Ali’s Year in Books

What did you read this year?

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2023

61,506

pages read

193

books read

Ali

Shortest Book

pages

Longest Book

1,010

pages

Average book length in 2023

318

pages

The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune

Most Shelved

1,757,312

people also shelved

Least Shelved

people also shelved

Ali’s average rating for 2023

4.0

Highest Rated on Goodreads

it was amazing

5.00 average

Ali’s first review of the year

really liked it

Aoki has a gift for evocative writing, most notably making this not a book to read if you are hungry. The pages are peppered (heh) with descriptions of steaming hot, fragrant food - from the intense (sickly?) sweetness of the donuts in the donut shop to the deceptively simple pleasures of well-prepared Hainan Chicken. Even the pleasures of eating a fresh tangerine or the taste explosion of kiwi boba become sources of comfort, expressions of love Aoki has a gift for evocative writing, most notably making this not a book to read if you are hungry. The pages are peppered (heh) with descriptions of steaming hot, fragrant food - from the intense (sickly?) sweetness of the donuts in the donut shop to the deceptively simple pleasures of well-prepared Hainan Chicken. Even the pleasures of eating a fresh tangerine or the taste explosion of kiwi boba become sources of comfort, expressions of love and, in some strange ways, reasons to live. Music, is of course, at the heart of this in the book, which is populated by characters who live - and die - for music, and for the way it makes people feel.
This is not a book in which the transness of the central character is incidental. Aoki captures something essential about surviving an expulsion from your home by finding reasons to survive in the joys of sensation and connection. Katrina's teacher marvels when she realises that while she is used to kids who will sell their soul for excellence, Katrina is willing to do that just for a life with simple pleasures, and respect. And in many ways this little sf book generates an understanding of homeless queer youth that grimmer books struggle for.
And it is not even a little bit grim, nor does it obey genre rules. There is a demon - some literal soul selling here - and an advanced alien leader. And the two are just as confused by each other's presence as the rules of fantasy-sci-fi split are. There's casual playing with the Fermi paradox, which while much less strung out and referenced, is not that different to the Three Body Problem's bleak solution. But here, the intellectualism of game theory is tempered, countered, by a discussion about how our culture - yep, music and food - speak to different futures.
Which is not to say, while I preferred Aoki's worldview, that this book has the complexity of Liu Cixin. The plot is there to showcase the characters and the message, and fortunate coincidences, unlikely leaps of faith and a few deus ex machina are deployed when needed to keep everything moving. A moving subplot about a violin maker never feels entirely brought into the book, and the outlines of the jigsaw puzzle of moving parts can be glimpsed. The healing power of music, food, desire and love never quite feel grounded, possining potency that might be wished for rather than had. But the book feels like a warm hug and goodness, we could all use more of those. ...more

ALI’S 2023 BOOKS

The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka

it was amazing

The Woman in the Library by Sulari Gentill

Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique by Sa'ed Atshan

The Paper Bark Tree Mystery by Ovidia Yu

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

it was amazing

Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

it was amazing

Queen of the Conquered by Kacen Callender

Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

it was amazing

In My Mother's Footsteps by Mona Hajjar Halaby

My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness by Kabi Nagata

it was amazing

Nothing Bad Ever Happens Here by Heather Rose

Revolution for Dummies by Bassem Youssef

The Library of the Unwritten by A.J. Hackwith

A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James

it was amazing

Big Beautiful Female Theory by Eloise Grills

The Last Storyteller by Donna Barba Higuera

THE DAUGHTERS OF KOBANI by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

really liked it

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin

Anthills of the Savannah by Chinua Achebe

When Rain Clouds Gather And Maru by Bessie Head

it was amazing

Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments by Saidiya Hartman

The Fire and the Rose by Robyn Cadwallader

Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens by Shankari Chandran

it was amazing

Madukka the River Serpent by Julie Janson

More than a Glitch by Meredith Broussard

it was amazing

A Stone is Most Precious Where It Belongs by Gulchehra Hoja

Don't Take Your Love to Town by Ruby Langford Ginibi

it was amazing

Ali’s last review of the year

really liked it

The Great Believers is a cracking tale, even if, like all books set amidst the US AIDS epidemic of the 1980s/1990s, it is one saturated by death. Makkai's genius here is setting a partnership at the heart of the novel, between Yale, an early 30s gay man, and Nora, a woman in her 90s, whose final preoccupations revolve around the artists lost through WW1 and the flu epidemic. By juxtaposing these epidemics of death, Makkai explores the consequence The Great Believers is a cracking tale, even if, like all books set amidst the US AIDS epidemic of the 1980s/1990s, it is one saturated by death. Makkai's genius here is setting a partnership at the heart of the novel, between Yale, an early 30s gay man, and Nora, a woman in her 90s, whose final preoccupations revolve around the artists lost through WW1 and the flu epidemic. By juxtaposing these epidemics of death, Makkai explores the consequences on the survivors of these world-shattering events, and explores the magnitude of what the world has lost.
This shouldn't be a surprising comparison. As a teenager in the late 80s and early 90s, I kept a copy of Margaret Postgate Cole's Praematuri on my wall, motivated by the epidemic (which, like most GenXrs, I was only on the remotest periphery of). (there is a breathtaking arrogance in the poem, as well as justifiable fury). One of the most memorable visuals in the novel is when we are asked to imagine the works of art that did not get made, paintings from early masters killed in the war, or dead of flu, or simply dead of not being able to live with the trauma. The art movements of the 20s, we are reminded, came from a much smaller group than the explosion of a decade earlier.
We are getting used to late 20th Century US AIDS stories (as opposed to those about the currently rabid plague in Africa, which is still a leading killer despite declining mortality) now - the scale of the loss, the destruction of young, vital and lovely men, the heroic women who cared for them, the
outrageous need for protest to force action, the few survivors left to tell the tales. Many of those beats are here, but Makkai applies welcome shading. Her survivors, for starters, don't get happy ever afters (although that they get afters at all is honoured). Makkai acknowledges the ways in which sex could be viewed as a weapon, and the messy combination of safe sex and ethical sex (or lack thereof), lifestyle and infection.
Makkai weaves in the terrorist attacks on the West of 2015, making a point that all our lives are subject to the disruption of social collapse. All of this works to make AIDS part of a broader human experience, without ever trivialising the experiences of those whose communities were, and are now being, ravaged by this. ...more

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