Another turn around the Sun in books

Should I do this? Is it worthwhile?

After debating this question, in the final hours of 2023, I chose to quiet my brain with “everything I needed to finish by the end of the year!!” and instead, reflect on life in my favourite way - books!

It hasn’t been a groundbreaking year in reading. In fact, it has been the slowest of many years. But with the increasing uncertainty in my life, it remained that steadfast companion it has always been.

This year, I travelled the most I have ever done in my life: I took my longest flight (18hrs to Seoul), visited the greatest number of cities, and spent the most number of days in hotels and couches. It was exhilarating and exhausting. And as I gaze onto a grey sky now, rain tapping on my window, it is almost unreal to close my eyes and see the delicate minarets of Istanbul, the unforgiving rockfaces of Italian mountains, the carved canyons in a windswept desert of Riyadh and the soaring towers of Seoul. And all these fantastic images very much shaped not only what and where I read but also how those writings affected me.

But books! Let’s get back to it.

Last year, I attempted to identify patterns in my reading habit. This year, I want to focus on a handful that made the greatest impression on me, in chronological order.

The God of Small Things

One of my first reads of the year was not the easiest. I had purchased this hardback years ago in a secondhand store in Befored and unsure what to read next, took it to bed one night. Roy shares the story of twins in post-colonial India. I remember having a bad dream on one of the nights as aspects of the story bled into reality in my subconsciousness. The thing is it is not 'horror' - it is the very real difficulties and challenges of life, and one I have witnessed closely through mine, that makes it quite a bold read. It reminded me of stories my grandmother shared as she, like millions of others, left their homes in the 1947 partition. A masterpiece in writing and her truly unique style, my favourite part of it was her way of foreshadowing in tiny details - a certain article of clothing or a smell which seems inconsequential but she reminds you again a few chapters later and you see the significance. Also, her implicit meanings in many, many of her metaphors. Whether it's digging at colonialism, patriarchy, or politics - she does it unapologetically. Highly recommend but remember to interleave it with some lighter reads!

“He folded his fear into a perfect rose. He held it out in the palm of his hand. She took it from him and put it in her hair.”

“Writers imagine that they cull stories from the world. I'm beginning to believe that vanity makes them think so. That it's actually the other way around. Stories cull writers from the world. Stories reveal themselves to us. The public narrative, the private narrative - they colonize us. They commission us. They insist on being told. Fiction and nonfiction are only different techniques of story telling. For reasons that I don't fully understand, fiction dances out of me, and nonfiction is wrenched out by the aching, broken world I wake up to every morning.”

Rebecca

In a random Wikipedia rabbit hole starting with Regent’s Park architecture, I came across, once again, the name of Daphne du Maurier. A curious name for an English woman and an even more interesting family story. I picked up the classic, Rebecca and was brought into a Gothic world. With exquisite writing and a deeply layered plot line, I was guided by the author through not just a story but a set of impressions. There is debate on whether Rebecca was a pro-feminist novel or not. Regardless, what strikes me is how in telling the story, the author has shared and even influenced her belief of gender roles. In making the title of the book the name of a dead ‘villainous’ woman and not even given the name of the other main character, she made a memorable decision. It was eye-opening to see these themes written in the 20th century still being very much part of our lives today.

“Happiness is not a possession to be prized, it is a quality of thought, a state of mind.”

Parable of the Sower

A sci-fi book written exactly 30 years ago about a dystopian 2024. Except, it isn’t as impossible as you would hope. A world facing existential crises, society breaking down and climate change making large parts of the world uninhabitable, it is haunting to read a fiction that could actually become reality. Rick Riordan, author of the Percy Jackson series and one of my favourites put it perfectly, “this novel set in the near future is so frighteningly prescient it is difficult to read.” The story questions the fragility of our society and the social norms we have all subscribed to. How quickly can civilisation break down? The protagonist is a young “agent of change” and chooses community and faith as a means to bring people together was consoling. If anything is to be taken away, it highlights that the work of youth today is more important than ever.

"Civilization is to groups what intelligence is to individuals. It is a means of combining the intelligence of many to achieve ongoing group adaptation. Civilization, like intelligence, may serve well, serve adequately, or fail to serve its adaptive function. When civilization fails to serve, it must disintegrate unless it is acted upon by unifying internal or external forces."

P.G. Wodehouse

A final author to share that was an undercurrent to my 2023. On the most stressful of days, I found solace in the humorous short stories of Jeeves and Psmith. I needed this so much and for many weeks, I did nothing but consume story upon story and reach every anthology of Wodehouse that had been put together. Laughter is the best medicine and as strange as it sounds, there were many nights when one could have stood outside of my bedroom and heard my chuckling away at that exquisite wit of PG.

“He had just about enough intelligence to open his mouth when he wanted to eat, but certainly no more.”

“A melancholy-looking man, he had the appearance of one who has searched for the leak in life's gas-pipe with a lighted candle.”