Retrospective: 2017

This is a little late, but I wanted to put this up before January ends. In no particular order, here are my favorite reads from 2017!

The Remains of the Day (Kazuo Ishiguro)

This meditation on what it means to lead an honorable life in the face of passivity, lost opportunities, and fear of sunk costs really resonates with me at a time in my life where I too am trying to make sure that I establish a life and career that I am proud of.

I read this book on my commutes from between my house and Los Angeles City Hall, and the parallels of an up-and-coming graduate like myself with Mr. Stevens’s own mental gymnastics that he has to do to justify his life is a reminder that regardless of who we are connected to, we are our own persons. Most importantly, we must remember that to inhabit a role we think is noble is not noble in and of itself—that it is our own actions that define our nobility of purpose of self.

Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights (Salman Rushdie)

Behind all of the farcical humor and the dark undertones of this novel is a fascinating position Rushdie takes— that in the absence of turmoil, violence, and hardship, humans lose the ability to hold hope and to imagine/dream. Rushdie clearly argues that the great sciences and philosophies developed by humanity are developed in response to, in spite of, and in the midst of conflict. But this isn’t a dark assertion he makes. In fact, it’s a reaffirmation of the resilience of the human spirit.

It’s also ridiculously funny and sharp in its characterization of people and institutions. (One instance: the story of Baby Storm, an infant who, upon coming into contact with corrupt people, has an involuntary magical ability to cause their skin to deteriorate. Naturally, half of New York City Hall flees the five boroughs when the Mayor of New York takes Baby Storm for a tour of the building.)

Call Me By Your Name (Andre Acíman)

I haven’t been so moved by a novel since I read The Moor’s Last Sigh (read in 2016 while on holiday.) Proustian in its manifestation of Elio’s consciousness and lucid in its portrayal of a coming-of-age narrative, this book captures the joys, fears, and foibles of first love—something universal to the human condition beyond the love story between Elio and Oliver.

What I love most about fiction is that the genre is about making readers feel invested in the characters and in the plot, and often, this is done through a concerted effort to get into the minds of the characters. The medium of the novel thus becomes a practice that lets us as humans rediscover our emotions (and our humanity) by having us relate to other human narratives. Acíman does this masterfully and shows that powerful fiction hinges on being able to promulgate and enshrine empathy to elicit an emotional/intellectual investment from people. But this moves beyond fiction. In reading novels like Acíman’s, we reaffirm that empathy—that being the ability and need to connect with others—is of paramount importance to our human existence.

Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)

This is technically a re-read, but I wanted to mark the 200th anniversary of Jane Austen’s passing by revisiting one of my favorite novels. This time, I was particularly fascinated by how embedded realism, and I couldn’t help but notice that even non-scholarly critics are seeing this and trying to re-interpret this into relevance for a millennial readership where attention spans last as long as a Vine video—we’ve all seen comparisons of the Bennets with the Kardashians, but then we have to ask ourselves, who to us is the character that upends the status quo a lá Blac Chyna? Is it Wickham? Elizabeth? Lydia? Jane? Are we revealing our own inner selves when we make this sort of judgment by forcing parallels? Most importantly, we ask ourselves: why do we need to re-translate works into more contemporary versions of itself? This may be difficult to answer, but it also speaks to the timelessness of the issues Jane Austen herself was writing about: the recklessness of youth, the desire to have it all, and the joy of hope in the face of great and dark odds.

It is this realism that also strikes me on re-reading of the novel. The novel ends with Austen tying up so many loose ends—every person is accounted for. And while this can be read as just a convention of the time (Samuel Richardson’s Pamela doesn’t reach a happy conclusion until Mr. B ensures that Pamela is financially stable), it also can be read as a signal that even fantasies are grounded in the needs of reality—these fairy-tale endings are the result of a reality that did not look favorably upon women with agency. But this is what makes Jane Austen’s works as a whole so powerful—her ability to find equilibrium in situations of great social/power imbalances is a model for how we too can find hope and positivity in trying situations.

Honorable Mention: Rich People Problems (Kevin Kuan)

Definitely my favorite beach read of the year- in all honesty, I only really liked Crazy Rich Asians (the first of the trilogy) but as a whole, it’s refreshing to see a trilogy of books concerned with dominant characters that are immensely relatable to both Asians and to AANHPIs. The plot of this novel (like the other two) has a lot of issues, many of which involve ridiculous deus ex machina, but we don’t read this trilogy for lively turns of phrase or for perfect structure. We read it because Kuan has a talent for writing sassy dialogue and for cataloguing Veblen goods that makes you feel like you’re in a reality show with gilded interiors.