A very fantastical-yet-not-fantasy book, sort of similar to 100 Years of Solitude. It follows the story of a family in Iran post the Islamic Revolution in the 1960s. Although the book has magic, ghosts and even a mermaid, it's missing that something that would make me want to categorise it as a fantasy book - maybe because of its very serious subject matter, and really the lack of anything good happening. (It's just one tragedy after another). The author escaped from Iran herself, and with little cultural references explained in the footnotes, you can see how it's a lament for what could have been for her country.
I gave it a 4 stars because it has a bit of a slow start, with the fantasy elements feeling quite overwhelming and confusing at first.
Originally posted at www.emgoto.com.
Contains spoilers
A murder mystery about two children who both go missing from the same summer camp, 15 years apart. The book jumps back and forth between the two time periods, introducing the children before their disappearances, as well as their (sometimes troubled) relationships with friends and family.
The middle part of the book was a bit hard to read as we started to see seemingly innocent people get framed, but it all ties up at the end for a mostly satisfying finish.
It became unexpectedly relevant when less than a week later, I saw all the news about the flooding of the summer camps in Texas. Sad stuff.
It ends with it turning out that the second child pretended to be murdered and actually ran away to live on a friend's deserted island away from civilization, until she could be emancipated at 18. I'm not too sure how much I agree with the logistics of a child living on an island for 5 years though. Is that really the best approach, especially since the dad went to jail for covering up her brother's murder anyway? And wouldn't her friend get in trouble for harbouring a minor on her island?
Originally posted at www.emgoto.com.
About first contact with an alien species (after Children of Time, I suppose this is Tchaikovsky's specialty). These aliens are interesting because they live on a planet devoid of light and communicate solely via electromagnetic waves. The book follows the POV of both human and alien, who can't communicate with each other and many misunderstandings ensue - albeit not so much in a a comedic way, but slightly more verging on horror.
Originally posted at www.emgoto.com.
Quite a short one. An elderly couple start seeing each other, after each of their respective partners have long passed away. Living in a small town, they continue to meet while ignoring the disapproving eyes of their neighbours. It's quite a cute, almost wholesome book (with some tinges of bittersweetness) about finding love in your old age.
Originally posted at www.emgoto.com.
The book centres around a young activist/hacker student and his university professor in London who has connections in rather high places. As his famous friends become embroiled in scandals, it seems like the professor is careening towards a downfall of his own.
I found the first half of this book really hard to get into. The author clearly knows what he's talking about, and the professor inhabits a very different world from us normal people (talking with Dukes and the like) and I think with a bunch of different characters being thrown at you it's hard to keep up with it all (or even care, if I'm being honest).
It did start to all come together in the second half of the book though, and I do appreciate that rather this just being a book about the student hacker and his underdog story, we get to see the perspective from the other side of the rich and famous. Overall though I didn't like it enough to recommend it, and hence why I'm giving it a 3.5/5.
Originally posted at www.emgoto.com.
If I had to sum up this book in one sentence it would be that the key to happiness and life satisfaction is to spend as much of your time in a “flow” state as possible. Even if you’re not familiar with the concept of flow itself, you’ve probably experienced it before - it’s that feeling when you really “lock in” to a task at hand, and can focus on it without any distractions, where time feels like it passes quicker, and you emerge with that satisfying sense of a job well done.
This isn’t just another pop science book on “how to find happiness” though, since the author Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is a psychologist who had quite extensively studied and was the originator of this concept of “flow”. Although the book is over 30 years old now, it still feels quite relevant. It’s aimed at regular readers so it’s not too heavy on the scientific concepts and is quite an interesting read, although I do feel at times it does get quite wordy and meander a bit.
To enter a state of flow, there’s a fine line to tread between finding something that’s challenging enough that your brain wants to lock onto it as a problem that it wants to solve, but not so challenging that you feel defeated and have to give up mid-way. For me, the most common time I enter flow is when I get stuck into some code and can spend some number of hours on fixing a bug or programming a new feature without my mind wandering anywhere else.
The kind of activity you need to be doing to enter a flow-state is something that requires a skill. You don’t need to necessarily be skilled though - it’s as long as the activity is appropriate for your skill level. A natural example is a sport, or a hobby like art, or suprisingly even walking can get you in a flow state, if you use the time to observe the environment around you, or are working towards achieving some sort of goal (visiting landmarks, or walking a certain distance and so on).
Something that doesn’t require flow would be something like watching TV, where you are a more of a passive consumer. I could imagine that it is still possible to get into a flow state when watching TV though - maybe if you used the time to notice certain visual techniques that are being used, or if you watched something not in your native language as a way to improve your language skills.
It’s towards the end of the book where I feel the book finally gets to the good part, and introduces a rather interesting paradox - people tend to spend the majority of their time in “flow” while at work, and not in their leisure time. And although they may say that they wish they had to work less, they actually reported higher levels of satisfaction at work rather than in their free time, due to the amount of time they spent in flow.
You can imagine plopping onto your couch after a tiring day’s work and just switching on the TV to decompress. It can take your mind off things, but since there’s really no challenge in it, you don’t enter a state of flow and it might not quite be as satisfying.
The book’s answer to this is quite complicated and it would be a disservice to sum it up as “don’t be tired” but it is sort of like that a bit. Or at least be able to see the work at you do from a more positive angle, so then you still have the energy at the end of the day to do other things to keep you in a flow state (or find a new job).
The book ends with suggesting that you strive to live your life always being in a state of flow. This is not an easy feat, since even if you find a satisfying job or multiple hobbies to help you enter flow states, jumping between these different activities will have you exit in and out of flow. And so you must find an overarching goal (basically your life’s purpose) such that all your sub-goals and the things you do are helping you proceed towards that main goal, which should help you be in a sense of flow all of the time.
Much easier said than done!
Goal-setting is such a personal activity that the book can’t really give you the answers on what they should be. This book doesn’t have a sequel, but if it did I feel like a natural follow-on would be find some sort of book on goal-setting. Or possibly Cal Newport’s book on “Deep Work” which is essentially about removing distractions so that you can spend extended periods of time focusing (and thus being in a flow state).
Overall, this was a book that leaves you with a lot of food for thought. Since it mostly makes reference to past studies done in the 60s and 70s, I would have loved a follow-up book or a revised edition, just to see what else has been learned from the science in the past couple of decades. But alas, the author passed away in 2021.
Another thing that wasn’t really covered in the book, but that in hindsight I would have liked clarified, is the difference between hyperfocus and flow. Although hyperfocus can have its merits, it’s also sometimes characterised as a negative thing, where you focus on something to the detriment of other parts of your life. In contrast, Csikszentmihalyi describes flow positively as being in a state of “optimal experience”.
If I get so stuck into a programming problem that I skip lunch and only stop when I realise it’s gotten dark outside, is that still flow, or is that hyperfocus? (Or both?) When I was younger, I can similarly remember getting hooked on video games in the same way. I suppose when you come up for air after a period of being locked in, the difference between flow and hyperfocus would be how you feel afterwards. Satisfied, or a sense of dismay at how you whiled the hours away?
I actually originally read this book a couple of years ago, but I felt like it was worth the re-read so I could more properly digest its contents (and write this book note on it). I actually bought a physical copy of it too. It’d been a long while since I’ve read a physical book (everything is on my Kindle these days) but man does it feel good! It’s unfortunate that living in my tiny Japanese apartment makes it hard to buy books, but I’d love to go back to having a proper physical library of books one day if I get a bigger place.
Originally posted at www.emgoto.com.
The book starts off quite slow-paced, as we are introduced to a character who has decided to quit her job to run a local bookshop. I'll admit that at first I didn't see the point of it - I didn't feel like anything was happening plot-wise - but by the end I felt really charmed by this one.
As the bookshop becomes a community and a place for locals to gather, the owner starts to grow into her role as bookshop owner as well. By the end I really wanted to visit the bookshop myself.
When I was a kid I wanted to run a bookshop (and live on the second floor above it) which I'm sure is a common dream for bookworms. But I guess running a bookshop is often more about the people that come to the store rather than the books themselves. I'm not much of a people person so I guess I'm glad that dream didn't pan out 😂
Originally posted at www.emgoto.com.
A robot steps out of his regular routine as a manservant and discovers that the human world as we know it seems to have died out. What's left are robots stuck with their programmed conditions - to wait for guests to arrive to serve them tea, for instance.
But since there are no guests coming, they are destined to wait forever.
Although Uncharles the robot is quite fixed (well, programmed) in his ways, it's not in an annoying way, and his POV adds an interesting layer to the story as we more immediately grasp what's going on compared to the naivety of Uncharles. Another great book by Tchaikovsky.
Originally posted at www.emgoto.com.
Aliens have come along, demolished Earth, and let a couple million of the remaining humans participate in a televised fight to the death for the rest of the universe to enjoy.
It's obviously an absurd situation, but the main character Carl is quite aware of the fact that a) most of Earth has died and b) more are dying every day. He also has a talking cat named Princess Donut.
So it's kind of this mix between humour and the depressing reality of it all? Good if you're looking for a fast-paced action book with a twist.
Originally posted at www.emgoto.com.
When I saw my favourite book roasting podcast (If Books Could Kill) covered this book, I figured I'd read it first and then see how the podcast would roast it.
The book posits that thanks to feminism, women no longer need to rely on marriage (and men) for financial stability. But that it has left men in a weird spot where their societally defined role as a breadwinner hasn't really been updated with the times.
The author offers 3 solutions to try and help men in today's society:
Points 2 and 3 sound good, although it sounds quite expensive to get governments to implement. HEAL roles are criminally underpaid, and I feel like are less respected as professions in society - maybe bringing more men into the field could inadvertently help fix this as it becomes less of a "woman's job"?
And similarly with parental leave, at the end of the day women having to do more of the childcare is the real career killer, so we need to remove that assumed responsibility as much as possible so I'm in full agreement there.
However the author also doesn't think we need gender parity in STEM - his reasoning being that although it's taboo to say, some women are more likely to tend towards "caring" roles as a gender, and so maybe we should aim for a slightly lower number (I forget what he suggested, maybe 40/60?)
He also points to statistics where the gender ratio in STEM is closer to even in poorer countries, but surprisingly still very skewed in richer countries that have better gender equality overall - and so posits that this is because women are more likely to enter STEM when they need to financially, rather than because they truly want to do it as a career.
... A quick Google about this finds a study which terms this as the "Gender Equality Paradox" and that this could just be because the male/female stereotypes are stronger in richer countries, so it seems like the author may be wrong on that point. STEM does pay more, and so if we want to close the gender pay gap we probably should continue to aim for parity as much as possible.
Listening to the podcast afterwards, it went less roasty, and was more a good faith take on the topic. I only ended up getting halfway through it before being distracted by other things. Although the comments on Spotify were all pretty outraged that the podcast hosts went too easy on the book, I do think we need more conversations like this. I think people get a bit outraged because women's rights isn't really a "solved" issue and we still have a long way to go so it's like, why are we focusing on men? But I think with stuff like parental leave or a HEAL drive, it can help men and women at the same time, doesn't have to be an either or.
Originally posted at emgoto.com.
In comparison to the long-accepted belief that diseases can be spread at short distances via droplets that are coughed onto people, the field of aerobiology has been trying to prove that diseases can instead float long distances through the air since the 1940s.
Unfortunately the idea didn't quite take off. It's quite a hard thing to have enough evidence to convince people (even though scientific studies were done), and there was also a lot of strong opposition from some scientists, partly because the miasma or "bad air" theory from a much earlier time in history had already been disproved.
It was only once we were months into COVID, and enough scientists made some noise that it started to become a more accepted theory in scientific society, as we discovered that COVID was indeed airborne.
I think it's an interesting book which goes to show as rational and logical the field of science seems to be, scientists are still human and can be quick to dismiss a theory if it sounds "stupid". I'm sure the environment of COVID didn't help, since people would not have wanted to stir up more panic by considering the fact that COVID could be airborne.
Interestingly, famed aviator Charles Lindbergh even makes an appearance as he helps a scientist carry out tests to see what’s floating up at high altitudes. I got a bit sidetracked and found out that he was quite the cheater, and there's even a conspiracy theory he killed his first child.
Overall an interesting read, it provides a fairly interesting overview of the field of aerobiology.
Originally posted at www.emgoto.com.
A popular Japanese YA novel about 7 children who visit a mysterious castle via a portal that suddenly opens in their mirror. The one thing they all have in common - they all are not attending their local middle school.
The main character Kokoro is introduced to us as someone who refuses to leave the leave the house due to anxiety. Although her mother does try at first for her to attend an alternative school, she also seems pretty willing to let her daughter sit around at home all day. (Which works well for the story, since it gives Kokoro plenty of time to visit the castle).
I'm not sure if whether we are supposed to empathise with Kokoro or pity her? But she doesn't start off as much of a likeable character. The book continues along for over 6 months as the children get to know each other and reveal their backstories, while knowing that the castle will close before the next year school year begins.
I read a lot slower in Japanese, and I felt like the middle really dragged on which put me off from finishing it for months, but things finally picked up towards the end and I got through the last third in one day while on a long-distance plane trip. There was one twist at the end which I did see coming, and another one that I didn't - which I feel did a pretty good job of wrapping things up neatly.
I think it's not a bad one for language learning, but personally not something I'd recommend if I was reading it purely for the plot.
Originally posted at www.emgoto.com.
The second book in the “Before the Coffee Gets Cold” series, which centres around a Japanese cafe with the unique power to let its visitors time travel, but only within the bounds of the cafe, and before their cup of coffee gets cold. The original title for this book is “before the secret gets out”, and so the stories of the time travellers are themed around loss, whether it's travelling forward in time to confirm your own death, or travelling backwards to meet a deceased friend or lover.
As the title would suggest, in some of the stories they end up accidentally revealing to the person that they are going to die. It's written from the POV of the time traveller, who has their own struggles, but gosh. Letting someone know they are going to die soon is such a horrible thing to place on someone, right? And I'm surprised this plot point is just skipped over in the stories. Nonetheless, there are some bittersweet moments in the stories as the travellers learn how to move on after a loved one's death.
I read this one in Japanese, so for language learners I would say it’s quite good. Since the entire story takes place within the cafe, and the story is mostly dialog, it helps to keep things simple (complex plots are hard enough to keep up with, let alone in another language).
Originally posted at www.emgoto.com.
A retelling of Huckleberry Finn, but from the POV of Huck’s companion, a slave named Jim (or as he calls himself, James).
In the original book Jim is portrayed as a bit slow, and speaks a very grammatically incorrect dialect of English (whether it’s typical or stereotypical I’m not sure). But the twist is that James chooses to play up this slave stereotype in front of white people, while secretly knowing how to read and speaks “correct” English when with his family and fellow slaves.
I hadn’t actually read Huckleberry Finn, so I got the general plot overview from Wikipedia. The book seems to hit all the major plot points, diverging to tell James’s imagined story when the pair get separated. It’s still very readable even without that added context, although I wonder if it would be more impactful having been able to read how Huck sees Jim first, before the real James.
Originally posted at www.emgoto.com.
This is one of those sci-fi books that I would put on a "must read" list. It attempts to answer the question - why does life exist on Earth, and seemingly nowhere else? And the place it ends up at definitely makes it worthy winning the 2024 Arthur C Clarke Award.
The main character is Leigh, a Dutch scientist who obsessively dives into her scientific research as an excuse to avoid facing the difficult relationship she has with her mother and their family history.
It's set a little bit in the future - there have been advancements made in space technology, but the timeskip also shows Earth worse off - pollution has worsened, seas are rising and wildfires raging from the affects of climate change.
One of the reviews I saw mentioned alien contact, and although the book does have a slow build up towards this, it's not really the key part of the story. The writing is also excellent, with a lot of the focus on the characters rather than being a "hard sci-fi" kind of book.
Originally posted at www.emgoto.com.
The main character Phoebe has a bit of a mental breakdown and mid-life crisis after her husband decides he wants a divorce, and also reveals he's been having an affair.
In an attempt to escape her problems, she rents out the penthouse suite of her dream hotel, and then accidentally ends up joining a week-long wedding celebration.
To complicate things, Phoebe gets along great with the groom, and it seems like the bridge and groom aren't the right fit for each other. As you would expect from a romance novel, the inevitable begins to ensue. Although no lines are crossed, it does feel like it dances on some emotional cheating, which feels a bit hmm considering Phoebe was cheated on herself.
I'd say compared to your run-of-the-mill romance novel, the plot and emotional depth to the story felt pretty good. However for winning the 2024 Goodreads choice award for "best fiction novel" it felt pretty mid.
Originally posted at www.emgoto.com.
I picked this one up as the most recent winner of the Nebula award. It’s a fantasy novel, where a boy has his shadow severed from his body by his mother, and then he grows up to move to a city where there are inexplicably glowing doors all over the place that don’t lead anywhere.
The book itself was easy to read, and some of the characters felt easy to connect with, but overall the plot felt quite vague at times. From reading the reviews afterwards it seems the wow factor comes from the themes it covers - religious fanaticism, totalitarianism and so on but I think it was a bit lost on me and I would have liked something more tangible.
Originally posted at www.emgoto.com.
So this won Goodreads scifi award for 2024. I was a bit iffy at first, since Goodreads is the kind of place where ACOTAR wins awards, and so I wasn't sure if this book just won the scifi award on a technicality because although it has time travel it didn't sound very scifi-y. But I was pleasantly surprised!
The story centres around people who were destined to die in their original timeline, but instead brought out before this happens to live in 21st century London. The secretive Ministry that brings them out obviously doesn't have altruism in mind when they do this, though. As they struggle to adjust, the Ministry also comes under fire from enemy spies. And there's a (good) romance side plot too.
There's a lot happening in this book, and I almost feel like it could have been simplified a bit by removing a side plot or two. Also time travel is always a confusing topic to write about with changing timelines and the like. But overall a really great read.
Originally posted at www.emgoto.com.
The book's plot summary hooked me - the pair meet via a Reddit "Am I The Asshole" thread, and it turns out to they are both similarly cursed with having their exes immediately found "the one" right after their breakup.
As well as the romance itself, there's a side plot surrounding some mental health issues and unresolved drama with their family.
I think what makes a good romance for me is the buildup and the "pining" stage but it's mostly skips that and instead the main complication is the character's childhood trauma and issues with forming relationships with other people which is kinda meh to read about (sorry).
Originally posted at www.emgoto.com.
Loosely based on a true story, about Black women and girls in 1970s America who were given birth control without being properly informed of the risks and side effects, and/or being sterilised without actually realising it.
The story follows Civil, a nurse who helps two of these girls, and ends up becoming almost like a member of their family - which is quite emotionally conflicting for both her and the family as she see-saws between her role as nurse and pseudo-mother figure.
Overall it’s quite an unsettling book.
Originally posted at www.emgoto.com.
A book about a summer romance with a movie star, which jumps between that summer and 30 years later when the woman, now a mother, narrates the story to her grown daughters. The romance is a bit more towards nostalgia and melancholy than romcom.
I don't know what it is about the book, like it's just straight fiction but it really gripped me? I think also the jumps between the two time periods lets the mother to reflect on her naivety at the time and also to see the story from her daughters' perspectives.
Originally posted at www.emgoto.com.
About a white writer stealing a story from Chinese American author and passing it off as her own, while making her penname be racially ambiguous hence the title “yellowface”.
The main character doesn't think of herself as a racist but is very obviously one (a lot of little microaggressions throughout the whole book like being surprised when an Asian character speaks good English). So you start off by obviously hating her, but the way it's done feels quite heavy handed. And as she gets sucked more into her lie towards the end you can't help but feel some sympathy for her but at the same time you don't want her to succeed so it feels pretty conflicting.
The ending also acts more as a set up for a second novel but I can't help but wish it was resolved a bit more satisfyingly.
Originally posted at www.emgoto.com.
The main character, Elena, who is now in her 60s, recounts a childhood spent growing up with her best friend Lina in Italy. The pair are both from poor(er) families, but do well in school. They end up leading diverging lives as their individual circumstances change. The story and characters are vividly written and I read the entire book in one sitting.
There's a 1 chapter setup for the book in present time, before a 50 year jump back in time for the rest of the book. The story ends on an abrupt cliffhanger. At first I thought this was some sort of literary technique to make you go and reread the first chapter to piece together what happens, but no this is actually just the setup for the next book (lol).
I mean I miiiight go read the second, and I am sort of curious about the HBO series although unfortunately I'm not sure where to view it in my country!
Originally posted at www.emgoto.com.
A story that follows a three different people and eras. First we have Lily, a girl born in America to Chinese immigrant parents. As someone who can’t even speak Mandarin, she struggles with feeling like an American yet not being perceived as one by the people around her.
The story then jumps forward to Lily’s son, Noah, who looks identical to his white Dad. He identifies as half-Chinese, but everyone only sees him as an American, and he struggles with this gap in his identity.
The third character is Lily’s mother, May, who takes us on a time-skip back to 1950s China. May’s struggles are more real and immediate as she lives through the harsh poverty caused by the Cultural Revolution.
There’s a secondary plot around genetic engineering, and developing the ability for certain genes to be more dominant when giving birth, as well as this weird magical ability the characters have to (occasionally) slow down time - although they don't really use it much at all. I think that magical side-plot should either have been expanded upon more, or cut out altogether, because I didn’t feel like it added much to the story.
As a fellow half-Asian I related the most to Noah’s story. We have Lily who so desperately wants to fit in and feel included as an American by her peers, and yet Noah, who has the comfort of already being accepted, instead wants to be recognized for his differences. Is your identify something that you decide for yourself, or is partially influenced or constructed by the people around you?
Originally posted at www.emgoto.com.