5 Books I Actually Finished This Year
Plus, an honorable mention for one I didn't (but would still recommend)
Back in the summer, I wrote an essay about how much I was struggling to read a single gosh dang book without getting distracted. I’ve had a notorious habit of picking up new titles, reading a chapter or two, putting them down, and never finishing them.
It’s a very frustrating habit, especially for someone who, ahem, writes for a living. You’d think I’d be great at supporting my fellow writers by devouring novel after novel, but my silly, shortsighted brain simply does not want me to do that. Couple my concentration problems with the constant presence of social media and the notifications pinging from my phone and it feels like there’s no reason to even try reading books, much less finish them.
Writing about my frustration with reading was the first time I admitted to myself how much it bothered me. And a lot of you wrote to me to express that you also struggle with reading books cover to cover. I was glad to hear I wasn’t alone.
Honestly, getting those feelings out into the world helped me gather the strength to try reading books again. I already felt like an impostor and kind of a failure for being a writer who can’t read ‘til the end, so I figured it wouldn’t really hurt to at least crack open a few new novels even if I didn’t think I’d finish them.
And guess what? Against my own odds, I actually read five books cover to cover in the second half of this year! Well, more like nine, but some of them were part of the same series, which I’m lumping together for the sake of this post.
I want to write more later about the things that helped me quiet my mind and focus on reading books. But for now I think it’s worth highlighting the titles that captured my attention for several hundred pages. Consider this part book review and part celebration of progress.
Without further ado:
1. The Cabinet by Un-Su Kim
Sometimes the best books you read are the ones you stumble upon by accident. I was killing time at the library one day when I spotted The Cabinet on a curated display of books by Asian authors. The cover art jumped out at me, so I checked it out and took it with me, because why not?
I started reading The Cabinet on the bus ride home, and quickly found myself intrigued by the novel’s enduring weirdness. It begins with a bizarre, fable-like narrative that leaves you with so many questions that you just have to keep reading to uncover the answers. (I won’t tell you if you actually find those answers by the end, though.)
The bulk of the story follows anti-hero Deok-geun Kong, who works the world’s most boring job at a research center that gives him literally nothing to do all day. So, out of sheer boredom, he starts nosing through documents in a cabinet owned by a researcher named Professor Kwon. Instead of punishing him for trespassing, Kwon enlists Kong’s help managing the file cabinet.
What’s in the files? Hundreds of stories about people called “symptomers” — those who have come to Professor Kwon with odd, extraordinary symptoms. Kwon is convinced that they may mark the beginning of a new species, one that’s adapted to the modern world in extraordinary ways.
To give you some examples: there’s a man who notices a ginkgo tree growing from his thumb, which eventually takes over his entire body. Another guy attempts to become a cat — yes, a literal cat — to impress the woman he admires. And there are several people called “torporers” who fall into a deep, deep sleep for months on end, waking up to a world that’s kept on changing without them.
While Professor Kwon is enamored by these symptomers — studying them is his life’s work, after all — Kong is completely apathetic about them. It’s these stark contrasts between boredom and fascination and the real vs. the surreal that made The Cabinet such an immersive read. Combined that with the author’s deadpan humor and a overarching sense of mystery, I felt like I had to keep going page after page to see what the book was really all about.
2. Chronin, Vol. 1 & 2 by Alison Wilgus
I actually picked up this graphic novel series back when I was an editor at Discover. We got sooooo many advanced reading copies to the office, and many of them had scant to do with the subjects we even covered in the magazine. Publishers just love to send free stuff, apparently!
Chronin sat on my bookshelf for more than two years before I finally decided to read it. The series is about a group of college students living in New York City (in the fuuuuuture) who are tasked with time traveling to important events in history to document them.
The series’ main characters go back to Japan in 1864 to witness an uprising against the Tokugawa shogunate (which appears to be based off of the real-life Kinmon incident). But they end up altering the course of history so much that they create a new problem: they can’t travel back to their present-day timeline.
I love time travel stories, so I thought this one would be an instant hit for me. But honestly it kinda fell flat even though I was determined to read the whole thing!
I think I was more intrigued by the idea of Chronin, but the story itself was hard to follow at points. Some of that may have been due to the illustration style, which is on the simpler side and (probably unintentionally) causes some of the characters to look extremely similar. And the way the series ended was good but I felt like there were some inconsistencies and loose ends I would’ve liked to see tied up.
But these books were still enjoyable, and I’d say Chronin is definitely worth the time and effort it takes to read.
3.Here for It: Or, How to Save Your Soul in America by R. Eric Thomas
I actually wanted to read Thomas’ new book, Congratulations, the Best is Over! because I read about it in the free BookPage newsletter at the library one night and was enamored by the title. But because it was a new release, I couldn’t get the book right away.
I felt impatient that night, so I went up to the biography section at the library and checked out Here for It instead. I’d never read any of the author’s work, but I was determined to because I just wanted to leave the library with something, dammit!
Thomas is an incredible essayist, which is no surprise considering he was scooped up to write a column for Elle.com from a viral Facebook post (!!) I can’t imagine having such overnight success as a writer, especially when you didn’t think you were capable of such a thing. He talks a bit about this meteoric rise in Here for It, as well as the (sometimes big) mistakes he made along the way.
Every entry in this collection of essays was electric. I had trouble putting the book down once I picked it up, and it actually had me laughing out loud at points. There are some stories in here that are a true rollercoaster of emotions, and others that are more level but really make you think.
Thomas is deeply down to Earth and honest, even when the truth isn’t simple or pretty. It’s a quality I admire in his writing and try to stick to in my own. In the end this book made me feel inspired to write my own stories, which I think is the best thing a collection of essays can do to a reader.
4. Keep it in the Family by John Marrs
I went through a brief but intense phase a winter or two ago where I read a lot of thrillers (meaning like, three books in a season, which is a lot for me). Thrillers are so easy to get sucked into, which is why I love them. I felt so accomplished after finishing Girl on the Train during that time because it was one of the first books I actually read cover to cover in so long.
Ryan recommended checking out John Marrs after he read Keep it in the Family earlier this year. I think we both tore through it in about two or three days. This book is absolutely deranged, and I don’t want to spoil the plot for anyone, but will say it involves a lot of stuffing dead bodies in suitcases. And of course, the typical traits that make thrillers great: Deception! Mystery! Lies! Family secrets!
5. The entire Alice in Borderland series by Haro Aso
In truth, I’ve been a devoted AIB fan since last year when I read the first volume at the library. But there’s some weird mental block I have about counting manga/graphic novels as “real” books. Which, when I think about it, is just silly and limiting.
Even though this series has its own Netflix show, the manga is still being translated into English, volume by volume, from the original Japanese. (Yes, there’s a lot more of the manga than made it into the TV series.)
After I read all the volumes available at the library last year, I decided to go all-in and preorder the manga so I could get new volumes as they were released. I don’t normally do this, but it sounded fun to get a new book every few months that I forgot I ordered. One comes out approximately every three or four months, and I dutifully pick it up at my local bookstore downtown as soon as I can.
This year I read volumes 5-7, and I’m due to get volume 8 in a few weeks. Every time I get a new AIB book, I devour it within an evening or two. Usually two, because the series is quite violent and disturbing and I’m prone to nightmares. So it helps to pace myself.
I can’t tell you exactly what draws me to this series, because it is so much more gory than most media I consume. But I do think AIB asks some complex questions about ethics and human nature, especially when people are pushed to their limits. That intrigues me for obvious reasons.
Honorable mention
When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris
The book that started it all! I found a copy of this collection of essays at a Goodwill and bought it because I liked the painting on the cover (you can read more about that here).
I read about 80% of this book and loved every bit of it. So much that it inspired me to start writing essays again — and sparked the name of this very newsletter.
I only stopped reading because the final essay in the book is a 3-part tale about how David quit smoking while traveling through Japan, and it takes up a whopping 83 pages! I simply did not feel like reading 83 pages about this man’s journey to cut out cigarettes. Maybe one day I’ll give it another shot, though.