Here are a few books I’ve read in the past year that I have enjoyed!
Recursion by Blake Crouch:
Recursion is told from the points of view of two main characters who develop a romance at some point and spoiler alert it does have a happy ending. It’s science fiction and deals with a memory illness which is actually caused by an interesting form of time traveling which creates alternate timelines. This book does have a bit a repetition in the second half due to the time travel and the main characters going back again and again to try to save the world. The book also has some scary stuff about nuclear war. I was surprised by that being part of the book because I feel like it appears so rarely in novels nowadays, even though it’s a very important topic in the real world today.
Night Film by Marisha Pessl:
Night Film is written from the point of view of an investigative journalist who is trying to figure out the suicide of the daughter of a famous filmmaker. The filmmaker is made up and so are all of his films. It’s incredible how Pessl incorporates all these parts from the films that are entirely made up. It’s a little bit of a thriller and at first I was doubtful because I felt weird reading from the point of view of this sad, middle-aged, male reporter. As a woman, I kind of prefer to read books from the point of view of other women, but it was actually not as much of an issue as I thought at first. The book is very much rooted in our reality, but later on in the book some magical elements do appear, which are somewhat surprising as it’s not a fantasy book for the first 70% in any way. I really liked it and couldn’t put it down once I got into the mystery and storyline.
Lexicon by Max Barry:
Lexicon is about a secret organization that has perfected mind control and basically runs the world. People are categorized into different types and certain phrases are used to stimulate their suggestibility, making them then vulnerable to mind control. The story is told from the point of view of few characters and there is a romance with a happy ending, which I found satisfying. This book went by very quickly and was an easy read in terms of language. There is definitely some dark and creepy stuff and one of the main characters creates a small genocide even though it was not her intention to do so and she was being mind-controlled as well. If you’re a conspiracy theorist convinced that real people are being mind-controlled, you’ll probably really enjoy this take on the subject.
Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl:
This is the first book I read by Marisha Pessl. It was a difficult read for me because there are so many references to books I have never heard of. I believe that some are real and some are made up, but I’m not absolutely sure about that. I did not look up the references. That would take forever. There’s a reference in almost every paragraph and this slowed me a down a lot, forcing me to refocus a few times per page. It is a mystery, like Night Film, but with no aspects of magic. It’s about a girl who was raised by her intellectual father and her friendship with the cool kids at school. She joins a clique of clever people and there are buried secrets about her connection to a radical political organization which come out at the end. Difficult to read, but I enjoyed it. I actually bought it thinking that it was a non-fiction book about physics, which it is not. There is no physics at all in the book.
Neverworld Wake by Marisha Pessl:
I read this one on an iPad and it went by pretty quickly. There is a lot of recurrence and time-travel type situations but the book is definitely fantasy/science fiction. There isn’t a whole lot of explanation into how these things occur in the story, but it does sort of make sense in the way in which it is portrayed. This book keeps the reader guessing until the very end when the main character’s secret is exposed. There is a lot of loyalty as well as trickery in this story and it does include the death of several teenagers in a car accident, and them re-living of the day before the accident, so it is a bit dark, but it’s also fun and interesting.
The Turn of the Screw and the Aspen Papers by Henry James:
I read this book in high school but I remembered liking it and decided to reread it. It’s an old book, and the language is a bit difficult. The Aspen Papers left no impression on me but I did realize that I’d remembered The Turn of the Screw completely incorrectly. There’s a film somewhat based on The Turn of the Screw called The Innocents and I remember that really scaring me as a kid. I think the plot is a bit different though. It’s a ghost story and it’s good but not the most fascinating thing ever and it didn’t have the ending that I thought it had. It is, however, well-written and an interesting look into the Victorian era.
The Alchemy of a Blackbird by Claire McMillan
This novel is based on the life story of Remedios Varo. She meets and works with several famous people from history during her escape from Europe during the Second World War and her experience of living in Mexico as well as her internal journey as an surrealist painter. I didn’t realize that she was a real person until after I read the book but it did make sense considering the appearance of the various famous people throughout her story. The book is largely about her spirituality and study of Tarot and her application of those things to her relationships with other people, herself, and her art. The art she created in real life is really amazing and I would definitely suggest taking a look at it.
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami:
This book was totally awesome. Once you figure out the connection between the two points of view which alternate between chapters, it starts to really come together as a story. I didn’t agree with the main character’s choices at the end of the book. In fact, I would have done the opposite of what he did, but I really felt like it was a learning experience. Although the book seems kind of absurd, it does make sense if you’re open minded to the technology and are able to come up with real world analogs to the different organizations, characters, communities described in the book. I would definitely re-read it because I felt like I learned a lot about some of my own experiences that I compared to the main character’s experiences. It’s science fiction and a little steampunk in a nontraditional way. It’s about brains and computers and a futuristic combination of the two as well as the choice to live indefinitely in one’s imagination versus returning to a flawed reality.
Men Without Women by Haruki Murakami:
This book is a collection of short stories about different men. I enjoyed it. It’s not the happiest book ever, but the stories are good on their own. I don’t really feel like I fully understood the points of each different story. Perhaps reading some other people’s opinions and analyses of the stories would clarify those for me. With Murakami, I never have that weird discomfort about reading from a male perspective at all, unlike the feeling I had at the beginning of Night Film. The book is well-written and most of the main characters experience nostalgia or some sort of loneliness or confusion. I try to avoid really sad media in general, because I don’t like sad endings in stories, but this book doesn’t leave a really sad feeling afterwards, it’s just kind of middle of the road.
I wish Marisha Pessl would write some more books. I read Recursion and Lexicon extremely quickly, as I couldn’t put them down once I started. Those two were both suggestions from an instagram influencer and I plan to pick out more books from his suggested reads, since I was really happy with both those books. When I’m curious about a book, I usually go on Apple Books and search for a sample of the book. I read the beginning, and if I like it, I generally order a paper copy. I sometimes read on my iPad, but I prefer to read paper books for whatever reason. I do read the digital versions of the kind of trashy fantasy books I can’t help but read. I guess I don’t feel like they warrant a place on my bookshelf, but they are a fine way to pass the time. None of those are included above. Those fantasy books aren’t particularly well written or creative, but I sort of enjoy them because they are easy to read and have magic and simple storylines. I’m trying to veer away from this shitty fantasy genre completely and stick to the more quality books like the ones I described above.