recently read: favorite books of 2024
29: and the book communities supporting LA fire relief efforts
Knowing what book someone is reading and what parts they resonate with most can be so intimate. It reveals their interests, where their head is at, and what excerpts are so significant that they will mark up a page because they think it’s worth revisiting at a later time. I’m fascinated by what books others gravitate towards and I find that it helps me get to know them better and gives me a small glimpse into who they are at their core. No one asked for these book reviews, but maybe it’s my way of showing who I am and what I’m interested in – beyond the clothes, the products, and my career. Or at the very least, encourage some to look up from their phones and instead towards the pages of a good book.
But before I share my 9 favorite books of last year along with my thoughts on three books I’ve recently read, I want to take some time to shed light on incredibly important initiatives that provide needed relief from the recent LA fires.
I really don’t even know what to say or where to start. I was born and raised in LA. Los Angeles is my home and the home to so many incredible, hard-working, compassionate people. There aren’t enough words to explain how devastating it is for these people — my family and friends included — to lose everything they have overnight. There are also not enough words to explain how incredibly inspiring and heartwarming it is to see the kind, generous, selfless people of Los Angeles come together to do everything they can to make it a little less devastating.
If you are reading this and have too been horrified by the destruction the LA fires have caused and would like to know how you can help, I’m sharing just a few of the many ways you can help below:
Donate directly to families affected by the fires, whose fundraisers are less than 20% of their goal
Provide direct support for the incarcerated men and women fighting fires
My favorite books of 2024
*Each book listed below is linked to either Book Alley in Pasadena, whose owner Tom lost his home in the Eaton fire, or Bookshop.org, which financially supports independent bookstores so they can compete online and maintain their presence in local communities
Book no. 7 of 2024
The Three-Body Problem - Liu Cixin
I know I’m in the minority here so don’t come for me… It was such a struggle for me to get through this book, as 75% of it was scientific jargon. I had to skim to finish it at all and it wasn’t until I got to the part where it talked about why people were open to an alien civilization invading earth — because they gave up all hope on humans and were willing to betray and turn on their own — that it became interesting. I got excited and decided to finish the rest, only to find that the rest of the book went back to science speak. I found the characters to be generally pretty unlikeable and the storyline hard to follow. I also wish there was more history injected in the story as I did enjoy reading about China’s Cultural Revolution.
Honestly, my favorite part was in the author’s postscript:
“There’s a strange contradiction revealed by the naïveté and kindness demonstrated by humanity when faced with the universe. On Earth, humankind can step onto another continent, and without a thought, destroy the kindred civilizations found there through warfare and disease. But when they gaze up at the stars, they turn sentimental and believe that if extraterrestrial intelligences exist, they must be… noble, moral… Let’s turn the kindness we show toward the stars to members of the human race on Earth and build up the trust and understanding between the different peoples and civilizations that make up humanity…”
Underlined quotes:
“He believed that technological progress was a disease in human society. The explosive development of technology was analogous to the growth of cancer cells, and the results would be identical: the exhaustion of all sources of nourishment, the destruction of organs, and the final death of the host body.”
“By the time you’re my age, you’ll realize that everything you once thought mattered so much turns out to mean very little.”
“Emptiness is not nothingness. Emptiness is a type of existence. You must use this existential emptiness to fill yourself.”
Book no. 8 of 2024
An Egyptian-American perspective on class differences, the clash of modernity and tradition, and the ongoing questioning of one’s faith. The story felt simplistic and predictable at times (and I really question the author furthering the western stereotype of Arab men as terrorists) but I did enjoy the peek into Cairo and reading about the transition one experiences moving from there to New York and his inner dialogue of living in America and deciding to return home.
Underlined quote:
“How can a man see a glass as half full when he’s used to it being fully full?”
Book no. 8 of 2024
An incredibly important photography book that humanizes a dark time in American history when Japanese Americans were put into internment camps. As someone who was taught this history in school in such a brief, detached and impersonal way, I felt the weight of this time so much more when confronted with the faces and stories of the people who had to go through this, who somehow were able to find joy and hope amidst such injustice. It’s a reminder of just how much history repeats itself — the ways a powerful government can deem a group of people as less than.
