#reading list
my year in books
read/goal:50/50
top 10:
- How Much of These Hills is Gold, C. Pam Zhang: In my opinion, a contemporary classic. Weaves Chinese myth with stories of the American Gold Rush. Beautiful prose and valuable takeaways re: family, truth, and gender.
- A Little Devil in America: Notes on Black Performance, Hanif Abdurraqib: Essay upon essay of mind-plowing poetics and storytelling. Hanif’s version of Baldwin’s Devil Finds Work. A wide swath of topics from blackface to spades to magic.
- Writers & Lovers, Lily King: Came to me at the exact right (or wrong?) time, just when my father passed away. A keenly-observed novel about grief and persona that is something like if SweetbittermetNormal People.
- How to Write an Autobiographical Novel, Alexander Chee: Inspired me to get over myself and just start writing again. The essay on roses absolutely floored me.
- Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route, Saidiya Hartman: Hard to stomach, but necessary. Foundational for the way I am thinking about neo-slave narratives and speculative historical fiction.
- Seek You: A Journey Through American Loneliness, Kristen Radtke: The minute I read this, I added it to the syllabus for my class on women in isolation. Part graphic novel, part longform essay, part research paper, and wholly extraordinary.
- The Sonic Color Line: Race and the Cultural Politics of Listening, Jennifer Lynn Stoever: This one’s just for me. The burning core at the center of my reading list and the inspiration and model for my scholarship.
- The Street, Ann Petry: Read it because of the book above, but an absolute banger of a book. Devastating ending. Would be extraordinary taught alongside Native Son.
- The Fifth Season, N.K. Jemisin: This book has everything. Polyamory. Earth-bending. An alien creature frozen inside a giant piece of rock in the middle of the ocean. Love this woman, love seeing Blackness-as-default in sci-fi novels.
- Fun Home, Alison Bechdel: You read it in high school for a good reason. A true exemplar of the genre and a fascinating way to teach non-chronological storytelling.
rest below the cut
- Camera Lucida, Roland Barthes
- The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, V.E. Schwab
- Brothers & Keepers, John Edgar Wideman
- Bunk: The True Story of Hoaxes, Hucksters, Humbug, Plagiarists, Forgeries, and Phonies, Kevin Young
- Ninth House, Leigh Bardugo
- House of Earth and Blood, Sarah J. Maas
- Children of Virtue and Vengeance, Tomi Adeyemi
- Emergence of Cinematic Time: Modernity, Contingency, the Archive, Mary Ann Doane
- An American Sunrise, Joy Harjo
- Nabokov’s Favorite Word is Mauve: What the Numbers Reveal About the Classics, Bestsellers, and Our Own Writing, Ben Blatt
- Rule of Wolves, Leigh Bardugo
- The Lightning Thief, Rick Riordan
- Savage Preservation: The Ethnographic Origins of Modern Media Technology, Brian Hochman
- The Obelisk Gate, N.K. Jemisin
- The Stone Sky, N.K. Jemisin
- People We Meet on Vacation, Emily Henry
- The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice & Virtue, Mackenzi Lee
- The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman
- Legendborn, Tracy Deonn
- Josh & Hazel’s Guide to Not Dating, Christina Lauren
- In Cold Blood, Truman Capote
- The Race of Sound: Listening, Timbre, and Vocality in African American Music, Nina Sun Eidsheim
- One Last Stop, Casey McQuiston
- One to Watch, Kate Stayman-London
- Time Binds: Queer Temporalities, Queer Histories, Elizabeth Freeman
- Gideon the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir
- Echo and Narcissus: Women’s Voices in Classical Hollywood Cinema, Amy Lawrence
- An Extraordinary Union, Alyssa Cole
- It Ends With Us, Colleen Hoover
- Harrow the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir
- Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism, Safiya Noble
- Listening in: Radio and the American Imagination, Susan J. Douglass
- How to Fail at Flirting, Denise Williams
- The Flat-Share, Beth O'Leary
- Radio Voices: American Broadcasting, 1922-1952, Michele Hilmes
- Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, Scott McCloud
- The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. Du Bois
- The Love Hypothesis, Ali Hazelwood
- The Road Trip, Beth O'Leary
- We Ride Upon Sticks, Quan Barry
Planning about taking a hike in the woods? This books might make you think again.
- The Darkest Part of the Forest by Holly Black
- The Hazel Wood Series by Melissa Albert
- Wink Poppy Midnight by April Genevieve Tucholke
- Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater
- The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan
Happy Transgender Awareness Week! Here are a few of our young adult titles that feature transgender and non-binary main characters!
- Some Assembly Required: the Not-So-Secret Life of a Transgender Teen by Arin Andrews
- Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out by Susan Kuklin
- Even If We Break by Marieke Nijkamp
- Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas
- Symptoms of Being Human by Jeff Garvin
- Lumberjanes by Noelle Stevenson
- Lily and Dunkin by Donna Gephart
- Gracefully Grayson by Ami Polonsky
- Felix Ever After by Kacen Callender
- Beautiful Music for Ugly Children by Kirstin Cronn-Mills
- Beast by Brie Spangler
Books I have read and will proceed to recommend to you
Here’s a big ol reading list of the books that I have read or reread most recently. Check em out, maybe you’ll find something you like!
NONFICTION
Conversations with an Executioner, by Kazimierz Moczarski— this is the only holocaust book I’ve ever reread. It’s a meticulously compiled and edited transcription of Kazimierz Moczarski’s “interviews” (they were confined to the same prison cell) with the odious ex-SS-Polizeigeneral Jürgen Stroop. Stroop rose from ordinary beginnings in the sleepy German state of Lippe-Detmold to become the man Hitler personally trusted to destroy the Warsaw Ghetto, and he would mercilessly crush the Jewish uprising there in 1943. The book is an unflinching and often horrifying look at how ordinary people become Nazis and go on to commit acts of unspeakable evil. Yet, it’s oddly inspiring in Stroop’s awed and disbelieving descriptions of the pure bravery and strength of the Ghetto fighters, which ran against everything he had been conditioned to believe about Jews.
October, by China Miéville— a well-written and compelling narrative history of the October Revolution, tracing it from the first stirrings of revolt to the formation of the Bolshevik government. Miéville writes stridently and from an unabashedly socialist perspective. The book inspires with its stories of courage, struggle, and triumph, but does not shy away from the uncertainty and power-wrangling involved in the formation of the revolutionary government. It ends by acknowledging the mistakes of the USSR and urging the readers to dream better and do better in what the author believes will be the inevitable next revolution.
A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things, by Jason Moore and Raj Patel— this is an interesting and thought-provoking look at the development of global imperialist capitalism, through the framing device of narrating the Spanish conquest of South and Central America. The “seven cheap things” the authors discuss (nature, work, money, care, food, energy, and lives) both served and serve to underpin our modern system. In many ways, they demonstrate, nothing has fundamentally changed from the most brutal days of colonialism to now.
What Is to Be Done?, by Vladimir Illych Lenin— astrident and practical revolutionary text that lays out Lenin’s disagreements with certain wrong-headed ideological tendencies in inimitable style. Along the way, it lays out a series of workable ideas and blueprints for a revolutionary movement, from organization to propaganda to security. Really, just read this one.
The Night is Dark and I am Far From Home, by Jonathan Kozol— this obscure but fascinating text, now long since out of print, came to me recommended in the highest terms. With the cold and furious precision of an angry surgeon, Kozol dissects the ways in which the North American education system crushes our dissenting tendencies and moulds us into proper capitalist citizens. We find ourselves, after twelve years, fully detached from the violence and exploitation on which our lives are built (even more so if one becomes an academic) unwilling to question the evil of our system, cut off, in many ways, from our own humanity. This is not a typical critique of the education system— it is nothing less than a polemic against the ways in which all of us go about our lives, viewed from the system that shaped the way we live and construct our selves.
Revolutionary Yiddishland: A History of Jewish Radicalism, by Alain Brossat and Sylvie Klingberg— originally published in French, this book is composed largely of edited interviews with aging Jewish radicals living either in Israel or France. It is very much a portal into a world not so much vanished as hidden, disposed of by western Jews eager to prove their anti-communist credentials. The stories of revolt and underground political activity, the vibrant history of both secular and religious Jewish leftism— all are inspiring. However, the tale ends with sadness and defeat, as the Jews of the book find themselves betrayed by the USSR, and make their way to an Israel they have no choice but to come to terms with. In writing, the authors say they wish to help the young Jews of today dream of a Jewish future beyond the dead Zionism that dominates our culture, a future in which the oppressed of the world will find true freedom. I hope it helps you dream, and I hope that dream gets put to work.
FICTION
The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair— you have of course heard of this one. A classic work of realist fiction, it tells the brutal story of an immigrant family literally ground to pieces by the uncaring evil of capitalism. This story is still being played out, every day, far from our eyes. Read it.
Arcadian Adventures With the Idle Rich, by Stephen Leacock— Leacock is one of the most famous Canadian humorists of the 20th century, best known for his charming satirical look at small-town Ontario life in the 1910s, Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town. This,itssequel/companion volume, dials up the satire and back the charm in its vicious and biting dissection of the moneyed class in an unnamed American large city. From religion, to politics, to social occasions and romance, no aspect of upper-class life is not skewered, and the satires ring just as true today.
Dispatches, by Michael Herr— afrankly hallucinatory ride through the worst and most absurd of the Vietnam War, this “semi-fictional” half-memoir is best read as a cry against the American imperial war machine and the suffering it causes. Embedded with the troops as a journalist for Esquire magazine, Herr writes what he saw, felt, and experienced, and the result is hard to put down. An admittedly American-centric exploration of the lives destroyed by imperial adventures.
That’s that for now! Happy reading, if you decide to pick up any of these.
—tbr list keeps growing
-ATEEZMASTERLIST
disclaimer: all of these works are fiction i am in no way saying this is what the members are like, also my old pieces of work are really bad and i will be rewriting them at some point.Kim Hongjoong:
Drabbles + One shots:
sorry i’m late{s}confessionsgarden partybathtimei’ll helpwant to watch[s]Timestamps:
[17:22] [19:50]Headcanons:
Park Seonghwa:
Drabbles + Oneshots:
“mine”{s}secretstaylet it gonightmarein the rainthigh riding[s]Timestamps:
[3:36] /[2:45]Headcanons:
Jeong Yunho:
Drabbles + Oneshots:
drunkspin the bottleparty{s}“dont be a tease”eyes were just eyeskiss it betterTimestamps:
[12:12]{s}/[00:56]Headcanons:
Kang yeosang:
Drabbles + Oneshots:
“can i kiss you?”i’ll protect youBedtimeWalking home with yeosangGreaser!yeosang Drabblebreakups and makeupsover the phonei’m right here[s]a tease[s]Timestamps:
[14:38] / [22:35] / [01:27] {s} / [20:45] {s}Headcanons:
Choi San:
Drabbles + Oneshots:
jealousyswimming“bad boys want love too”“sorry wrong person”{s}“you don’t know what you do to me do you”“first one to make a noise loses”{s}“i’ll wait for you”my fake date {s}heat{s}lace{s}spiderdrabbledrabble“i’m going to ruin you.”[s]Timestamps:
[19:47] / [23:50] [s] / [01:15]Headcanons:
Nsfw A-ZSong Mingi:
Drabbles + Oneshots:
jealousyyou’re a single motherTimestamps:
[00:36]/[11:34]Headcanons:
Jung Wooyoung:
Drabbles + Oneshots:
Bare“friends don’t do this type of shit”{s}tease{s}hair clipsnightmareTimestamps:
[01:38] {s} / [02:00]{s}Headcanons:
Series:
The Boy Next Door(completed)Choi Jongho:
Drabbles + One shots:
datehomeTimestamps:
Headcanons:
REACTIONS + OTHER
you set them as your lockscreenwhen you’re on your periodwhen you/him are jealousyou don’t like sharing food xyou pick your lips when you are anxiousateez as subtle signs of loveyou say something suggestive for the first timeseeing your marks on their skinsee you stressed because of assignmentsyou have a crush on themyou tattoo their lyrics on youyou wear revealing clothing pt oneyou have never had sex before and want advicesee you cry for the first timeateez as ways to say ‘i love you’your first kiss togetherATEEZ AS TYPES OF KISSES
- andrea gibson’s maybe i need you (spoken word that will take your breath away “tonight I begged another stage light to become that back alley street lamp that we danced beneath”)
- dominic fike being an actual fairy prince and playing an acoustic version of his song on a swing somewhere in paris
- angie sijun lou’s jessica gives me a chill pill (certain lines will give you the chills)
- litany in which certain things are crossed out by richard siken (i walk through your dreams and invent the future)
- go on the prettiest virtual big sur roadtrip ever
- the night we met but you’re driving in the rain on a time loop (corny yes, but you might cry, and the cry might feel like setting down a heavy weight. try it.)
- me reading a letter to my younger self
- “you watch the sun set too often it just becomes 6pm, you make the same mistake over and over you’ll stop calling it a mistake”
- lennon stella turn’s drake controlla into a completely different song
- 34 excuses for why we failed at love (”you’re a ghost town i’m too patriotic to leave”)
- david gomes auditions for the voice portugal with beyonce’s crazy in love (i’m never not thinking about this video)
- yoko ono’s cleaning pieces
- if heaven and hell decide that they both are satisfied
- cheryl strayed’s dear sugar column, and some little bits of endless, beautiful advice