with other readers has just been a nice bonus.
I don't have a full plan for which books I'll pick this year, but I do have my reading diary handy. Strap in, grab a cup of coffee or tea, and let's get going
#AdventOfBooks 2024 day 1: The Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood #bookstodon
A collection of semi-autobiographical stories recounting life in jazz-age Berlin. They mix a close-up view of a compelling cast of characters with a backdrop of the Nazis' rise to power. Read them for the manic atmosphere of a city in decay.
And then afterwards, read the author's thoughts on the propriety of a foreigner coming to town, taking other people's stories, twisting them and making them his own.
#AdventOfBooks 2024 Day 2: The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro #bookstodon
The story of the butler Stevens, and his life in service at Darlington Hall, told as he drives through England, remembering his time with the late Lord Darlington
What makes the book is the tension between what a cold and dignified Stevens narrates and what we infer must have happened, as well as what we can infer about Stevens' relationship with the people around him, and about the character of his employer
#AdventOfBooks 2024 Day 3: As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner #Bookstodon
The story of a poor family's travails as they try to honour their wife and mother's wish to be buried in her hometown in the US South.
It took me a bit of time to get into the book, but I really enjoyed the stream-of-consciousness narration and the cast of larger than life characters. I was expecting the book to be grotesque and macabre, but I wasn't expecting it to be as funny as I ended up finding it.
#AdventOfBooks 2024 day 4: Heimsuchung by Jenny Erpenbeck #Bookstodon
The story of a house, from when it was built in the 1800s, to after the fall of the Berlin wall. But the house is in Eastern Germany, so over the years it had many owners and visitors, who treated each other and the house well or badly, made changes as they saw fit, and let things decay or be repaired
It's a moving reflection on the importance of place, on history, and on what property and ownership means in times of flux
(And the story is that much closer to my personal experience, since I've been to cottages and summer houses that have changed hands up to and after the second world war in ways that very much echo the story told here)
#AdventOfBooks 2024 day 5: Regeneration by Pat Barker #Bookstodon
The (trueish) story of a mental institution in Scotland during WWI, where the resident psychiatrist treats PTSD soldiers, with the ultimate goal of getting them healed enough to return to the war.
The story roughly tracks (real) war poet Siegfried Sassoon's time at the hospital, after he's sent there for an anti-war protest, and chronicles his relationship with Wilfred Owen, and the genesis of Owen's *Anthem for Doomed Youth*
#AdventOfBooks 2024 day 6: Secondhand Time by Svetlana Alexievich #Bookstodon
An oral history of the end of the Soviet Union, as told to the author
It's an chronicle of a bygone time, of a period of tumultuous change, and of a new normal afterwards, told through the words of ordinary people, of people who succeeded and failed in their lives under either system
Most of all it's the story of a sharp break, where people steeped in the old culture don't understand the new, and vice versa
#AdventOfBooks 2024 day 7: The Hands of fhe Emperor by Victoria Goddard #Bookstodon
I read this book after it was recommended here, and I was impressed
It's the story of many different things - cross-cultural misunderstandings, the relationship between core and periphery, and between between an individual and their family, defying expectations - but most of all it's the story of the relationship between an Emperor and his personal secretary as it grows from stiff formality to close friendship
#AdventOfBooks 2024 day 8: Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin #Bookstodon
The story of a closeted man in Paris in the 50s, and his relationship with his distant girlfriend and with his lover Giovanni, as he suffers under his own conception of what it means to be a true man, and bears the yoke of his own homophobia.
I really liked the writing in this one, as well as the the exploration of how queer life plays out in public and in private. It's not an uplifting book, but I found it very powerful
#AdventOfBooks 2024 day 9: Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal #Bookstodon
Today's book is a short novel set in Czechoslovakia in the late 1960s. We follow a man employed as a paper crusher as he nears retirement. He spends his time as an absurd craftsman, reading the books he is to crush, putting philosophical and artistic works strategically into the bales to make a statement
I liked the mix of absurdity and thoughtfulness of the book, and the meandering style
#AdventOfBooks 2024 day 10: The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee #Bookstodon
A really engaging account of the history of the disease(s) and our approch for treating it, with a focus that moves from single patients and up to entire healthcare systems
Two points really stuck out to me:
1. How much we actually know about cancer cells and what makes them different from healthy cells
2. How bad we've historically been at treating cancer, and how bad we still are
#AdventOfBooks 2024 day 11: This House of Grief by Helen Garner #Bookstodon
It's the story of the trial of a man accused of crashing a car and killing his children in order to take revenge on his ex-wife.
But more importantly, it's a story of how trials and the justice system work, and how you can make sense of such an act. And maybe it's the story of what could drive a person to do such a horrible thing
#AdventOfBooks 2024 day 12: Tuyo by Rachel Neumeier #Bookstodon
A lighter book today, since the last few have been quite heavy
It's a second-world fantasy story, set in the middle of a war between the summer and winter countries, and it tells the story of Ryo, a man from the north who's left as hostage to raiders from the south
What I really enjoyed about the stories were the characters, their interactions (particularly those between Ryo and his captor), and their cultural misunderstandings.
#AdventOfBooks 2024 day 13: Whistling Vivaldi by Claude Steele #Bookstodon
I read this a few years back, and it's stayed with me ever since
It's a look at how prejudice can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. The author goes through many examples and shows how the stress of performing under the lens of prejudice can in itself cause a degradation of performance. And this effect exists across many different areas
If ound it a good reminder to always be critical of even supposedly objective measures
#AdventOfBooks 2024 day 14: Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín #Bookstodon
A historical novel about Ireland and Brooklyn in the 1950s. We follow Eilis, a young Irish woman who lives at home with her mother and her sister. She can't find a job, and the local priest suggests she moves to Brooklyn, where he has contacts. She sails across, and tries to make a new life for herself in the US
She gets news that her sister has died, and has to travel back to Ireland, torn between her old life and her new...
#AdventOfBooks 2024 day 15: The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez #Bookstodon
A fantasy story which is almost too clever, but an excellent read. It mixes 2½ levels of storytelling: a frame story, a fantasy story told within the frame, and a dream theatre where the two overlap
It's well-written, and the relationship between the protagonists is compelling. And somewhere in the intricate structure, the book manages to say something about family ties and how actions echo through time
#AdventOfBooks 2024 day 16: The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion #Bookstodon
A really compelling look at grief, and what it does to a person's thinking in the days, weeks, months (and years) after bereavement, told as a memoir of the year following the death of the author's husband
This is a repeat from 2023, but it's stayed with me and helped me throughout the year, so I'd always wanted to use it again this year
My grandmother died this morning, so it felt appropriate to do it now
#AdventOfBooks 2024 day 17: Bad Blood by Lorna Sage #Bookstodon
A riveting memoir that shows the craft at its best, showing the reader a bygone time and an unfamiliar world
It's the story of a girl raised by her grandparents in Wales; of her dysfunctional childhood and of escaping her "bad blood" to make a better life
Her granddad is a drunk and a philanderer, and his wife wants nothing to do with him; so they live in opposite sides of the house and never interact
And that's just the start!
#AdventOfBooks 2024 day 18: The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells #Bookstodon
Another one I read because it was recommended here
It's a series of novellas & short novels, telling the story of a security robot who's hacked its own governor module, and can act of its own volition.
Follow along as it grows from a snarky, soap opera-loving robot with no real purpose in life to a snarky soap opera-loving robot with friends.
It's not heavy reading, but definitely entertaining!
#AdventOfBooks 2024 day 19: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot #Bookstodon
The book is part biography, part medical history, and 100% riveting. It's a story of modern medicine and medical ethics
Henrietta Lacks was the woman who gave birth to the first ever "immortal" cell line, which can be propagated entirely in the lab. But the cells were taken without her knowledge when she went ot hospital to be treated for cervical cancer in the 1950s. Was this ethical?
#AdventOfBooks 2024 day 20: Cannery Row by John Steinbeck #Bookstodon
It's the story of a street in Monterey and its residents. A group of bums want to do something nice for their biologist friend, and decide to throw a surprise party. And that's the impetus for a whole bunch of shenanigans, as they need to raise money for the event and plan it
Lots of Steinbeckian themes and characters going on, but the story was also much more funny than some of his other works. It's sweet but not overly so
#AdventOfBooks 2024 day 21: The Sound of Things Falling by Juan Gabriel Vasquez #Bookstodon
It's the story of the Colombian drug war, from the point of view of the survivors and the left-behind
I really liked the way the drug aspect of everything was initially hinted at, rather than described directly - and how the author managed to work the tales of past and present together. I also liked the open ending, where the protagonist's uncertainty and lack of closure mirrors the country's
#AdventOfBooks 2024 day 22: Der Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse #Bookstodon
It's a book deals with the idea of the outsider, of the loner who feels cut off from society, and out of step with the world at large. And it very gently punctures that conceit, taking seriously the idea that we are social animals
Read it for the mood, and for the feeling of isolation and loneliness, then read it for its thoughts on society and the individual. Just don't expect a synthesis between those perspectives
#AdventOfBooks 2024 day 23: Small Island by Andrea Levy #Bookstodon
The story of the people who came to England from the colonies after WW2, told through the eyes of a Jamaican couple and an English couple, and of the difficulties everybody involved had in adapting to the new circumstances
My top character is the Jamaican Hortense, who followed her husband to England. She's stubborn and haughty, and her reactions to the prejudice she encounters in England make for the best scenes in the book
I read this entire series twice this year. I, like murderbot, am uncomfortable around people and would very much prefer to be left alone to consume media.