A Chinese-American family, in 1970s Ohio, tries to understand the events and thoughts that could‘ve led to their middle child drowning in the town lake. Her debut novel, Ng explores the dangers of wordlessly accepting what others may want and think of you, even if it seems like the thing most protecting you.

Jamaica Kincaid‘s semi-autobiographical account of her growing up as a young girl on the Caribbean island of Antigua and the mixed feelings she feels for those central to her upbringing, namely, her beautiful, overbearing mother. Kincaid writes well of the many different gods we adopt and subsequently reject as we pass through childhood and into adulthood, and the accompanying feelings of sadness and loss we can feel doing so.

A cross-species science fiction story, set alongside the highways of northern rural Scotland where vulnerable humans are picked up by a strange woman and made to face a horrible fate. A moralistic tale without heavy-handed preaching, Faber calls into question our assumptions about “classes” of animals and “classes” of human and asks whether we all are really the same, “under the skin.”

An old college book of my mother-in-law‘s that I‘ve always wanted to read. Not entirely a cultural point-by-point analysis of Mexican character and thought, but covers a good swath of Central American history and the psychological/philosophical changes a people must make to accommodate the coming of the conquistadors, Spanish Catholicism, French revolutionary thought and American imperialism. Paz, as poet, places ritual, love and poetry as balm.

A horror/science fiction about two Black families mapping safe routes for Black motorists in 1950s America (think The Green Book) and encountering the monsters (both the human and the Lovecraftian supernatural) dotting the backroads.

A work of entwined fiction and non-fiction, Cohen muses on the unsaid within interactions between the men and women heavily responsible for American cultural history. Spanning the century between the Civil War and Vietnam, Cohen allows us to “eavesdrop” on the great friendships/collaborations between artistic behemoths such as Gertrude Stein, James Baldwin, Marcel Duchamp, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Avedon, Walt Whitman and Marianne Moore.

A woman‘s memoir of her growing up in Tennessee while trying to find what it means to be “Chinese” and “American,” fielding definitions given to her by her immigrant parents, an idolized older brother battling his own psychotic break, and a manipulative partner content to shape and mold her. Interspersed, are chapters on ferns, whose vivid and beautiful array of genera and species help Tchou redefine her own past and present.

Charming and absolutely morbid at the same time, Comyns‘ small book cheerfully details the deferred dreams, vanities and mundane comings and goings of an eclectic country family as the rural village surrounding them succumbs to the madness of a mass ergot poisoning. Based on a true account that she read in a local newspaper, the author is superb at blending, what David Auerbach in “Waggish” calls, “the pastoral and the horrific.”

Having graduated nursing school, I wanted to read a bit into the history of American nursing. It is a shame that this book is so well-researched but still reads remarkably dry. The bibliography/source material (regarding the Mormon nurses of the Latter Day Saints, African American nurses navigating segregated hospitals, Civil War workers on the front lines, US Army Corps of Nurses) looks to be a lot more interesting than the book itself.

I cannot begin to describe how much I love this book. Both a novel about Anil, a young woman who returns to her birth country of Sri Lanka after years of studying abroad, and a historical document detailing the challenges facing her as a forensic anthropologist as she attempts to unravel truth from the bodies left/scattered from the island‘s years of civil war and forced disappearances.

Ms. Lahiri‘s stories center on the experiences of Indian-American immigrants, divided between West Bengal and New England, with a common theme of yearning, out of homesickness amidst “foreignness,” or for an object of which the characters are often not entirely sure of. The last story, “The Third and Final Continent” is a favorite: inspired by the author‘s own father and his journeys to strange lands, grappling with a recent arranged marriage.

Didn‘t enjoy this as much as Freeman‘s: Love, most likely due to the fact that to be fascinated by animals (especially wild ones) always leaves you feeling morally shaken (What IS our relationship to animals? Pets?), with the perpetual reminder of human-made climate change affecting all such creatures. Not that I‘m saying the stories were not superb. Freeman‘s always introduces me to gifted new writers whose larger work I immediately seek out.

I wanted to start into something culinary, when I get the free time over the coming summer, and figured reading an anthology of food essays by Vogue food writer and critic Jeffrey Steingarten would be the best start. The panoply of food he discusses (paired with his tried and true recipes) is mind-boggling and drool-inducing: from sourdough starter and Sicilian granita, to Tunisian bkaila and a good apple pie (hint: never use cinnamon).

A strange and obscure little book written in the 1920s, about a rural Ohio woman torn between her husband and a lover. As Dawn Powell‘s biographer puts it well, this novel reads as romance fiction but with all the dark and bleak stylization of a Theodore Dreiser story.

Comprised of three books (“My Childhood,” “In The World,” and “My Universities”) by the famed Soviet writer Maxim Gorky. It‘s touted as one of Russian literature‘s best autobiographies, which I agree with. Gorky (a pseudonym meaning “bitter”), who grew up in ghastly poverty, is a fantastic observer of Russian peasant life and its hard-bitten cruelties alongside its simultaneous spiritual raptures, all under the last half-century of tsarism.

I cannot recommend this book enough - it may not be the most “fun” read because it is designed to critically teach and not entertain - but it is necessary and thus, riveting. A famed Brazilian educator who grew up in the slums of Recife, Paulo Freire believes that real, “consciousness-raising” education consists of knowing what our world is, how it came to be that way, what other and better ways we could imagine it, and how to realize those ways.

A very erotic portrait of the tail-end of a passionate love affair between a teenage girl and a much older man, both brought into close orbit again, years later, by the man‘s travels to Kyoto to see the city‘s temple bells ring in a New Year. This is Kawabata‘s last (completed) novel and an intensely psychological one at that, the tautness of his doomed love triangle softened by his painterly impressions of a Japan passing through her seasons.

Last book of the year! Ended with this Christmas classic: the first Dickens novel (short story?) that I‘ve read as an adult. And can appreciate - Dickens is known for his rich, nostalgic storytelling filled with hints of his real-life concerns for welfare of the urban poor (he thought any morose pinch-penny during Yuletide was an especial sin against humanity). This edition came with other Xmas stories of his, such as from “The Pickwick Papers.”

On a school assignment, I was first introduced to Duckworth via her TED Talk on grit. Her research on the psychology of achievement is absolutely fascinating and an inspiration for anyone who is searching for (or already has) their own grit. The secret(s) of grit? Find something you‘re passionate about, put in deliberate practice, seek a higher purpose for your passion and above all have hope, no matter the obstacle. A great New Year‘s resolution!

As a fairly new runner, I love the sport/lifestyle enough that I want to do it the rest of my life. Burfoot, a former Boston Marathon champion and lifelong runner, provides tons of sage (and pretty basic) advice of how to make your running sustainable, safe, goal-oriented, injury-avoidant and most importantly, fun. In summing up his attitude towards running shoes, pacing, nutrition etc., Burfoot provides the acronym KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid).

A collection of essays and poems, this book was an early piece about the ongoing Siege of Sarajevo and the Bosnian War. A Bosnian city resident and writer living out the early ‘90s under daily sniper fire and shelling, Mehmedinovic documents what strikes him hardest amongst the existential dread and ennui of this war, from the gray hairs found in his young son‘s hair to fellow artists risking their lives to chronicle Sarajevo‘s destruction.

An homage to an old Russian fairy tale. In 1920, a man and woman, grieving over their stillborn baby, move to a remote outpost in the Alaska Territory to start anew. Making a snow child one snowy night and finding it gone the next morning, the woman soon suspects the snow figure has come to life, after spotting a lone girl in the woods.

It was almost a relief to end this book, just because hooks packs such an emotional punch into her work. Incisive and critically minded, hooks takes her scalpel to our culturally defined notion of familial and romantic love, cutting and reassembling it into a more expanded and just version of love. I picked up a used copy and was thrilled to find, months later, hooks‘s writing on the first page. Now all I have to do is change my name to Tracey.

One of the more famous works of true-crime, abetted by the author‘s added advantage of being a friend and confidante to almost all the absurdly rich, decadent and oh-so-genteel actors involved in this eerie Savannah murder case. Also part travelogue, this book makes you want to wander the historic town, spared by the destruction of the Civil War, and visit the lush garden squares and hauntingly beautiful Bonaventure Cemetery.

Considered one (if not “the”) founding work of Gothic fiction, The Castle of Otranto was designed by its British politician author to be a marriage between “the modern novel and ancient romance,” “romance” referring to the chivalric times of knights and damsels in distress of the 1100s to 1200s. This book is not so much eerie and terrifying as more of a historical curiosity, showing how 18th century literati thought of their medieval forebears.

Happened to be reading this when the Mike Tyson/Jake Paul fight was being aired. A wonderful collection of journalist (and avid boxing fan) Liebling‘s sports articles for the New Yorker, regarding the first-rate pugilists of 1940s and 1950s America, as the advent of television-aired matches began to rob Madison Square Garden, Yankee Stadium and amateur boxing clubs of paying audiences.

A collection of forty-five of San Franciscan journalist and satirist Ambrose Bierce‘s best stories of the weird, the ghostly and the horrific. Famous for his wit as much as his misanthropy, Bierce‘s dark view of human nature informs most of his tales about vacant and eerie cabins, invisible monsters and dead men arisen.

Saw the 1971 film first, before immediately rifling through my bookstore‘s paperback section to find the 1961 novel. A young schoolteacher, in Australia‘s bleak western deserts, stops through the mining town of Bundanyabba for a night, on his way to Sydney. Little does he know that he will soon lose his train ticket out, as well as all of his money, dignity and sanity as he descends into a weekend of dark depravity. “Welcome to the ‘Yabba, mate!”

Was feeling like a thoroughly English gothic thriller for October. A young man is about to come into a large inheritance after the untimely passing of his cousin, when he is paid a visit by said cousin‘s beautiful Italian widow (Italian? Then she must be up to no good). Du Maurier does an excellent job swathing cousin Rachel‘s friendly visit (or is it murderous plotting??) in ambiguity.

This was dense but oh, so very good. Probably one of the best books I‘ve ever read. William James, a psychologist of the pragmatic tradition tackles religion in a series of lectures. His argument, drawing from the accounts of countless psychologists, authors, swamis, theologians, philosophers, laymen and madmen, convinces that objective seeking of the why and whereabouts of a god ring useless next to subjective religious experience.

A good intro to the Great Migration, where for the better part of the 20th century, thousands of African-Americans left the South, seeking better opportunity in the great industrial cities north of the Mason-Dixon Line. It was brilliant of Wilkerson to veer from reliance on historical documents only and instead structure this nonfiction narrative around three interviewed persons who retell their own personal exoduses North.

What a treat! Usually I shy away from short stories and literary contemporary fiction AND poetry…yet this collection (comprised of all three genres) has completely changed my stance, as well as introduced me to an array of authors whose longer works I can‘t wait to read next. Similar to Granta, and Lapham‘s Quarterly, Freeman‘s draws together various literary talent to expound on a common theme, in this case: love, in its many, many forms.

Published in 1901, The Desert is one of the first books that wrote about, and espoused the beauties of, (you called it) the desert. Traveling through the American Southwest, and specifically the Mojave, (an experience that probably augmented his post as art advisor to industrialist Andrew Carnegie), Van Dyke points out the vivid and stark beauty of his surroundings, or what he calls “the sublimity of the waste.”

Living in San Francisco, it is almost mandated that you read this classic by SF Chronicle columnist Maupin. Rollicking, acerbic and outlandish are the only words I can come up with to describe the interlinked exploits, shenanigans and “affairettes” of the residents of 28 Barbary Lane (which is based on Macondray Lane, right above my workplace). Next up: watching the 1993 TV miniseries (Laura Linney anyone?)

I‘ve first watched the film version of this novel, and was long overdue to read the book too. Admittedly, I didn‘t like it as much as the movie (a horrible thing to say, I know) but it was still a treat to read a book about book readers and their love of books (especially if it‘s Austen, with a lot of science fiction recommendations to boot). Also, who can‘t say no to a book club that offers peach margaritas?

I love Banana Yoshimoto‘s transmutation of the (at least for me) mundane into joyful practice. I was never into cooking (let alone scrubbing a kitchen floor or sink) but I could certainly try to aspire to Yoshimoto‘s thoughtful prescription of approaching my kitchen as one would any place of peace, beauty and comfort. Her second story, “Moonlight Shadow,” is also worth the read, about young love cut short and how grief can be navigated.

A woman lives as a recluse and eccentric in rural New Zealand. Sensing her emptiness, she meets a mute child and his troubled Māori foster father. This book won a whole slew of awards upon its first publishing in the early ‘80s by a small literary feminist collective. The author‘s language is beautiful, dancing between Māori, English, poetry, and prose. Warning: there are many instances of child abuse which may make this a grim read at times.

Gloria Anzaldua is an icon: it‘s an honor to finally get to read one of her greatest works. This is for anyone who thinks that a border is just an arbitrary line: through essays and poetry in both Spanish and English (reflecting the code-switching incumbent upon all residents of the U.S./Mexican Borderlands), Anzaldua relates the forces that shape her Mexicana-Chicana-Tejana heritage, growing up in Texas‘s Rio Grande Valley.

As a beginner runner, I find Murakami‘s musings on the sensation of “running-as-necessity” perfect. For him, he uses his long distance joys as a parallel, and tool, for constructing the frame of mind he needs to write books. Simple and meditative, this book was a comfort to read, as nerves begin to mount for my first marathon.

Sometimes you read a book because you want an easy answer to something. Not what this book provides: but Ellison‘s “non-answer” is more illuminating and truly descriptive of something as complex and monolithic as America‘s attitude and treatment toward race, versus any definitive “answer.” Invisible Man is one Black man‘s search for identity in mid-20th century Harlem and the Deep South - a narrative true to today and far from being outmoded.

James Cain‘s stories are always fun to read - mini book-bound film noirs, usually about a man who knows better, but falls anyway for that sexy married woman with murderous intentions. It hardly ever turns out well for the man. “Mildred Pierce” had to be my favorite though - more novella than short story, it veered in a different direction than most of Cain‘s plots. About to watch the 1945 film version next, starring a mesmerizing Joan Crawford.

Written in 1942 during the German occupation of Denmark, Danish writer Dinesen (a nom de plume for Baroness Karen Blixen) weaves beautifully rich tapestries that are her short stories, believing in the power of myth, romance and medieval fable as bulwarks against the bleak “wintry” landscape of WWII. Great contrast with my “summery” reading spot: Standish-Hickey State Park along the beautiful Eel River.

Long and dense but if you‘re willing to give yourself over to the pace of the novel and you can overlook long-winded conversations - this book is very good. A young German man, in the turmoil of a Europe approaching the eve of WWI, visits his ailing cousin up at a TB sanatorium in the heights of the Alps. His visit is set for three weeks but he remains up on “the magic mountain” for seven years.

Mi primer libro en español! Budista y profesor de ética y religión, David Loy identifica el sentido del "yo" como destructivo en el sentido de que hay una otra mitad necesaria de la cual comprendemos algo que siempre falta. Así lo llenamos de dinero, sexo, guerra y karma.

Some forewarning: I‘ve become addicted to running. To the point where I‘ve only competed in a 10K (great finisher‘s medal!), but Ive already registered for the San Francisco Marathon in July and am even pondering ultras. So no surprise that I love this book. A journalist gets to participate in a foot race hosted by an isolated tribe of the most gifted ultra runners on the planet; it‘s the book‘s aim to unpack how and why, and drags you in with it.

This book of short stories is slim - but it took me a month to mentally scale the lofty (but beautiful) prose, dense with philosophy, history and theology. Borges is a master of magical realism (perhaps veering closer to fantasy and esoterica): his stories are riveting imaginings concerning the impermanence of time, the symbolic nature of labyrinths, the ambiguity of authorship, as well as how eternity may manifest on a human scale.

I love the author‘s focus on her minor characters most, which gives this Korean family‘s saga (from the early 1900s Japanese colonial period of a once undivided Korea to modern day Osaka/Tokyo/Yokohama) a broad, sweeping quality, but the side-stories dead-end, which is frustrating. I appreciate this peek into the Korean-Japanese experience and how the tides of one woman‘s shame, her survival, discrimination, and globalization mold a family.

I clearly remember being assigned Morrison‘s novel “Song of Solomon” in 8th grade English: I couldn‘t recall the story now but I can recall the feelings of nostalgia, beauty, contemplation the book drew from me (which is hard to do in a 14 year old)! This book of essays has not replicated that (I think Morrison is a better fiction writer than essayist) but it still doesn‘t take away from the pleasure of, in a way, “being in her company.”

A behemoth of fine journalistic writing. Shilts was a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle when AIDS first began to ravage the city. The disease soon shone a spotlight on the stunning health disparities in the US as the federal government, scientific and public health institutions as well as blood banks refused to initially take seriously what they condescended as “the gay virus.” Shilts later succumbed to AIDS, seven years after publishing.

Content-wise, I felt this was more of a review for me, given that I had started my meanderings into cosmology/physics with Brian Greene‘s “The Elegant Universe.” But it‘s not lacking in star appeal (no pun intended)…I‘m a huge fan of Stephen Hawking, RIP. I‘d recommend this short book to anyone wanting their black holes, neutrinos and particle colliders put in introductory lay terms, from a famed theoretical physicist with a sense of humor.