Books I’ve read so far {2024}
Here are, (mostly) in sequential order, (some of) the books I’ve read this first half of the year. I will include a short introduction and review for each book. CONTAINS SPOILERS.
1. It Ends With Us | Colleen Hoover
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
Published: 2016
Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary
Pages: 386
I started off the year with a book everyone either loves or hates (maybe mostly hates). It Ends With Us is about love, hurt, abuse, and grief. I don’t regret reading it, but I do regret how prominently this book is shared in BookTok/Bookstagram communities. We can do better.
(Having said that, I will 100% watch it when its played in a cinema near me).
2. Fate of the Artist | Eddie Campbell
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
Published: 2006
Genre: Graphic Novel, Art, Mystery
Pages: 96
Eddie Campbell has earned an international following. For over 25 years, he has blazed a trail in the world of graphic novels, and his work has earned nearly every honor in the field, including the Eisner, Ignatz, and Harvey awards.
Eddie Campbell conducts an investigation into his own disappearance in his book The Fate of The Artist. It is a captivating read, and the images are put together with sophistication and taste. Very good choice for anyone with reading block.
3. The Stranger | Albert Camus
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Published: 1942
Genre: Classic, Philosophy, Fiction
Pages: 123
The Stranger starts off relatively normal, but ends with the protagonist/narrator unwittingly doing something very bad in the spur of the moment. I had no idea the direction in which the book would go, and if you are a fan of big twists towards the end of a book, this is perfect for you. It’s also considered one of the top 100 books of the 19th century, so why not give this a read?
4. Train to Pakistan | Khushwant Singh
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
Published: 1956
Genre: Historical Fiction, South Asian Fiction
Pages: 181
The Train to Pakistan is set just after partition, and it tells the story of a small village in the midst of the civil war, it tells the story of religious hate, and the story of a Sikh boy and Muslim girl, whose love transcends the hate and rampage of the war. I could not give this 4 stars because there are already so many fiction books on our colonial history, and so many of them are so eloquently written. Khushwant’s writing was.. not bad by any means, but nothing special either.
Are you ready for my classic Murakami recommendations?
5. South of the Border, West of the Sun | Haruki Murakami
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
Published: 1992
Genre: Japanese Literature, Romance
Pages: 190
If you don’t like the heavy magical surrealism of most of Murakami’s works, then South of the Border, West of the Sun, in addition to Norwegian Wood, are good options. This was straight up, no nonsense Murakami and I loved it. It’s about rediscovering a childhood friend and how that can catapult your life into the past. It’s quite a sweet read, similar to Sputnik Sweetheart. I’d only recommend this if you’ve read his other works, though. He has such better work out there for you to read.
6. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running | Haruki Murakami
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Published: 2007
Genre: Non-fiction, Memoir
Pages: 188
There is this certain niche of non-fiction writing where fiction writers talk about a hobby, no, you cannot call it a hobby; something they are passionate about. Another such book is Like the Flowing River by Paulo Coelho, in which he delved into his practice of archery. I’ll include a summary of What I Talk About When I Talk About Running:
In 1982.. Murakami began running to keep fit. A year later, he’d completed a solo course from Athens to Marathon, and now, after dozens of such races and critically acclaimed books, he reflects upon the influence the sport has had on his life and on his writing.
7. The Wind Up Bird Chronicle | Haruki Murakami
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Published: 1994
Genre: Japanese Literature, Magic Realism
Pages: 607
The Wind-up Bird Chronicle is one of those Murakami books with so much magic realism that you have to stop questioning things and let yourself get carried away. Murakami addresses the themes of alienation, loneliness, an individual’s search for identity. He questions the national identity while exploring some horrifying stories about Japan in the second world war. He leaves a lot of questions to be answered, but it is one of those books where the journey matters more than where the story finally leads you.
Back to other authors.
8. The Sun Also Rises | Ernest Hemingway
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Published: 1926
Genre: Classic, Historical Fiction
Pages: 189
This is one of Hemingway’s masterpieces and a classic example of his spare but powerful writing style. His language, characterizations, his love for all the people he writes about (no matter how unsavory they may be), his empathy with the pain people feel in life and love, his touch with locale, his getting everything just right with nothing out of place and nothing superfluous, all of this makes The Sun Also Rises my favorite Hemingway novel.
9. The Bluest Eye | Toni Morrison
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Published: 1970
Genre: Classic, Historical Fiction, African American
Pages: 216
The Bluest Eye is Toni Morrison’s first novel, a book heralded for its richness of language and boldness of vision. Set in the her childhood hometown in Ohio, it tells the story of black, eleven-year-old Pecola. Pecola prays for her eyes to turn blue so that she will be as beautiful and beloved as all the blond, blue-eyed children around her. This is a significant work in the African American novel genre, and an unforgettable book to read.
10. The Stand | Stephen King
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Published: 1970
Genre: Classic, Historical Fiction, African American
Pages: 216
The Stand is an epic post-apocalyptic horror novel by Stephen King. It tells the story of a pandemic that wipes out most of the world’s population, and the ensuing struggle between the survivors and the forces of good and evil. Forced to flee hometowns and search for human population, the many characters of the book find themselves dreaming of two forces; the good, represented by an 108 year old Black lady in the midwest called Mother Abigail, and the bad, represented by the ‘dark man’, known as Randall Flagg.
11. 1Q84 | Haruki Murakami
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Published: 2009
Genre: Japanese Literature, Magic Realism, Fantasy
Pages: 944
Aomame follows a taxi driver’s enigmatic suggestion and begins to notice puzzling discrepancies in the world around her. She realizes she has entered a parallel existence, which she calls 1Q84. It is set in the year 1984, coincidentally (or not?) the same year as Orwell’s 1984. 1Q84 is another gigantic book, but I loved every second of it. I saw myself in both the narrators, Aomame and Tengo. A love story, a mystery, a fantasy, a novel of self-discovery, Murakami really outdid himself with this one.
12. Circe | Madeline Miller
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Published: 2018
Genre: Greek Mythology, Fantasy
Pages: 393
Circe is one of the most high impact books I have read surrounding Greek Mythology. It follows a portion of the eternal life of Circe, daughter of Helios, the god of sun. She feels different from her siblings and many cousins, and upon discovering her talent for witchcraft she turns a romantic rival into a monster. She is subsequently banished to an island, where she practices her witchcraft and is visited by other notable characters from time to time. In The Odysseus, Circe famously turns his men into swine, something she had gotten into the habit of doing. I enjoyed this book a lot, and if you’re into Greek mythology at all, you’ll love it. I vouch for it!
13. Cat’s Cradle | Kurt Vonnegut
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Published: 1963
Genre: Classics, Science Fiction, Dystopia
Pages: 179
Cat’s Cradle follows narrator John as he reports on the life of Dr. Felix Hoenniker (one of the founding fathers of the atomic bomb — and later Hoenniker’s eccentric family. What starts off as a story about documenting a scientist’s life, quickly turns into a strange adventurous tale involving Caribbean dictators, undertakers, Hoosiers, a new way of making love, ice-nine, Bokononism, the end of the world. Utterly ridiculous and utterly serious at the same time, only Vonnegut could’ve written this book. It’s not as popular as Slaughterhouse-five, but is infinitely more enjoyable, with its dry satire and disconnected form. It’s short, and an easy book to read. Go ahead, give it a try.
14. Breakfast of Champions | Kurt Vonnegut
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Published: 1973
Genre: Classics, Science Fiction, Humour
Pages: 303
In Breakfast of Champions, one of Kurt Vonnegut’s most beloved characters, the aging writer Kilgore Trout finds to his horror that a Midwest car dealer is taking his fiction as truth. What follows is murderously funny satire, as Vonnegut looks at war, sex, racism, success, politics, and pollution in America and reminds us how to see the truth.
This book has hand drawn pictures of things in Earth, as it is narrated to extraterrestrial life wanting to learn about Earth. It is so incredulous and downright disastrous, that there is no way to do anything but love it.
15. Immortality | Milan Kundera
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Published: 1990
Genre: Classics, Fiction, Philosophy
Pages: 400
Milan Kundera is my favorite philosophical fiction author, with his The Unbearable Lightness of Being being on my top ten list. Immortality, however fell short of the expectations that I had from Kundera, but is still a powerful book, The premise of the book feels Vonnegut-esque, in that Kundera’s protagonists creates a character based on a swift motion of the hand by an older woman he saw at the swimming pool. The characters then come to life and merge. There is conversation between Goethe and Hemingway in the afterlife. This is a must read!
In total, I read 22 books, amounting to a total of around 7000 pages, at the rate of 5.5 books per month. The average year of publication of the books is 1999, and the average book was 378 pages long.