IT IS OFTEN CONSIDERED that in order to get good at
something, you need to spend more time doing it. That it is only over time
that one really gets the hang of something, internalizes it, and syncs with it.
And so, while the early days of reading was really fun and exciting for me,
it is after four or five years of reading that I have come to mature at it.
Although the childish excitement still makes itself expressed whenever I get my
hands on some new books, or go to my book shelves and pick a new book to start
reading, or finally read the book I always wanted to read, on the whole,
reading has, by now, also become an act that descends deeper in me. It
entertains the brimming merriment on the surface, and then gravitates through
them, gaining in weight, and landing somewhere firmer, more disciplined, and
intentional inside me.
Reading is no longer a hobby for me; I’ve grown, albeit with
a nudging concern, dependant upon it. Whether it is the inexhaustible and
never-ending piles of books that I either want to acquire or read, or the
feeling that my day remains uncharted and unattended if I don’t get to read
some pages – I read, and read every day; almost as effortlessly as I eat or as
naturally as I have to use the bathroom. Yet the questions continue to gnaw at
me: Why so many books? Would you even remember them in time? What material
value does it have in shaping your life in your 20s? Shouldn’t you rather be
interested and thereby invested in something more practically useful? I mostly
avoid these questions by opening a book and start reading it.
Within reading itself, however, questions don’t end either.
To have on your shelves: books from the worthy classics to the exciting
contemporary novels, from the essentials of nonfiction history to the calling
wisdom of philosophy, from the beautiful and transcendentally spoiling poetry
to the wonders of science, from the ever-urgent books of self-help to the
pressing need to understand religion – I usually find myself torn between
different yet equally as important books to read. To decide, then, which book
to pick first and which to put off at the expense of returning to it too late, is
a serious moral conundrum. In 2021, I designed myself a system to find myself a
way through this guilt of favoring some books over others, where I specified to
each month a particular genre to read.
And so, it was decided: contemporary fiction for January,
and nonfiction science for February; March to be spent with books from Iranian
Literature, and April (the Ramadan) with books on religion; Urdu literature
would get some love in May, while in June we would learn about the history;
July would be the month of nonfiction research-based books, while in August we
would return to the classics. And while I acknowledge myself for sticking to
the scripts as the year ends, albeit for eight months only after which
depression got the better of me and I was glad barely to read anything at all,
I’m not utterly glad about 2021 as a reading year.
But I would be lying if I didn’t mention that I not only met
a few of my, probably all-time, favorite books during this year, but thanks to
my reading resolution, I also read some of the more objectively important and worthy
books as well. And in this blog, I’m going to list them down and write about
these books from numerous genres. But lastly, I would like to say: thank you
(with emphasis) to all the books that stood by me through the thick and thin of
this year. You make it possible - the living.
*In order of the author’s surname
1: The Proof of Honey by Salwa Al Neimi (Nonfiction,
Memoir)
An erotic memoir about the eros in the Islamic literature
and school of thought, Neimi’s book boldly and unapologetically breaks off the
conservative and repressing chains of taboo around sexual desires. As deliciously satisfying as the meaning of its title,
this book, through reviving the buried teachings of Islam, helped me not only in becoming
unashamed of my bodily feelings, but also taught me how to accept and cherish
them.
2: No god But God by Reza Aslan (Nonfiction,
Religion)
Aslan’s scholarly religious perspective and presentation of
the Islamic history in this accessible, thorough, and progressive book, is all
what an eager reader, in search of a foundational book upon which to build
his/her understanding about the religion of Islam, could
ask for. A comprehensive, modern, and solving book.
3: God: A Human History by Reza Aslan (Nonfiction,
Religion)
A Big-History of religion and religious thought, this book
of just a hundred and seventy pages, blew me away with its scope, eloquence,
and brevity. Starting with the dawn of man and his first fascination with the
idea of ‘soul’, Aslan then, with a quick-pace that compliments his pithy
understanding of religions, journeys through millennia and arrives at the
monotheistic religions of today. Aslan ends this sweeping story with a controversial and
striking sentence: ‘you are god’. Read to find out if you are!
4: The Enlightenment of
The Greengage Tree by Shokoofeh Azar (Historical/Regional Fiction)
Telling a fantastical story of a tragedy that befalls an
Iranian family in the post-revolution Iran under the grotesque rule of
Khomeini, Azar’s prose merges magic and reality together and creates a spell of
a book that would leave the hair standing on your skin. This book is as impactful a novel in
its artistry, as the story it tells of the true horrors of history.
5: The Sea by John Banville (Literary Fiction)
I read this book back in January and the impact this book’s
purely literary prose and storytelling left on me has lasted the whole year,
and will do so in the years to come. This novel tells the story of the protagonist’s return
to the village by the sea, that he visited in his childhood, where his life comes
back to him in full circle. A beautiful book!
6: At Night All Blood is Black by David Diop (Literary
Fiction)
Winner of 2021’s International Booker Prize, this novella
tells the first-person story of a French soldier and his memories of first
World War. The protagonist’s hasty, at times neurotic, brutally honest accounts
of the horrors of war is sure to leave a lasting impact on the consciousness of
the reader. A quick and powerful read.
7: The Swerve: How the
World Became Modern by Michael Greenblatt (Nonfiction, History)
This Pulitzer-prize winning nonfiction book tells the story
of the renaissance: the discovery of Lucretius' book of verses ‘On the
Nature of Things’, based on the philosophy of the Roman
philosopher, Epicurus. Discovered by the humanist book-hunter Poggio Bracciolini, this book sets in
motion ‘the great return’ of the medieval intellectuals and artists to their
Greek and Roman roots of philosophy and arts when the Church wasn’t as
dominantly conservative.
8: The Human Factor by Graham Greene (Classical
Fiction)
My first Greene novel which made me fall in love with the
author, this book tells the story of a Secret Services officer from The
Britain, who in the wake of an information leak, finds himself under severe
investigation, which sadly takes a tragic turn. Greene poignantly captures the
loneliness and captivity of the life of Secret Services officers, while telling
a grounded, touching, and moving story of a man who finds himself in the midst
of it.
9: Reasons to Stay Alive by Matt Haig (Nonfiction,
Self-Help)
One of the two books that got me out of bitter sulking and
got me moving again, this book is Haig’s retelling of his suffering with
depression and anxiety, which he calls a ‘mental illness cocktail’. An
easy-going, comforting, and hopeful book about an illness that sucks all hope
and happiness out of your life. Such books are read to survive, to hang on, and
it helped me do that.
10: Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari (Nonfiction,
History)
Taking its title from the name of the next species that Homo
Sapiens shall evolve into, Harari, with this third book of his trilogy,
completes the story of the humankind by showing us a peak into the horrific
possibilities that we humans might create for ourselves in the future.
Albeit provocative and controversial, this book is thrilling, fun, and
mind-bending read.
11: Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan (Literary
Fiction)
A completely unexpected book for me which I only read in the
second last week of December after finding it on the multiple
best-books-of-the-year lists, this novella is about a small Irish family in the
mid-1980s around Christmas, set against the true events of the Church-funded
scandal of incarcerated women for forced labor. It’s a beautifully written,
feel-good, touching, and optimism-bearing book. Just lovely!
12: Identity by Milan Kundera (Literary
Fiction)
Another novella and this one is from one of my most adored
and admired writers, Milan Kundera. It tells a simple story of a couple who
visit another town and rent a hotel room, and once there, their sense of identity,
both of themselves and of each other, begins to ebb away. At times haunting,
this is an insightful, philosophical, and engrossing little book to read.
13: Pakistan: A Hard Country by Anatol Levin (Nonfiction,
Regional/Politics)
Levin’s journalistic, grounded, and piercing insights into
this complicated and misunderstood country where I live, had both a revelatory
and connecting effect on me, where throughout reading this book, I had moments
of ‘Aha… so that is how it is’. In this book the whole of Pakistan, from its
diverse peoples, cultures, and lands, get to tell their story - eventually
reaching a nuanced, realistic, and honest account of the whole.
14: Dear Friend, From My Life I Write to You in Your Life
by Yiyun Li (Memoir)
After discontinuing it for its difficult prose back in 2019,
I picked up this incredibly intellectual and far-reaching memoir and read it
from start to finish this year. Li’s prose, as well as the thinking that it helps
convey, despite being intellectually demanding and uneasy to comprehend, or
maybe because of it, is one of my favorites. This is a memoir of depression,
suicide, reading, writing, literary criticism, of wanting to disappear, of
being conflicted, and most of all, of being an unhelpably indulging thinking
person.
15: Mrs. Engels by Gavin McCrae (Literary/Historical
Fiction)
A fictional tale of Mrs. Engels, misses of Fredrich Engels,
the best friend of Karl Marx and the co-author of ‘Communist Manifesto’, this
novel tells a domestic story of Lizzie Burns who works at the mills owned by Mr.
Engels and later becomes his misses and wife. McCrae takes this appealing historical
plot and with it combines his critical, poignant, imaginative, and insightful
storytelling and understanding of the late 1800s, to write this beautiful and touching
novel.
16: Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill (Memoir)
Part memoir, part fiction, in this book Jenny Offill writes
about a number of things: relationship, marriage, motherhood, arguments, hurt
feelings, to name a few, and does so with fragmented paragraphs that tell only
a snippet, an event-to-event story. Yet what comes together at the
end of the book is a coherent and wholesome feeling of joy, wisdom, tenderness,
and understanding. I can’t wait to read more from Offill.
17: Figuring by Maria Popova (Nonfiction Biography)
Popova, creator of ‘The Brain Pickings’ (now, The
Marginalian), starts this book with a sensational and vivid retelling of the sixteenth
century astrologist, Johannes Kepler’s life and discoveries. Then, more great
lives are retold and re-imagined: Maria Mitchell, Elizabeth Barret, Margaret
Fuller, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Harriet Homer, Emily Dickinson, and Rachel Carson,
among others. Reading a chapter a night for a month, I was duly inspired by
Popova’s avid and extractive reading, and her own intellectual insights into these
lives. Excellent!
18: Raja Gidh (King of Vultures) by Bano Qudsia (Literary
Fiction)
Courtesy of reading Urdu Literature in May, I happened to
read this domestic masterpiece! A most renowned Urdu novel, ‘Raja Gidh’ tells
two parallel stories that reflect off of each other: Qayum, a hopeless,
troubled, and melancholic romantic in the human-world; and in the animal kingdom,
the trial of expelling the vultures from the jungle for their human-adopted
madness. This novel is rich with emotions, culture, philosophy, religion,
and human frailties.
19: The Gardens of Consolations by Parisa Reza (Literary
Fiction)
A beautiful and poignant novel about the story of a couple,
who after marrying, move from their forefather’s villages to city of Tehran,
where they hope to raise their son an educated person. This novel captures not
only the domestic feel and atmosphere of Iran, but also the divide, both politically
and perspective-wise, between the old and new generations. Lovely and touching!
20: Heartbreak House by George Bernard Shaw (Play)
As per my preparations for the civil services exams, I finally
started reading plays. But I didn’t read Shakespeare, instead I read Shaw, Beckett,
and Pinter. And boy did I love Shaw! A play in three acts, this tells the story
of Captain Shotover, his daughters, and his ship-like house where hearts famously get broken. The wittiness, genius, and piercing insights of Shaw can
be felt with its sheer force throughout this play. I was utterly mesmerized and
spell-bounded by this book.
21: Orlando by Virginia Woolf (Classical
Fiction)
The sex-changing protagonist of this novel lives through
four centuries, three English eras, and on multiple continents, from being born
a boy to becoming a lady – such is the inventiveness, playfulness, and scale of
this novel. Yet Woolf handles it all handsomely through her light prose,
gripping world-building, incredible psychological insights, and just fun storytelling.
A must-read Woolf novel!