Miss Clueless

A little recap of what I've read in the past three months.  January ~Anne's House of Dreams by Lucy Maud Montgomery ~A House for Mr Biswas by V. S. Naipaul ~Arrival/Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang ~Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw February ~A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf ~Winter Recipes from the Collective by Louise Glück  ~Dottie by Abdulrazak Gurnah  ~The Enigma of Arrival by V. S. Naipaul  ~The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón March ~Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk ~The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman ~Anne of Ingleside by Lucy Maud Montgomery ~Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out by Mo Yan ~The Stranger by Albert Camus ~The Lady with the Little Dog by Anton Chekhov To pick a favourite from each month: For Jan, I liked  A House for Mr Biswas by V. S. Naipaul so much. I've been reading books by Western authors, mostly by white people, about white people. I've also read some Asian authors, but I...

Some titles describe. Some titles intrigue. And then, some titles don’t just name a book—they  whisper a feeling. For me, the most beautiful of them all is On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous  by Ocean Vuong I picked up this book following Andrew Garfield's book recommendations. (Thanks, Andrew). When I first heard/saw this title, I was like, "Wow! Such a pretty name!" I love it. While I may not like the book as much (I mean, my favourites are other books), the title of this one tops all else I’ve read. I just want to appreciate it by making a blog post about it. It's a sentence that feels like a sigh. A title that holds love, grief, beauty, and brevity — all at once. It doesn’t ask for attention. It deserves it. And a few others that live rent-free in my head (some of these may not be what you call beautiful, but I just like them): To Kill a Mockingbird The Book Thief One Hundred Years of Solitude Howl’s Moving Castle The Catcher in the Rye A Midsummer Night’s Dream...

I finally ticked off a major milestone this month—I went on my first international trip! Vietnam was the destination, and I went along with my sister and a friend.  We planned it all within two months, which, in hindsight, felt a bit rushed. In our excitement, we tried to cover too much in too little time. Our itinerary was built for seven days, but when you take out the travel days, we were really left with only five. We now realize we could have planned it better—maybe focused on just one or two regions instead of trying to do everything. Still, no regrets. We took a ton of photos, shared some laughs, and made memories. A Few Reflections from the Trip One of the biggest takeaways for me was realizing how much I value solo travel. Don’t get me wrong—traveling with friends and family is lovely. You share the highs, split the logistics, and there’s always someone to take your picture. But I did find myself longing for the kind of freedom that only solo travel allows. To go whereve...

I read Sapiens last year, and I still think about it sometimes. Especially these lines... The secret was probably the appearance of fiction. Large numbers of strangers can cooperate successfully by believing in common myths. The pursuit of an easier life resulted in much hardship, and not for the last time. It happens to us today. How many young college graduates have taken demanding jobs in high-powered firms, vowing that they will work hard to earn money that will enable them to retire and pursue their real interests when they are thirty-five? But by the time they reach that age, they have large mortgages, children to school, houses in the suburbs that necessitate at least two cars per family, and a sense that life is not worth living without really good wine and expensive holidays abroad. What are they supposed to do, go back to digging up roots? No, they double their efforts and keep slaving away. History is something that very few people have been doing while everyone else was plo...

I think 59 is a decent number; no speed-reading here, just enjoyment. Here's my list of 59 books I read in 2024. How many do we have in common? ;) A Little Life, Hanya Yanagihara 😭 Pachinko, Min Jin Lee 😍 Yellowface, R F Kuang  Fathers and Sons, Ivan Turgenev  Everything I Never Told You, Celeste Ng One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez 😍 Post Office, Charles Bukowski  The Book Thief, Markus Zusak 😍 Kafka On The Shore, Haruki Murakami🙂 Middlemarch, George Elliot  To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee 😍 Howl's Moving Castle, Diana Wynne Jones🙂 A Gentleman in Moscow, Amor Towles The Catcher in the Rye, J D Salinger🙂 Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie  Later, Stephen King  Notes from the Underground, Fyodor Dostoevsky  All Systems Red, Martha Wells  The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Leo Tolstoy  The Sirens of Titan, Kurt Vonnegut  Piranesi, Susanna Clarke🙂 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain To the Lighthouse, Virginia Wo...

 The Bell Jar—I found it disturbing, simply sad. I was even sadder when I read about Sylvia Plath on Wikipedia. But hey, what do you think of these lines from the book? The book is said to be semi-autobiographical. Perhaps these will tell you a bit about Plath herself. I was supposed to be having the time of my life. All my life I'd told myself studying and reading and writing and working like mad was what I wanted to do, and it actually seemed to be true, I did everything well enough and got all A's and by the time I made it to college nobody could stop me. Perhaps one day I would be able to write great books the way she did. I'd always spoil what I did so nobody would ask me to do it again. (Here Plath is talking about cooking and this is precisely what my sister thinks I do when I cook, but I don't, I swear. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯) The trouble was, I hated the idea of serving men in any way. I wanted to dictate my own thrilling letters. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this...

I read Orbital by Samantha Harvey, the Booker Prize winner for 2024, and here are a few lines worth remembering from the book, at least for me! Though I enjoy reading and even resonate with many of these thoughtful reflections and lines, I didn't find the book as captivating or impactful as some other books I've read. Rating 3/5. .............. She finds she often struggles for things to tell people at home, because the small things are too mundane and the rest is too astounding and there seems to be nothing in between, none of the usual gossip, the he-said-she-said, the ups and downs; there is a lot of round and round. The strongest, most deducible proof of life in the photograph is the photographer himself—his eye at the view-finder, the warm press of his finger on the shutter release. I love the moon as it is, she said. Yes, yes, he'd answered, me too, but all those things are beautiful, because their beauty doesn't come from their goodness, you didn't ask if pro...