timemidae

My recommendations out of what I've read this year:

The Factory and The Hole, by Hiroko Oyamada (trans. David Boyd): Two slim novellas, both capture the eeriness of the mundane, and the general atmosphere of mystery compels you to keep reading even though there's not necessarily a plot to be resolved. Read if you like: Kafka, Kobo Abe, The Employees.

Jacob's Ladder, by Ludmila Ulitskaya (trans. Polly Gannon): I picked this book up by accident while looking for Olga Tokarczuk's Book of Jacob, but I'm glad I did! Soviet family epic, with a focal character who is a set designer and who voices really interesting thoughts on art, drama, and memory. Read if you liked: Pachinko, The Goldfinch.

The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin: It's rare to find a book that combines such rich and thought provoking ideas with such a readable style and compelling plot (I read this over the course of a single overnight train ride). Le Guin sets out worlds that you can believe in - they are not utopias, but they offer a vision for alternatives to what we're doing. Read if you like: Star Trek, Emma Goldman, The Parable of the Sower.

Christopher and His Kind by Christopher Isherwood: Unlike any memoir I've ever read. Come for the catty behind-the-scenes look at the 1930's British literary scene (seriously, Isherwood is friends with every English poet you've ever heard of), stay for the heartbreaking candor of Isherwood's account of being a human being in impossible times. Really interesting use of first and third person. Highly, highly recommend to anyone who has ever read any of Isherwood's other works, which are helpful to read first for context.

The Story of a Life by Konstantin Paustovsky (trans. Douglass Smith): Another literary memoir! This one was long and slow, and yet it held me. It was novel to feel so immersed in another person's life. Also, KP's writing from the perspective of his childhood self is very well done, and I think that's a tricky thing to pull off. Read if you like: Before the Flood/Three Cities (Sholem Asch).

Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky: If you've ever been organized, this book will make you go 'Oh! So that's why we did that.' It was good to touch ground with a coherent theory of change. Alinsky's theory of change doesn't have to be yours, of course, but it's nice to feel that someone out there has actually thought these things through.

The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka: This book made me sob - whether to take that as a warning or an endorsement is up to you. Read if you like: The Satanic Verses, American Gods

Happy new year and happy reading! If seeing these makes you think of anything I would like, I'll happily take recs for the year to come.