Some Books I’ve Recently Enjoyed

Hello all! It’s been a while since I’ve updated this blog, due to the difficult and overwhelming transition into medical school. Now that things are starting to settle and I have a few exams under my belt, I thought I would come back and provide some recommendations of books I’ve loved recently. 

Due to my reduced amount of free time, I’ve been really intentional about the books I choose to read. Accordingly, I decided to provide a shorter, more cultivated list of recommendations rather than listing all the books I read in the summer or autumn time. Hopefully you find something on this list that suits your taste, because all of these were greatly impactful reads to me. 

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Tenth of December by George Saunders

After reading George Saunders’s only novel, Lincoln in the Bardo, I knew I needed to pick up more of his work. Lincoln is one the most peculiar, charming, and innovative novels I’ve read, mostly due to Saunders’s incredible writing style. Saunders is most famous for his short stories, where his genre-bending and smart writing style can really shine in sometimes just a few pages. 

Tenth of December is a collection of short stories that have quite spectacular range— in genre, in length, in tone. Together, they all portray life in middle class America under oppressive forces of capitalism and various social pressures. My two favorites in the collection are the opening story “Victory Lap,” about a boy who witnesses a young girl being kidnapped and must decide what to do, and “The Semplica Girl Diaries,” a story in a world where trafficked women are displayed as lawn ornaments. 

If you’re interested in very readable but wildly innovative short stories, or if you’re interested in collections about capitalism and contemporary American culture, I would highly recommend this collection. 

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The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead

Similar to my experience with Saunders, I was first introduced to Colson Whitehead’s work in 2016 with his Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Underground Railroad. Because I grew to be a fan of Whitehead’s recent work, I decided to pick up his debut novel, The Intuitionist. 

Though I already had high expectations of the novel as a fan of Whitehead’s writing, I was pleasantly surprised by The Intuitionist. This novel is well written and well constructed to the point where it hardly reads like a debut. In this speculative novel (one that blends genres as Whitehead’s recent work has also done), there are two parties of elevator inspectors— the Empiricists and the Intuitionists. The philosophies are tied to opposing politicians and opposing elevator companies, and as elections approach, tension is rising. 

Lila Mae is an Intuitionist and the only Black female elevator inspector, and thus is used as an example case in the debates between the two political parties. As she comes to understand her role in the deeply divided field, she makes friends and enemies. This high stakes story against a backdrop rich with racial and political metaphor is quick witted and smart, honest and satirical, and an absolute pleasure to read. 

After reading this novel, I’m excited to read the complete body of Whitehead’s work— I’m charmed to know he was a fantastic writer even decades prior to his double Pulitzer wins. 

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Sabrina & Corina by Kali Fajardo-Anstine

After reading Tenth of December, I found myself increasingly drawn to short story collections. Sabrina & Corina caught my attention because of its beautiful cover, but also because its stories feature Indigenous Latina women in Colorado. 

These short stories are immensely readable and each uniquely fascinating and intimate. Fajardo-Anstine’s writing is amazing— she’s one of those writers I find myself trying to learn from and emulate in my own short story writing. The sense of location and community in all the stories is so strong; while we have a wide array of characters and identities throughout the stories, they are all connected in the strong sense of place. 

It’s hard for me to recommend individual stories in this collection because I truly enjoyed every single one— from the complicated familial relationships and traditions in the story Sabrina & Corina, the story Remedies about a family struggling to deal with a lice outbreak, to the haunting final story, Ghost Sickness. 

If you enjoy reading short story collections, or if you are looking to begin reading them, I would highly recommend Sabrina & Corina.

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Real Life by Brandon Taylor

This novel is another one that floated around in the back of my mind for months before I finally caved in and stopped waiting for paperback. Following Wallace, a gay, Black PhD candidate in biochemistry at a midwestern university, this novel is a poetically written study of real life, with all of its pain, grief, and intimacy. 

Brandon Taylor is an incredible writer— it’s hard to believe that this Booker long-listed novel is his debut. He illuminates some of the most mundane laboratory tasks in Wallace’s work with nematodes (which, in my opinion, are among the most tedious and irritating model organism to use) in such thoughtful ways. The writing beautifully reflects how model systems and microscopic sciences can reflect life itself in unexpected ways.⠀

The whole novel takes place over just a few days. Still, Taylor manages to present a full cast of real and honest characters, each with their own tensions and motivations and trauma. The events that transpire between them feel so true, I almost feel intrusive reading about them. I was so emotionally invested in this novel because of this unflinching honesty, and imagine many other readers will feel the same way. 

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Lectures on Dostoevsky by Joseph Frank

Those of you who have been following my reading patterns for a long time would know how deeply I cherish the work of Dostoevsky. I picked up my first Dostoevsky novel, The Idiot, at age 16 on my mother’s recommendation, and have been reading his work since. Despite being so enamored with his work, I never had the opportunity to formally study his novels when I got my English degree. That’s why I was so compelled to pick up this collection of lectures by Joseph Frank.

I’ve been hesitant to pick up dense or lengthy work on Dostoevsky (for example, Frank’s famous biographies) because I was afraid I wouldn’t understand them or that they would lead me to “overanalyze” the novels I read mostly for enjoyment. Frank’s Lectures are accessible introductions to Dostoyevsky’s major works and the context behind them. They allowed me to better understand Dostoevsky’s life and the political circumstances at the time at which he was writing, providing a fuller context for the work without much meticulous or dense study. 

I wanted to include this recommendation for other readers like me who would like a short but incredibly helpful introduction into Dostoevsky’s life and major works 🙂