How is it that as early as January I may have read one of the best non-fiction books this year! Outstanding! BETWEEN TWO KINGDOMS by Suleika Jaouad is one of those books that will stay with me for quiet a long time. Poignant, beautifully written, and a searing narrative, Suleika is born a storyteller. She has this unbelievable command of words. Whe she strikes, she meant it, her words and thoughts so propulsive I can't help but be wowed. 👇

"We're always striving for more: growing a business, getting that promotion, making the big bucks, finishing the project. On this never-ending pursuit of more, when do we ever stop and smell the flowers?" ?? Happy New Year fellow Readers ???

😲 This book is so moving, I am of out of breath, really! What a woman you are, Ruth Coker Burks! You are unbelievable. A heroic story of selflessness, compassion, altruism and unconditional love, All The Young Men breaks my heart but it also gives me hope that people like Ruth is out there, helping people living with AIDS in getting the dignity they deserve while equally grappling how to live the remaining days of their lives. 👇

I read 30 books in 2021. Short of my goal of 50 and way behind of what I accomplished last year (47) but still full of remarkable discoveries: new authors, books I would not have picked on my own, themes I found out I fascinated the most a.k.a. astronomy, and genre I am quite fond of this year - narrative non-fiction. There were so many ups and downs this year that halted my daily readings but I got up and persevered and reminded myself 👇

It took me more than a month to finish reading this massive book (580 pages) and Mr. Franzen delivers his story magnanimously. Like his previous novel, The Corrections, which I have loved, Crossroads is an exploration of fractured family dynamics, spiritual and religious tensions, infidelity, jealousy, 👇

Hello, my name is Oreo. I am a Chihuahua 😊

Done reading this massive book, 576 pages long, and I thought The Lincoln Highway is brilliant in every sense of the word. A family affair, a travelogue, a coming-of-age saga, a grand adventure both real and mythological and lastly a really affecting look at the interplay of lives both young and old, the innocent and the guilty, the events we can and 👇

Opening salvo is just breathtaking 🙏 🙌

I am quite struggling what to make of this book. I do not particularly like the writing style where narrations and conversations are lumped into one whole paragraph that readers may not be so keen enough to follow who is speaking what. But I sort of understand where this novel is coming from. This is as much about adulting: how we maintain and nurture friendship, how we draw the line 👇

Wrapping up my August reads with this movingly written book, The Rise and Fall of Osama Bin Laden by Peter Bergen. This is a great follow up to Jean Sasson‘s opus Growing Up Bin Laden. Mr. Bergen has produced a narrative that is both deftly constructed and meticulously researched. With the recent withdrawal of US forces in Afghanistan, the war on terror narrative is 👇

At once funny, cleverly honest, and achingly sad, this fierce and thought-provoking debut deserves to be read widely, if only to discover an amazing writer brimming with imagination and vision. Guapa by Saleem Haddad illuminates so precisely, so humanely, about being different in a world full of beliefs, judgments and prejudices. I loved this book! The tone reminds me of The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen. That witty, wistful and 👇

Breaking my reading slump with this book: Growing Up Bin Laden by Jean Sasson. Gripping and heartbreaking, Ms. Sasson takes us to the domestic world of the infamous Osama Bin Laden through the eyes of his first wife Najwa Bin Laden and their fourth son Omar Bin Laden. What life was like for the first and most important wife of Osama? What kind of father and husband had Osama been? Had he love his wives (5) and children (24)? 👇

Glad to have read this book, And The Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini, that had been on my radar for quite some time after reading his two remarkable and succesful novels, The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns. Although, I loved those two books, And The Mountains Echoed was my least favorite. It was a little disorienting and there was a feeling of inadequacy right towards the end. 👇

Hello, my name is Jokoy 😊 I think I'm cute 😄

3 hits and 1 miss - my #JuneWrapUp

The whole month of June I had an opportunity to armchair-travel to Nigeria, South Sudan, Rwanda, Sri Lanka, Haiti, Angola and Afghanistan. These books were all over the world yet profoundly brilliant, observant, and an unputdownable tale of survival, belonging, altruism, identity, violence, social and economic injustice across culture and tradition, across all facets of life. 😊👊

Superb! Narrative and investigative non-fiction of the very highest order. No Good Men Among the Living by Anand Gopal is wholly absorbing. Mr. Gopal's storytelling is imbued with a sense of understanding and moral seriousness of the broad landscape of Afghanistan's war through the lives of ordinary people all trying to survive. His close observations and delicate renderings of the war on terror is sad but true that, ultimately, the war 👇

Damien Brown, an Australian doctor, suceeds in depicting the day-to-day experience of a doctor working for the MSF (Doctors without borders) in places where poverty, conflict, tragedy are prevalent and a fact of life. He worked in Mavinga in Angola, dubbed as the "edge of the world" and in South Sudan where tribal or clan wars were the norms. He navigated cultural differences both in health care and personal upbringing. ?

Hello, its me 😊 I'm reading on my Onyx Boox Nova 3 Color 😊

A compelling narrative, Chasing Chaos had me from first page to last. Reading this book is likely to make the would-be aid worker feel both awed and a little frightened. I have always been fascinated by humanitarian workers and I thought: "They have the best job in the world." They get to travel everywhere and help alleviate people's unimaginable suffering. Here, Jessica Alexander recalled ?

Recording the history of her country, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie created a civil war story packed with gory details, intricate characters, unsavory circumstances, malnourised refugees, complicated romance. In short, Half of a Yellow Sun was a portraiture of human emotions as a cost of war. While it started really engaging and promising, I felt detached towards 👇

#MayWrapUp Five books I devoured in May! Beautifully written yet also compellingly page-turner, these books remind me why I fell in love with reading. 😊👏📚

Utterly heartbreaking and impossibly beautiful work of narrative non-fiction, TheLemonTree by SandyTolan is an extraordinary, harrowing account as seen through the eyes of a Jew and an Arab in perhaps the most unstable and fragile place in the world today. To read this book is to understand, if not total but at least quiet enough, Palestine and Israel as they exist today. It stunned me how myriad of events that unfolded from 1948 up to 👇

This book is deeply unsettling on every level as it is thrumming with suffering, violence, and injustice. But this is a story of resilience and survival, and, ultimately, love. I really admire the unrelenting bravery of this book. Susan Abulhawa writes passionalety and lyrically about the ugly realities of war as well as the beauty of family, friendship and community. 👇

My current reads: Mornings in Jenin by Susan Abulhawa and The Lemon Tree by Sandy Tolan. These could not have been more timely and, yes, heartbreaking! 🙏

My 3rd book this month: This is How it Always Is by Laurie Frankel. Ever heard of Gender Dysphoria? This book is about it and how it plays in the lives of an ordinary family living in an unforgiving, sometimes ignorant, and terrifying world where being different, being non-binary, being queer is not tolerated. Gender Dysphoria, simply put, is that strong desire to be of another gender. You are born a boy 👇

My 2nd #audiobook this year: #EatPrayLove by #ElizabethGilbert, read by the author herself and it was fantastic! I first read this book on paperback in Bali, in Ubud, circa 2017, and I enjoyed it so much. Rereading this after 4 years, it resonates well from where I was to where I am now. Not that I sufferred what Liz experienced, but that journey of trying to become a person of maturity, evenhandedness, curiosity and 👇

Done reading Before Night Falls by Reinaldo Arenas and I thought it was sad, grisly, unsettling but ultimately moving memoir in the midst of repression and fear. Told in chronological account of his life, Reinaldo Arenas was quite a character; a larger than life persona, who endured dictatorships from Batista to Castro in Cuba. As a gay writer, he was particularly pursued by the government and tagged as counterrevolutionary. 👇

Finished reading this book tonight and I enjoyed it! A pretty common premise: a woman from a small village who went to the city and endured so much, the highs and lows, the ups and downs, in life. But what fascinated me was the strong Indian culture, tradition, and gastronomy, depicted in this book from henna-making to 👇

Wow! This is one of the most profound and impactful books and I read much of it through tears. Filled with remarkable people and reads like a legal thriller, this book is about the application of the law to suit the tides of time so as not to trample the fundamental rights of every person enshrined under the Constitution - the right to marry, that right whom to marry, that right to choose whom to love and have a committed relationship with. 🙏😊

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 What a beautiful, remarkable book! The Code Breaker by Walter Isaacson is about fathoming the joyful and inspiring wonders of life through the lens of CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) which are the hallmark of a bacterial defense system that forms the basis for CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing technology. Scientific in nature, but Isaacson's approach is akin to a detective novel where 👇

#MarchWrapUp: These are the books I immersed myself with and enjoyed immensely this month. 😊

Another Astronomy book ticked off from my never-ending reading list. The discovery of Exoplanets (planets outside our solar system) paved the way to debunk or abandon at least some of our old, chauvinistic thinking of the universe, such as Stellar Chauvinism which states that planets, at least capable of supporting life, have to be in orbit around stars, and Surface Chauvinism which provides that in so far as water is necessary for the 👇

Blown-away! I am still soaking with enormous information that I might need to take a moment to process everything. I am delighted that I decided to pick up this book. The Future of Humanity by Michio Kaku is very readable and packed with fascinating information. It is an examination of the possibility of life outside our own world, the possibility of unifying the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics, 👇

I am really glad to have read this book because it unveils heaps of information about the cosmos, the space, time, planets, and galaxies in relation to humanity and the laws of nature. Katie Mack has a way of making daunting concepts accessible and ultimately fascinating. Her style is superb! She provides more questions to extrapolate our understanding, or the lack thereof, of the origins of the universe. I may not have understood everything 👇

I love my new Kindle ♥️ Light, sleek and waterproof. Perfect 🤗

My kind of break..😊 Happy Weekend fellow readers 🤗📚

The hype for this book is real. The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune captures so much emotions that the pessimism in us will back down. This a book to melt our hearts. It also expands our understanding of how prejudice annihilates our relationship with our fellow living, breathing, feeling, loving human being. You have here magic, adventure, queerness, eccentricity, but more than that, you have friendship and love and family and 👇

One of the best memoirs I've read in a long time, A Dutiful Boy is a must read for everyone across ages, gender, culture and beliefs. Moshin Zaidi is an epitome of a real catalyst of change starting from his own sexual identity to becoming a lawyer and advocating equality and justice for all. I admire his audacity and perserverance despite insurmountable barriers that involves his family and his own happiness. 👇

Sci-fi is not my go-to genre but I intend to read more of it this year. All Systems Red by Martha Wells is the first book in Murderbot Diaries series. I enjoyed it albeit quiet baffled by the terms, language and structure of this novella. I'll take this as a good start exploring this genre. Just over a little hundred pages, this book is compact, action-driven that you'll want to read it in one sitting. 👇

Long day, long week, but coffee is the answer and a good book 😊☕

The title is not showing up here. Honeytrap by Aster Glenn Gray is a big surprise for me because it is not often talked about and yet it should be given the spotlight it deserves. I am glad to have discovered this book on Goodreads. It even reminds me of Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey Mcquiston. You have two main characters: one is an American FBI agent and the other is a Soviet military spy. Two incongruous characters who must unite together 👇

Lovin my Kindle stand 😊 Happy Reading!

THE STATIONERY SHOP by Marjan Kamali is a tale both of romantic and political tragedy, written with a strong sense of place and time. I liked the story, and how it all unfolded. There were moments I gasped, goosebumps here and there. But I did not love it as much. I felt that towards the end the twists and turns seemed flat and unconvincing. But I was glad to have read this fierce of a novel and made it my first this new year. 🌟🌟🌟

Hello 2021 😊🎆

Not thinking backward, not thinking forward. Just being peaceful, being present. Just living in the moment, living my life. 😊 Cheers to more quality readings in the New Year 🎆📚

A very strange year and yet it was also my best reading year ever! I read an unprecedented 47 Books and I was grateful beyond measure.The pandemic upended practically everything familiar and normal and reading has been the best escape, the necessary portal to keep sane and grounded. The goal was 50 but I had never been happier for the stories and authors I discovered this year, so eclectic and exquisite and remarkable in their own literary ways.👇

My last read in 2020 turned out to be one of the very best I read in years. Unbelievable! LIE WITH ME by Philippe Besson (translated by Molly Ringwald) is a touching, tragic love story that speaks so powerfully of longing, repression, identity, secrecy, lust, desire, and love in its barest, purest, precious form. This book can be read in one sitting because it's less than 200 pages but the emotional voyage is simply astounding. 👇

Well, that was a quick read and I enjoyed this book greatly. Enjoyment is probably not the right word. Maybe, solidarity or empathy. HOW WE LIVE NOW is about the scenes from daily life during the height of Covid-19 pandemic early this year. Bill Hayes made a journal mainly to scribble what he thought, felt, heard, saw, captured during those times. 👇

The gift of love, the gift of peace, the gift of happiness. May all these be yours at Christmas. 🤗♥️

"Any true expression of freedom is by definition an expression of rebellion. No matter what you do in life or what path you take, if you continue to follow your one true path, there will be those who will try to enslave you, to bring you back into the fold of doing what they think you should. Deal with it by knowing that they have no right to dictate the terms of your existence. " ??