books i read in january

Crying in H Mart
By: Michelle Zauner ⭐️⭐️⭐️

This book was about grief, but when I read it, I was nostalgic. Nostalgic for high school, of all things.

My high school roommate (yes, roommate) is Korean and when I read this book, I could hear her on the phone with her mom. Could hear the inflection our her voice as she said Eomma, smell the spicy tang of Shin bowls as we hunched over our desks for study hours, feel the crinkle of the seaweed as we let sheet after sheet melt on our tongues. Zauner’s choice to write this book about her mother using food was perfect. The memory of food is a lot like love, touches all your senses at once.

It was a beautiful memoir, no rose-colored glasses just real, harsh, deep love for a parent.

All the Ugly and Wonderful Things
By: Bryn Greenwood ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Fiction, tormented, not sure how I feel about it but couldn’t put it down. It follows a young girl growing up in impossible circumstances and finding love in a way and with someone I couldn’t fully support.

And yet, I can understand it.

And I rooted for it.

I can see all the problems with a book like this and a love like this. But it was beautifully written and immersive. Real in a way that real life is real. Apparently, it’s a bildungsroman book — a fancy lit word for coming-of-age. Highly recommend.

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
By: Stephen King ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I’d never read anything by Stephen King until I read this — his memoir on the art of writing and his advice for would-be writers. I’m not one for horror books but figured a writer as prolific as King would have choice words for me, a writer who’s always struggled to write.

He said several things that have stuck with me. I won’t ruin them all, just two. I repeat them like mantras whenever I write now.

“Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.” & “Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open.” - Stephen King

My Time Will Come: A Memoir of Crime, Punishment, Hope
By: Ian Manuel ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

A wrenching memoir of a boy sentenced to life without parole for a crime he committed when he was only 14 years old.

Ian is a poet. And he weaves his pain into his poetry, tells his story with such beauty that you can almost forget that what you’re reading about is terror, is trauma, is still happening in the US today. I found it on a reading list from EJI and was reminded again of all the incredible work Bryan Steveson and his team do for incarcerated people of color and all that still needs to be done.

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