Super late post on my best books of 2024 from the first half of the year, but here they are! Number 1 on this list is still my top favorite.
I’ve also been having tons of fun with my bookstagram account, where I post book reviews pretty consistently. So if you want to know what I’m up to, give the account a follow @obsessivelybookishjojo. There’s a lot of more there than here!
In 2016, Aikins journeyed along his long-time Afghan friend, whom he called Omar, to leave Afghanistan and head to Europe via the smugglers’ road. Omar was previously employed by the US government, but his visa application was rejected because of lack of documentations.
In joining this journey, Aikins had to disguise himself as an Afghan—his mixed European and Asian background allowed him to look and pass as an Afghan—and ditched his passport. This book is the story of that journey, the harrowing games and gambles refugees take to cross over to a better world. It is also a personal story about Aikins and Omar, and how he wrestles with this reality as a journalist and as a friend.
What I love most about the prose is the author’s self-awareness that even though he walks along the refugees, he is still existing somewhat outside of their experience. He has an out at any time and he’s very honest about his state of mind throughout the underground journey. Yet the danger is very real, and he bears witness of this danger and experiences the highly vulnerable state of a refugee first-hand.
There are many thoughtful reflections in this book: what is a refugee, the nature of borders, the wall that is inside of us. It compels us to see beyond the simple binaries of villains and victims, but rather the system that creates this whole economy of migration. He also interweaves texts from Eastern and Western literature, those that express acutely the longing of a migrant, a refugee.
Favorite quote:
“For the first time in my life, I had an inkling of what the border meant to so many others: a wall between you and someone you loved.”
This incredibly expansive book covers the interlinking history between US foreign policy in Central America and the immigration crisis. Blitzer draws a thread from Cold War politics where the US supported governments to fight communism, to the Reagan administration, to the present day, on how decades of flawed policies create a groundswell of today’s immigration crisis.
Told through the personal stories of individuals, with their varied and harrowing immigration stories, Blitzer aptly paints the connections between the wider discussions on policies and politics, and the lived experiences of real people. When the scene that inspires the book title is revealed, it is staggering.
The book touches some of the reasons why people leave their homes that have become unlivable, among which are political persecutions, crimes, hunger. It touches on the sanctuary movement in the US, the definition of a refugee and asylum status.
It touches on corruption, politics, deportations, and family separation policies. It touches on the violence at the border and the violence of borders. It tells the connected worlds of the US and its Central American neighbors, shaped by migrants and deportees going across nation-states.
It is all very vexing, tangled, and complicated, but a necessary education for us all.
This books pairs well with Still Life with Bones by Alexa Hagerty, which was one of my favorite reads from last year. And the Cold War politics part is very resonant with history from my home halfway across the world, something I need to delve into more.
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What a delight it was to read this book! To read Martyr! was to experience a smorgasbord of feelings—joy, anxiety, grief, surprise, tenderness, pain, love, despair, and on it went. I’m certain that this book is not for everyone. It explores heavy themes like life, death, sexuality, and suicidality.
Even so, the book grapples with these themes in a playful way. Instead of examining them in the dark, it holds them out like objects in the light. I found Cyrus’, the main character, frankness about death very refreshing. Cyrus shines so brightly off the pages, I could not take my eyes off him right from the first page! His dreams, streams of consciousness, and his pain in the midst of the daily toil of existing are so visceral.
Martyr! left me weepy and tender, and some of the sentences took my breath away.
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An endlessly fascinating book on the unimaginable ways that animals sense the world—their ways of being in the world. Each chapter contains jaw-dropping revelations that will alter the way you see the most “common” animals at the zoo or the backyard.
Yong brings us on a tour of sensory experiences beyond the common ones we teach our children, and beyond what humans can experience. The sensory world of animals extends so vast to the realms of electric and magnetic fields!
The book’s recurring main point is the invitation to see the world of animals not through our eyes/perception, but through their particular sensory bubble—their Umwelt. Each species, including humans, can only experience a tiny slice of the world, and the exercise of thinking about another creature’s sensory experience is such a profound thing, nudging us a little closer to appreciate how truly immense this world is.
This book is such a joy to read. It is also a tribute to the numerous scientists who dedicate their lives studying particular creatures, unknowable as they seem. Each layer that gets unveiled brings more questions to look into.
Pick this book up if you want to bask in wonder and amazement!
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This book was so gripping I finished it in four hours!
The story begins with a chapter called Perfect City, U.S.A., describing a town so eerily perfect—clean, well-resourced, famously great schools—that you can’t help feeling that there’s something sinister underneath it all.
A series of racist incidents that become public disrupt this perfection, which, as it turns out, comes at the expense of minority students who bear daily indignities silently for a long time. Plans to be more inclusive ensue, with strong backlash, and then the plot grows into an outsize proportion as the fight attracts national attention and becomes a proxy war for the Christian nationalist movement.
By focusing on Southlake, Texas, Hixenbaugh tells the story of what’s going on with public school districts across the country as political war comes down on school board races, with students, educators, and librarians caught in the crossfire.
This extensive reporting is especially urgent because the US is still in the middle of this story, where school privatization is being fought in many states. It is also especially poignant for me because, well, hello from TX, and the school district next door is mentioned in the book.
I had the pleasure of attending the author event in Houston hosted by Blue Willow Bookshop @bluewillowbooks. I was also pleasantly surprised that Hixenbaugh’s reporting partner in this story is Antonia Hylton, whose book Madness is also a fantastic read!
If the subjects of public school, politics in education, and book bans interest you, you should pick this book up!
Wasteland is a fascinating journey into a whole universe of processes, commerce, and industry of waste once it ‘stops being our problem’. It should be our problem though, because dealing with waste is one of the main challenges of the Anthroprocene.
For someone who thinks about sustainability and the circular economy from time to time, I honestly hadn’t known much about the waste industry until this book. It’s a hard look at how complex it is to recycle and reuse things, how conflicting incentives can generate even more waste, and how truly globalized this problem is.
It’s easy to despair from the scale of the problem, but weirdly, learning about waste is an exercise in hope at the same time, because there’s always something each person can do.
This book is also a meditation on how humans deal with waste, why we look away from it (our trash and everything related to it). Perhaps it makes us feel ashamed, because our waste is like a mirror, showing the ugly side of ourselves that is not pretty to deal with.
This book is a delightful collection of nature writing and personal essays mixed into one. Each piece unveils a captivating mystery of the natural world, as well as a peek at the author’s life, touching on themes like race, motherhood, coming of age, and family.
With its short chapters, reading this book feels like taking little bites out of a platter of delicious appetizers. And I want more! The illustrations are also beautiful.
What a beautiful tribute to the author’s parents. In this memoir, Chung walks us through the emotional terrain of grief, of financial hardship, of inaccessible healthcare, of being far from those you love, and of losing both of her parents close to each other.
I find her prose pure and clear. It speaks the truth of the complex experience of being a daughter who struggles with fulfilling her concept of being a good daughter. It speaks of deep losses without cheap sentimentalism.
She tells of her love for her adoptive parents without minimizing the complicated way they had to understand each other throughout their lives. I remember feeling the same way after reading her first memoir, All You Can Ever Know, which was one of my favorite reads in 2019.
I love this book. I ugly cried past midnight reading this book. It’s one of those books that breaks your heart, but expands it as well.
If you enjoy these reviews, come over to @obsessivelybookishjojo! These are essentially repurposed from my posts there.
Favorite Books Lists
2023: Best Books of 2023 Part 1, Best Books of 2023 Part 2.
2022: Best Books of 2022 Part 1, Best Books of 2022 Part 2.
2021: Best Books of 2021 Part 1, Best Books of 2021 Part 2.
2020: Best Books of 2020 Part 1, Best Books of 2020 Part 2.
2019: Best Books of 2019 Part 1, Best Books of 2019 Part 2.
2018: Best Books of 2018 Part 1, Best Books of 2018 Part 2.
2017: Best Books of 2017 Part 1, Best Books of 2017 Part 2.
2016: Best Books of 2016 Part 1, Best Books of 2016 Part 2.
2015: Best Books of 2015 Part 1, Best Books of 2015 Part 2.
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