16,497 pages later, these are my 10 favourite books of the year
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
I quit all my absurd rules around books this year and reading came easy and plentiful. Crawled up to 70 books this month. I allowed myself to read just for pleasure and didn’t commit to a book just because I started one - it made all the difference. This was all made possible by the Berlin Public Library and yay for that! Here are some of the best books I read this year.
I listed the books in the order that I read them, not by quality. I didn’t include full reviews, just a few sentences. Click on the link to read more detailed descriptions and see other people’s more elaborate reviews. You can find all of these books(and more!) at the Berlin Library. If you are interested about the full list of the 70 books I read, you can check my GoodReads yearly recap. So many gems there I didn’t want to crowd this post with.
The 10 ✨best✨
Der Spazierende Man - a graphic novel by Jiro Taniguchi. It is a deep breath packed in a book. We follow a man on his walks around a neighborhood in Japan. I know it doesn’t sound flashy, but trust me on this one. I read it in German, but it’s translated in many languages.
Thick - an essay collection by Tressie McMillan Cottom. Her work is exquisite and I don’t know what the world would do without her insights. She tackles Black womanhood, class, beauty standards, capitalism and more. I learned so much from her work in this book. Following her on Twitter is a blessing you want upon yourself.
Girl, Woman, Other - a novel by Bernardine Evaristo. An ambitious, captivating history account, told through the stories of 12 people(mostly women), Black and British. My review on GoodReads is just: WOAH.
Nightingale Point - a novel by Luan Goldie. The novel is building up to a day in the life of a community, after which nothing will be the same. The relationships between the residents of a an old building block are a focal point. I finished reading this on April the 2nd, and I still sometimes sit with the characters on the bench or on the grass, looking at the building from a distance.
The Dutch House - a novel by Ann Patchett. This book is an absolute highlight. I found the writing clever and engaging, the story not a cliche. We follow a few generations of a family, revolving around a house that holds the main narrative. There is a special focus on the two siblings that grew up in the Dutch House, and then found home in each other.
Sprache und Sein - by Kübra Gümüşay. The book focuses on how language shapes who we are and our world, placed in the larger socio-political context of Germany. It’s a must read. It was one of the first more complex books I read in German, but the (e-)dictionary flips were absolutely worthwhile.
Eure Heimat is unser Albtraum - a collection of essays curated by Fatma Aydemir and Hengameh Yaghoobifarah. 14 authors speak about they everyday experience in Germany and how it is to grow up here when you are othered. The essays are short and powerful, versatile and necessary.
Everything I never told you - a novel by Celeste Ng. This book is dense, and heavy. It touches upon many sensitive issues, and layers characters and stories masterfully. Migration and migrant indetities, pressure bestowed upon women and people of colour, grief and lastly family, in all of it’s complicated glory.
Little Gods - a novel by Meng Jin. Jin’s writing style in this debut novel is experimental, a bit of a back and forth, as if slipping in an out of someone’s mind and relatity as such. I loved it. It is a book about belonging, and for me, two questions were centered: are we allowed to choose the past and reshape the core of ourselves, a product of that past? Can we make our mind a place to put roots in, if no actual place can hold them? There is so much more though. Motherhood, womanhood, migration, class. Worth the read and getting used to the writing style.
Pachinko - a novel by Min Jin Lee. This one is at the end of this list since I read it after all the ones listed above, but it could be easily me favourite book of the year. The novel portrays the life of a Korean family in Japan throughout generations. I could not put it down, the author is holding a class on storytelling with this one. As the generations change and characters come and dissapear from the focus you would yearn to know more and see them take the stage again, so wholesome and rich the world portrayed is. I learned an immense amout about the history between Korea and Japan to which I was clueless. To me, another thing stood out as well - the two brothers deal very differently with the othering and the immigrant identity troubles. Just that tiny part is insightful enough to be a reason to pick up this book.
Bonus: Her body and other parties and Want, discussed in my October blog post.
Thanks for celebrating these amazing works with me! Happy reading!
