Following on from falling back in love with reading in 2020, I’ve been sharing more of the books I’m getting stuck into. This year I’ve read 27 books in total and, while the number on your Goodreads challenge doesn’t matter, I’ve really loved reading such a wide range of authors and genres. Here are some of my favourites:
Transcendent Kingdom – Yaa Gyasi
This is Gyasi’s second novel, although I’m yet to pick up the first, Homegoing, I couldn’t put this down. The story is layered and raw, it follows a Ghanian family living in Alabama and is told from the perspective of Gifty, a neuroscience student at Stanford. Her studies focus on depression and addiction; her way of making sense of her brother’s overdose. I was moved by the exploration of science and faith in the face of a devastating loss and the writing stayed with me long time after I put it down.
“What I can say for certain is that there is no case study in the world that could capture the whole animal of my brother, that could show how smart and kind and generous he was, how much he wanted to get better, how much he wanted to live. Forget for a moment what he looked like on paper, and instead see him as he was in all of his glory, in all of his beauty. It’s true that for years before he died, I would look at his face and think, What a pity, what a waste. But the waste was my own, the waste was what I missed out on whenever I looked at him and saw just his addiction.”
Pachinko – Min Jin Lee
I’ve written a lot about Pachinko in a previous post, so I won’t go into the plot summary again but I will say that despite being almost five hundred pages long and spanning decades, I couldn’t get enough of this beautifully told story. It does start off quite slow paced but the level of historical detail, as we follow Sunja and her family through generations as they adapt to life in Japan as Korean immigrants, means you become fully immersed in their story.
“Living everyday in the presence of those who refuse to acknowledge your humanity takes great courage.”
The Girl with the Louding Voice – Abi Daré
Adunni’s fight for her freedom as a young girl sold into marriage, and then domestic labour, makes this an important story. Daré’s debut is written with a strong narrative voice, the narrators own invented English, and brings you into her world as a fourteen-year-old girl living in Lagos and dreaming of a better life for herself. A life where she is educated, free and, most importantly, heard.
“‘I want more than just a voice, Ms. Tia. I want a louding voice,’ I say. ‘I want to enter a room and people will hear me even before I open my mouth to be speaking.’
Children of Blood and Bone – Tomi Adeyemi
Growing up I loved fantasy books, from Harry Potter to Eragon, but it’s been a long time since I’ve read anything in that realm. On a friends recommendation, I picked up Children of Blood and Bone and was instantly sucked into the world of Zélie, a girl who is destined to change the tide for generations that have been persecuted for their magic, as she, with the help of her brother and a rogue princess, embarks on a quest to restore magic to Orïsha. Fast-paced and told from multiple perspectives,
“As long as we don’t have magic, they will never treat us with respect. They need to know we can hit them back. If they burn our homes, we burn theirs, too.”
The Salt Path – Raynor Winn
This one was too good not to share, so much so that I passed it on to my mum and nan immediately after reading. Rekindling a love for adventure in times when adventures have been few and far between, the story of Ray and Moth as they walk the entire South West Coast Path after losing their home really made me think about the healing benefits of being in nature and inspired me to spend more time noticing my surroundings.
“On a basic level, maybe all of us on the path were the same; perhaps we were all looking for something. Looking back, looking forward, or just looking for something that was missing.”
