#For context it's 'Transcendent Kingdom' by Yaa Gyasi

[literaturess]

Very funny when I'm reading a book written from a (hetero) woman's point of view and when a male character appears at the beginning I can immediately tell that they're going to get together at the end. And I'm always right. Like wish you heteros invented something creative. Have you heard of friendship perhaps?

[aidansghananlitblog]

Week 13 blog

This week, I read pages 140-180 of the book “Transcendent kingdom” by Yaa Gyasi.

This week I think the most important sentence could be found on page 63: “she knew what it meant to be close to death, to be around it.” Without any context this is a very solemn sentence and can be taken many different ways, but to gifty this was something she could say just by knowing her mother. Her mother was a churchgoing woman but had grown familiar with sickness, illness and the sound that death makes as it lurks waiting to snatch life away. Knowing the sound and what it means to be around death, she was able to tell that Ms. Palmer wasn’t too far away. Which is sad because Gifty’s mother is the one who has to take care of her. 

In these 40 pages, I was once again surprised that I have related to something else closely in the story. Although this isn’t this week’s most important sentence, it is definitely one that stood out to me because of how much I relate to it. On page 144: “Basketball season started in november, but for Nana the sport was year-round.” At everett high school currently, to this day some of the top athletes in the school easily share this year long grind. For basketball there were never many breaks. That’s how serious it was and also how loved the game was by the players to continue to come back day after day. For Nana, basketball being year round meant playing for the school team and camps, and then backyard basketball. For us, school basketball alone is year round. The same people who have grown up playing basketball in their backyards have created a system where they practice with the future team year long to prepare themselves and their chemistry for the season upcoming.

Word count : 317

[aaavia]

She was a matter-of-fact kind of woman, not a cruel woman, exactly, but something quite close to cruel. When I was young, I prided myself on being able to tell the difference. Nana was still around, and so I could stand being told I was a horrible baby. I could stand it because I understood the context; Nana was the context. When he died, every matter-of-fact thing became cruel. When I was very little, my mother took to calling me asaa, the miracle berry that, when eaten first, turns sour things sweet. Asaa in context is a miracle berry. Without context, it is nothing, does nothing. The sour fruit remains.

Transcendent Kingdom - Yaa Gyasi

[bookofmirth]

mid-year book freakout tag 2021

It’s halfway through 2021! This tag started on YouTube but I’ve done it here before, so let’s go. Feel free to do this if I tag you, or if you just feel like it, and tag me if you do! 

For context, I have read 75 books so far this year.

Best book you’ve read so far in 2021. I chose three because I’m like that: Lanny, by Max Porter. Beneath the Keep, by Erika Johansen. And Unsettled Ground by Claire Fuller. Honorable mention for Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi and Second First Impressions by Sally Thorne.

Best sequel you’ve read so far in 2021 Beneath the Keep is a prequel, but it’s definitely the best. The wait was worth it, and for a prequel it was just *chef’s kiss*

New release you want to read but haven’t yet Gah so many. Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro, Skyward Inn by Aliya Whiteley, The Prophets, by Robert Jones Jr. A few dozen others.

Most anticipated release for the second half of the year. The Hollow Heart by Marie Rutkoski omggggg. Still Life by Sarah Winman. 

Biggest disappointment Oh boy I have a couple. One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston 😬 That plot was a hot mess, y’all. Second place goes to Summerwater by Sarah Moss.

Biggest surprise Beneath the Keep, by Erika Johansen. I really didn’t know what to expect and I LOVED it.

Favorite new author Maybe not a new favorite, but one I am now very interested in - P. Djèlí Clark. I read Ring Shout earlier this year and it made me very intrigued to read A Master of Djinn.

Newest fictional crush Meh, I don’t get these.

Newest favorite character Not a new character, but I have a new appreciation for Lazarus from the Queen of the Tearling series

Book that made you cry Nothing this year so far! Second First Impressions did get really close.

Book that made you happy Second First Impressions by Sally Thorne

Favorite book to movie adaptation that you’ve seen this year I guess Shadow and Bone? I don’t think I’ve watched another, and it was mostly good! Even though I had some issues with it.

Most beautiful book you’ve bought this year By far, The Sky Atlas by  Edward Brooke-Hitching. It’s nonfiction and I picked it up in the bookstore because it was so beautiful, and the inside just keeps getting better and better.

What books do you have to read by the end of the year? Definitely The Hollow Heart by Marie Rutkoski and Empire of the Vampire by Jay Kristoff. I’m a bit meh on my support of him lately, he’s been so tone-deaf if not a downright asshole. Other than those two, I am also looking forward to Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix. I recently rearranged one of my smaller bookshelves to be my “tbr shelf” and so I’ll post that below; this is my tbr for the rest of the year, basically:

Tagging: @aelin-godkiller @spell-cleavers @nestha @rayonfrozenwings @ms-kittles @kylevalenti​ @symphonyofbleedingshadows @hellacioushag @fawnonfire @werewolffprince @theyretheirthere​  @echrai​

[lilianrogers]

February Books

In February I read a straightforward story of a man possessed by a white tiger (Man, Tiger by Eka Kurniawan), a memoir-style novel about a young Ghanaian-American scientist’s reckoning with the trauma of her childhood (Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi), a stupendous non-fiction work that delves into Singapore’s social democratic origins (Liberalism Disavowed by Chua Beng Huat), and a biography of Ruth Bader Ginsburg focused on the pop culture phenomenon she inspired (Notorious RBG by Irin Carmon and Shana Knizhnik).

For my thoughts in video form check out my YouTube video: https://youtu.be/Nvl4nPd61jM

Man, Tiger by Eka Kurniawan

Margio loves boar hunts, the daughter of his neighbor Anwar Sadat, and the thought of killing his father, who has subjected the boy and his family to years of abuse. But it is through his father’s father that he is passed down the incarnation of a tiger, white as a swan. Though Margio is robbed of the chance to commit patricide, he carries out a murder nonetheless with the help of the tiger. 

This novel starts with the sentence: “On the evening Margio kills Anwar Sadat, Kyai Jahro was blissfully busy with his fishpond”. By the last line we are about to witness this event unfold before our eyes, though we already know its five W’s (who, what, when, where, and why). Kurniawan’s storytelling hops throughout the timeline surrounding this central event, but crisply stays within the structure of the characters and emotions that comprise this world. I liked the smattering of magical realist elements: the ground shifting to refuse Komar bin Syueb’s body, Margio’s smitten adoration the first time he meets his tiger. 

An anecdote given halfway through the book hints that this is a story about how to wield your legacy and lineage. In this story-within-a-story, Kurniawan tells us of the wealthy land-holding woman who sells her property at dirt poor prices to the local villagers to completely circumvent her ungrateful children. She then uses the proceeds to entertain her own whims: sleeping in a new wedding dress, and buying an entire bus (because she enjoyed riding the bus as a child). In a book filled with an arc of seeming inevitability, the matriarch’s story stands out as proof of human agency.  

Rating: 3.8/5

Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi

In this quasi-memoir, Yaa Gyasi tells the story of Gifty, a first generation Ghanian-American who grew up in the American South and is now pursuing a PhD in neuroscience at Stanford University. In fertile, compact prose, we become enveloped in Gifty’s voice, her traumas, and the shield she has erected to protect herself throughout her life.  She is grappling with the aftereffects of losing her brother to drug addiction, which sends her mother into spiralling mental illness, and reflects on the quiet inability of religious faith to provide a lifeline to herself or her mother. 

There is plenty to unpack in this book, but I’ll just pick one theme that resonated strongly with me: the cleavage that happens when you start to form your own identity as a young adult. For much of our childhoods, we exist as extensions of our parents - in both our minds and theirs. Throughout the book, Gifty considers the force of this separating, feeling both responsible for and resentful of her mother, both burdened by and indebted to the upbringing she had. 

Gifty’s self-reflection is both raw and composed, powerful and measured, and kept me hooked until the very end when the plot stumbles a bit in its pacing. I wasn’t a big fan of the flashforward ending which felt too neat. But I enjoyed the read enough to give her first book, Homegoing, a try.  

Rating: 4/5

Liberalism Disavowed: Communitarianism and State Capitalism in Singapore by Chua Beng Huat

Foreign observers (and expats living in Singapore) easily repeat a hackneyed descriptor when the topic of Singapore’s political system comes up: authoritarian. While there are components of authoritarian rule in the history of PAP’s governance, using this word obliterates the nuance and complexity of Singapore’s political-economic origins in one damning stroke. Having read Chua’s Liberalism Disavowed, I’m fully convinced that it is not a useful simplifier. 

As Chua writes, “What this “encouraged” understanding veils, intentionally or otherwise, is the social democratic origin of the PAP, which explains some of the fundamental social and economic programs which are critical to the economic and political success of the PAP government, and from which it has not wavered in more than its 50 years in power.” 

Chua explains in wonderful detail and with historical context the social democratic origin of the PAP by focusing on four “institutionalized political and economic practices” - 1) ideological anti-liberalism, 2) Singapore’s national public housing program, 3) state capitalism, and 4) multiracialism.[1] In each of the areas, there is much more than meets the eye, and lazy comparisons obscure the reality of Singapore’s history and development. 

Liberalism Disavowed easily makes it into my top books to read about Singapore for its nuanced and rigorous accounting of Singapore’s political-economic development. It’s a much needed counter to the superficial tropes that abound, and I personally learned tons from reading it. 

[1] Chua writes “Their primacy is reflected in the fact that other significant social policies and administrative practices, which are politically important in their own right, can be enfolded within the operating logic of one or more of these four institutions.”

Rating: 4.9/5 

Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg by Irin Carmon and Shana Knizhnik

Though I never would have called myself an RBG stan, I now know that I am one! In addition to groundbreaking legal accomplishments and a convention-busting partnership with her husband, I learned RBG crossed the aisle to have friendships with political opposites (such as Justice Scalia), and preferred to convince through incremental progress rather than swooping decisions. 

I was worried this book might be a bit too “pop” and not enough substance, but it manages to strike the right balance between relevance and import. Don’t expect too much legal analysis or independent reporting or research, but the book does delightfully package together the through line of RBG’s personal life and career. I found it enjoyable to read, and helpful to re-acquaint myself with the history of women’s rights in the US through RBG’s eyes. 

Rating: 3.5/5

[thelifeofm]

2020 was a great year to escape. 

At the beginning of the year, my goal was to read 26 books — figuring one book every two weeks was doable and would still feel like an accomplishment. Once the pandemic started, I was devouring books at such a fast pace I immediately doubled my goal to 52. I read 58.

As I’ve said before:

"…after realizing the vast majority of the books read in college and ones I largely consider favorites were all by white men, two years ago I set out to change my reading habits. It’s one of the resolutions I’m most proud of from 2018.

Why is this important to me? Because people write about what they know and who they know, and then that becomes what you know. I recognized that while I’d been reading some great books written by white men they offered a really narrow vantage point. And I noticed that there was a huge blind spot in my love of literature because my bookshelves were full of a very male, very western perspective — one that’s at times patriarchal, one that touts masculinity as the foremost virtue, one that exudes entitlement, one that can be misogynistic, and one that often excludes women and people of color as protagonists and heroes.

So, in short, I realized that there was a problem with what I was taking in.

And I set out to change that. I made it a goal to seek out new voices.”

How’d 2020 end up? 59% of the authors were white / which means only 41% were by authors of color. And 71% of the books I read were written by women / or 29% by men. I see some definite room for improvement. But overall I’m pretty happy with the depth and breadth of the books I read this year, including working in some classics like Their Eyes Were Watching God, Sula, and 1984. I was transported to the Dominican Republic, Nigeria, Haiti, a fictitious Jewish shtetl set in a remote part of Alaska, small Southern towns, and Hogwarts. I was also finally given an excuse to read Harry Potter. And once I started, I couldn’t stop. A magical make believe world, complete with its own language, sport and spells captivated me and provided the perfect escape during the pandemic.

As far as my favorites go (or in case you’re looking for something good to pick up next), I gravitated toward fiction this year, purely to leave this world and enter another one. So this list is heavy on the fiction.

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson

Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips

A Man Called Ove by Frederick Backman

and Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi

...have all stuck with me. They were all great stories, that were incredibly well written and had something in them that grabbed ahold of my heart and twisted.

I also probably thought about, learned more from, and since referenced Isabel Wilkerson’s _Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent _more than any other book I read this year. It makes connections between the caste systems in the US, Germany and India that I’d never even considered before, and throws in some mind-blowing historical context about how these systems came to be and how they’ve persisted.

Happy reading, y’all. 

[thedeification]

“I didn’t know what it meant to be saved, not in the context of religion. Back then, when people at church talked about salvation, I took the word literally. I imagined that I needed to be near death in order for salvation to take hold. I needed to have Jesus rescue me from a burning building or pull me back from the edge of a cliff. I thought of saved Christians as a group of people who had almost died; the rest of us were waiting for that near-death experience to come so that God could reveal himself. Sometimes, the children’s church pastor would say, “You have to ask Jesus to come into your heart,” and I would say those words, “Jesus please come into my heart,” and then I would spend the rest of the service wondering how I would ever know if he’d accepted my invitation. I’d press my hand to my chest, listen and feel for its thumping rhythm. Was he there in my heartbeat?”

Yaa Gyasi, Transcendent Kingdom