reading in 2024
reading in 2024
consumption culture of social media likes to put out with the countless wrapping of everything we do in a shareable medium for everyone else’s consumption.
against that, i’ll be listing all my favorite reads for this year not just as an effort of appreciation and intentionality. but as a gesture towards joy beyond just mere consumption.
Nail Down the Sky by Jam Pascual
“and sometimes what will happen is that when someone decides / they are finished with the undertaking of being in your life, / they will make this decision privately, with relief, not / to hurt you, / though they do not consult you; this / decision does not take you / quietly aside, and you will need to know that this / is not abandonment”-Holy Week, and the Roads Are So Empty That Going Fast is Easy
grief is considered to be the most universal feeling. but, any attempt of grasping it always leads to redirection. it’s very essence manifests in a ghostlike quality, always lingering and cannot be boxed as it constantly passes through us. there’s something special when the atttempt further abstracts this complicatedness, for a moment a clarity emerges despite only being left with fragments for us to uncover when a loss occurs. Described by Jam as their series of “tantrums” to share, he unravels outbursts from the rubble they’ve been left with from the past years, not towards a concrete conclusion, but simply walking through a path to be able to reach someone. similar to the parable of footprints in the sand, and instead of carrying, they leave these marks for us to explore alongside them.
Unbecoming by Angeli Lacson
“Kasi hindi mo alam takbo ng mga isip nila” Who is the narrow “mo” they reference? Who becomes the “nila” they invoke as threat and casualty? How do we know who counts as which?”
the personal essay has invited such criticisms of only being an act of individualism. sure, with its format it does require a certain earnestness and what could be more honest when one writes about themselves? but the self cannot merely be uncovered within, but requires contending the realities surrounding them.
unbecoming makes sense of the confusion through notes. similar to typical personal essays, it cites several references and researches, tackles their own experiences, and has a general overarching theme. it goes beyond in creating a political citation, allowing not just a mere space for readers for awareness, but a critical carving of solidarity against crisis. it makes me think of the recent video essay, Brat and the Culture of Addiction, in enacting freedom for the marginalized comes with carrying burdens towards achieving it against the current destructive society.
Time is a Mother by Ocean Vuong
“To be born going one way, toward everything alive. To walk into the world you never asked for but then choose the room where your hunger ends—which part of war do we owe such knowledge? It’s warm in this house where we will die, you and I. Let the stanza be one room, then. Let it be big enough for everyone, even the ghosts rising now from this bread we tear open to see what we’ve made of each other. I know, we’ve been growing further apart, unhappy but half full.”-Nothing
i understand that so many of people from the Ocean Vuong fanbase expected this collection to be a stellar sequel to Night Sky with Exit Wounds. if that is your approach to any new book/piece published by your favorite author, i’d highly beg you to reconsider your relationship with literature. i can acknowledge that sometimes things cannot be for you, but we do need to learn to let the passage of time affect one’s craft. of course, we also cannot argue the mark Ocean’s debut collection left on ~ diaspora ~ writing, but we need to acknowledge that grief does not only exist in one enduring form. like the title of the collection itself, it allows Ocean to contend with the main subject his work has always been calling out for, his mother. Traversing her through the passage of time, even beyond her passing.
i feel this the same way with Richard Siken’s poetry suites. wherein Crush still manages to get the lone praise compared to his second suite, Fleet of the Foxes, where dare i say to gay twitter poets, is where the desire truly destructs itself.
Sa Tuwing Ikaw ay Tahimik by Vijae Quisola
“Mapagpatawad ang bilog, kagaya ng bukol sa noo, \ kahit malaki’t masakit, gumagaling at naglalaho”-Bilog ang Paborito kong Hugis
children’s literature is highly underrated in the scene. growing up with Adarna House as my moral compass, i do believe there needs to be a level of seriousness and playfulness in tackling and translating themes for children to be able to understand.
the form of poetry is definitely a good site for kids to be able to hold the heaviest of matters, especially when they often encounter it in their silent moments. the sounds, images, and rhythms allow for children to not just hear and feel these things, but also a solace to make sense of them.
Normal People by Sally Rooney
“The conversations that follow are gratifying for Connell, often taking unexpected turns and prompting him to express ideas he had never consciously formulated before. They talk about the novels he’s reading, the research she studies, the precise historical moment that they are currently living in, the difficulty of observing such a moment in process. At times he has the sensation that he and Marianne are like figure-skaters, improvising their discussions so adeptly and in such perfect synchronisation that it surprises them both. She tosses herself gracefully into the air, and each time, without knowing how he’s going to do it, he catches her. Knowing that they’ll probably have sex again before they sleep probably makes the talking more pleasurable, and he suspects that the intimacy of their discussions, often moving back and forth from the conceptual to the personal, also makes the sex feel better.“
as if i wasn’t already satisfied with the way the tv series adaptation destroyed me! i just had to read the original text not just as a comparison point, but to uncover the supposed “point” of the story based on various tiktok comments/essays/tweets i’ve seen about this novel. which was the underlying class critique rooney appears to embed through human relationships. i’ve tried her two other novels first before landing here, and i’d like to disagree that applied to everything she’s written (but i have not yet read her latest one so i can reconsider).
Normal People seems to have a lasting mark due to ensuring this critique persists, while magnifying the intimacy that occurs between these two lovers. there’s a lot of mundane moments that help shape and develop marianne and connell’s relationship over time. i think the most iconic one for me would be the delivery of the famous “I’m not a religious person but I do sometimes think God made you for me” placed in the context of a sext exchange. makes me realize maybe all we really do have is each other (and we’re all just really horny too)
Sunburn by Chole Michell Howarth
“Susannah, Save this letter: it marks the moment that my life finally started. I have never felt closer to Heaven than I felt today on the road with you. I can only hope that it was real, and that you will not change your mind. Now I am away from you, I have never felt further from home, further from myself. Susannah, since the day I met you, I have wanted to let you know that you are a spill of gleaming gold on my otherwise dull and pointless world. Yours always, Lucy”
i’ll be 100% biased that i only deeply enjoyed this book because it was the young adult lesbian novel i wish i had back in my teenage years!!! god everything about it is so tenderfully, heartbreakingly written!! its so cliched in the themes it explores (forbidden love, catholic angst, comphet, conservative communities) but god i wish these were on the shelves of Fully Booked so that i wouldn’t just settle on David Levithan books about gay boys.
Abandon Me by Melissa Febos
“We really want the undoing of our earliest wounds and sometimes, in our attempts to correct the errors of our childhoods, we choose the exact thing we hope to avoid. We recognize a chance for love’s redemption and run toward it. We hope for a different ending.”
been a big fan of melissa febos since reading her other book of essays, Body Work, emphasizing the empowering nature of writing a personal narrative. this thesis remains intact in her collection of memoirs on abandonment, allowing her to take control and let go towards deconstruction of encounters with lacking and what it means to intercede from both ends. to tell someone frankly, please allow me, both as an order and reclaim.
Strong Female Character by Fern Brady
“Trying to kill yourself never pans out the way it does in films. In hospital they do ask you if you meant to kill yourself but it’s such a factual box-ticking exercise that to answer with any kind of emotion would be mortifying. There’s no ‘It was a cry for help’ box but there should be. I feel like the doctors and the general public need to raise awareness of how embarrassing most suicide attempts are.\ When you’re in a backless hospital gown with your worst pants on it’s really hard to hold your nerve and say, ‘I wanted to die?”
sure there’s been a lot of jokes on self diagnosis on how it’s become the “buzzword” or excuse of the kids these days to justify their irresponsibility or chosen incompetence, but has the mental health movement ever advocated for accessible means or continuous research on diagnoses? until now, it’s only been pushing for this vague sense of awareness with outdated information from the dsm bible whatever and still very much rooted in very patriarchal framings.
i think a lot about the title of this memoir, how it’s often used to describe a complex female characterization in pieces of media as a groundbreaking way to dismantle patriarchal standards. but it’s still another vague form of awareness, another way of seeing these women boxed under certain conditions and stereotypes, and till now we will just look at them and do nothing about it.
What Artists Wear by Charlie Porter
“Agnes Martin built houses…It is important to remember the physicality of an artist’s labor”
my friend cidee and i have been thinking a lot lately on fashion! i recently finished the 75 hard style challenge as a means to understand what my “personal style” is, but instead it led me to this rabbit hole of exploring what fashion and style means in a theoretical and cultural sense.
and this book i believe can be a good gateway towards understanding what a pov could look like based on your own experiences! with artists being such a good point of focus on how expression isn’t just a vague means of creativity or sense of self or what tiktokers often like to call the “sauce” missing in an outfit, but as a visceral manifestation of the world around us. And if we think about the world around us, we need to think about the various contentions that extends beyond what we encounter in our mere vicinity.
Upstream by Mary Oliver
“Sometimes the desire to be lost again, as long ago, comes over me like a vapor. With growth into adulthood, responsibilities claimed me, so many heavy coats. I didn’t choose them, I don’t fault them, but it took time to reject them. Now in the spring I kneel, I put my face into the packets of violets, the dampness, the freshness, the sense of ever-ness. Something is wrong, I know it, if I don’t keep my attention on eternity. May I be the tiniest nail in the house of the universe, tiny but useful. May I stay forever in the stream. May I look down upon the windflower and the bull thistle and the coreopsis with the greatest respect.”
recalling her poem, In Blackwater Woods:
To live in this world / you must be able / to do three things: / to love what is mortal; / to hold it / against your bones knowing / your own life depends on it; / and, when the time comes to let it / go, / to let it go.
Bunny by Mona Awad
“The poets brace themselves for imminent, overeducated poverty.”
this is just a fun book! it’s like binging a trashy CW series, similar to Riverdale introduces the most random ass shit plot lines just to keep things spicy. but in here the symbolisyms actually be symboliziN! though i’ve seen various criticisms of this novel being too in your face in showcasing the perils of grad school and academia, i do think the metaphors of cliques and mean girls prevalent in crafting literary work is very very Very much present, especially in today’s ph lit scene.
Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
“All her life she had learned that passion, like fire, was a dangerous thing. It so easily went out of control. It scaled walls and jumped over trenches. Sparks leapt like fleas and spread as rapidly; a breeze could carry an ember for miles. Better to control that spark and pass it carefully from one generation to the next, like an Olympic torch. Or perhaps, to tend it carefully like an eternal flame: a reminder of light and goodness that would never-could never- set anything ablaze. Carefully controlled. Domesticated. Happy in captivity.”
this book definitely surprised me, especially since i couldn’t get past episode one of its series adaptation. i’m honestly surprised that celeste isn’t getting as much love as rooney has been when it comes to the topic of writing social issues baked in the everyday relations between people (well maybe its because of her expose of being a “mean girl” in that one bad artist friend essay) but god she just does it better and fearlessly! touching on so many systemic and cultural nuances when it comes to gentrified communities, interracial adoption, and philantrophy. idk if i was teaching a sociology class, this would be definitely be part of the syllabus.
How to Pacify a Distraught Infant by Anna Felicia Sanchez
“Maybe she had been to laid-back, she thought as she curled into the mattress, maybe she had things too easy and she had lived half her life being too soft, too weak, too happy with what she already had. She rubbed her arm against the cold sheets and felt a welling up inside her chest. She was still young, she had always insisted, spending the days and the money as they came, but that night it felt suddenly as if all the years had gained up with her, and like an old woman she twined the sheets around her body, feeling inconsolably cold, and she wondered if there was any way at all that sleep could be warmer.”
with the copious amounts of tradwife content coming into our periphery, there’s been a lot of contention on the concept of motherhood. there’s a lot of clamor for marrying rich and just staying at home to do the laborious task of homemaking. there’s these large families glamorizing the joy of having . there’s also those who chose to not bear any offspring and insisting on becoming the cool aunt guardian figure of the children around them.
and then there’s the women in these stories, all navigating the ambiguity of being displaced into a new placeholder of womanhood, often sprung up and not willed due to the circumstances that go against their current. we often never really get to deeply dive into their internal psyche, similar to how we never really get to dig deep into our own mother’s troubles and anxieties. the best they can to communicate such is through cradling us, rocking us to sleep against their chest, hoping it’s enough to say i’m here now, to quote keke palmer, i am a mother after all.
I Feel Bad About My Neck by Nora Ephron
“Here are some questions I am constantly noodling over: Do you splurge or do you hoard? Do you live every day as if it’s your last, or do you save your money on the chance you’ll live twenty more years? Is life too short, or is it going to be too long? Do you work as hard as you can, or do you slow down to smell the roses? And where do carbohydrates fit into all this? Are we really all going to spend our last years avoiding bread, especially now that bread in American is so unbelievable delicious? And what about chocolate?”
the encounter with this book greets one with familiarity. especially if you’ve already encountered nora ephron’s filmography (you’ve got mail, when harry met sally…took me a while to realize it myself and i kept saying wow this sounds just like those early romcoms!) you end up just breezing through each essay, where she rambles about the seemingly mundane things that we often actually deeply think about! like yes white woman based in nyc! i will think about the apartment i lived in for 1 year! i will moisturize my neck! unfortunately we do tend to canoodle over these things. i mean isn’t that what makes good conversation between two people about to embark on a life changing deep connection?!?!?!?!
Remaindered Life by Neferti Tadiar
“Becoming human is this continuing struggle, neither an ideal nor a model of a political project, not yet a polity but, rather, multiple strategies of survival and thriving against the disposability of one’s own life, including the shared being of one’s belonging. This struggle thus poses a different question, beyond the question of the human that founds its own disposability “
thinking about that one comic i saw on twitter recently, where op, a white person living in the safety confines of america, flexed on how they flipped off a cop in a protest and ran off?? the comic ends with them video calling their friend who is based in (currently in war) Palestine, and telling them all about it. thinking about my old job routinely checking through dark web forums, feeding them through a spreadsheet, seeing them reflected in an “ai-generated” module for american clients. thinking about the my mother’s slave essay. thinking about jia tolentino’s comeback in the industry despite her parents pleading guilty for human trafficking charges. thinking about the shift of pov on sex work, focusing on giving a livable alternative for the workers beyond the industry complex (thats u know formulated by men). thinking about the sustainable development goals, human rights advocates, and what they try to introduce as a livable life, despite these organization’s apathy to genocides.
GIGIL: A Sapphic Anthology
including this for the sole purpose of talking about my good friend kai! her short comic, toothpaste kisses, is such a great balancing act on tethering the line between desire and love. using the medium of body horror juxtaposed with fairytale-like elements, she introduces a different aperture of what it means to express our gigil for women. other notable comics in here are: ezjae’s sakbibi , dead balagtas’ abogada de campanilla, and caia & thirdy’s anino sa katirikan ng araw.
Isabela by Kaisa Aquino
“And whatever it is she meant to answer that with, everything else is drowned away by a newfound hunger: she bites at the piece already eaten off. It’s sweet. It’s so, very sweet. She breaks the bundle, and piece by piece, hands one to Julia, leaning on one of the boulders, still half-dressed, her hair wet and dripping onto the stone, singing one of those songs that they played on the radio during slow afternoons…The sound of the forest, of the falls, the birds above, everything else mellows and recedes into the distance as they quietly peel the patupat, as Julia sings. Here, there is nothing else but the sweetness of the rice cake, and the women, and the water. A lot of people think that being up in the hills is all gunfire and fight; sometimes, there’s sweetness too…Look, even the water is dazzling. Look at how it bounces the light around”
i recall my favorite novel of all time, caroline hau’s tiempo muerto, where at the center of the novel’s unveiling of contentious historical atrocities were two women. despite coming from vastly different social classes, they encounter multiple collisions in tracing the haunted past in the island of Banwa.
isabela does the same kind of navigation, as if continuing Hau’s project in her novel of a different kind of haunting. The novel expands the weave of women, featuring stories of wives, children, mothers, cadres, shaped by the ongoing people’s war in Cagayan Valley. reminding one of the transient place of womanhood in the revolution.
Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe
similar to Sunburn, i loved this book because it was something i wish i had back in my adolescent years too! i just kept nodding along!!! i too was confused about wanting both features of men and women?? being confused about sex?? desire?? not feeling gender???
Cicatrix by Elle Shivers
“Every pain in my body, in my mind was a symptom of some terminal illness that would finally take me. It was a symptom of a curse, an unnameable one, passed down, left to incubate until it settled in me.
I grew excessively scared of the doctor. I was paranoid that when they’d listen to my heartbeat. Or look down at my throat. Or take vials of my blood…They’d blow it up on a screen, crunch the numbers. And then everything I feel would be typed out plainly, objectively with no more need for interpretation. With no more space to grow. Combed over until everything is flat. “
what gets to be hereditary? the sins of our fathers and mothers cannot simply be passed– biologically speaking. but a close examination of our bloodwork might reveal something thicker underneath our skin’s surface. a scar that’s already been wounded, a lump awaiting diagnosis, a fracture beyond repair.
in cicatrix, elle attempts to examine their family’s involvement with the marcos regime through the physical manifestations of their own body. a growing lump of guilt occurs within them as they outline the bulk of hypocrisy and resentment of their lineage. as elle puts it, there’s nothing poetic about it. the lump is a lump, there’s nothing else more revelatory to it that a biopsy can reveal. there’s nothing more to do except to feel it, removing it would be too convenient. you can only disintegrate it this way.
Other articles/essays i enjoyed
don’t deceive yourself
Thinking about creativity in tax class
gen z’s military-dating complex
troubled sleep
Antisocial Goods
The Price of Belonging to You
Hungry Work
Is Feeling Sexy a Human Right?
“Remember to take care of yourselves.”
The Power of Art
‘I Can’t Decide What I Truly Want!’
You think you love it but you never wear it
Your phone is why you don’t feel sexy
Everything that turned out well in my life followed the same design process
is flirting the best way to make friends?
Getting physical