A good book, hot cocoa and a comfortable reading chair - there’s no better way to spend a weekend afternoon or evening.
Lately I have been reading nature books, seeking to better understand our world as climate change becomes an existential crisis that we can no longer ignore. That, and fantasy books, make up the bulk of my reading lists these days.
Growing up, I remembered scouring the entire library for books on Asian-Americans, by Asian writers. After a few months, I found every book in the children’s section - because there were so few. Now, there are so many great stories written by diverse authors, that it warms my heart to know that 1) diverse stories are being published and 2) creatives from immigrant and minority backgrounds pursue the arts.
Here are five books that I read over the holidays:
The Veiled Throne, Volume III of the Dandelion Dynasty series, Ken Liu
I’m a big fantasy geek and the latest volume in this series does not disappoint. It continues the epic, magical and swashbuckling adventures from the first volumes, but follows the political and pleasurable exploits of Dandelion’s princesses and empresses. One cannot help but read the conflict between the Dara and the Lyucu as a racial allegory for present-day indigenous-settler relations in the U.S.
It’s a huge tome and there are chapters that read like a TV episode (Spoiler: There’s an Masterchef - type cooking competition that takes up several chapters). Be ready to hunker down with this one.
Crying in H Mart, Michelle Zauner
There were several times that I teared up reading this, as Zauner writes about her final days with her mother. It gave me insight to what many of my friends and relatives have gone through in terms of experiencing a close one’s passing. Zauner weaves descriptions of cooking and traveling throughout this text, painting lovely pictures of her experiences in Korea and Korean dishes that she ate or made.
The Poppy War, R.F. Kuang
This book was a rollercoaster, offering insight into Chinese history, philosophy and military strategies through the allegorical Poppy Wars, which read much like the Sino-Japanese Wars of the twentieth-century - except with fire magic, evil spirits and demigods. The dialectic between madness and genius shadows the protagonist, making for a hard-to-categorize character who isn’t easy to empathize with, but will make you question whether any person with power is redeemable after all.
Entangled Life, Merlin Sheldrake
What a beautiful and poetic book on mushrooms. I learned so much about mycelium, but most notably that microorganisms in the soil will “sing a song” of creation when their ecosystem is in balance. Warning: You may want to grow your own mushrooms and create compostable fungi materials after reading this book.
Designs For The Pluriverse, Arturo Escobar
Escobar presents useful questions about design, design thinking and design systems that urge for more equitable, sustainable and regenerative approaches in design. He cites the Zapatista as a model and movement for working locally, with and within the community, in order to create collective consciousness / ways of knowing that resist globalism’s demands to scale, flatten and conform.
Any thoughts, comments or opinions about the books I mentioned above? What books are you reading this winter?