It's been a while. My last post was in 2019. Pre-pandemic. Pre-returning to graduate school for a research degree. Pre-LARE exams. Pre...lots of things. Rather than get into all of that, I've decided to share with you my favorite novels from the past few years. Because novels have been a source of comfort, knowledge, and guidance during trying times. Even though they relate to nearly every aspect of contemporary life (sometimes shockingly so), the small distance that fiction holds from reality allows me to engage with them without too much despair kicking in. With the onslaught of AI, I appreciate more than ever the skill of the writer. (Thank you writers, and I am sorry that AI is stealing your work.)
Let's get into it. While wandering the local library's bookshelves I found Anna North's Bog Queen (2025), in which an English moss colony "speaks" and shares tales of human relationships with the earth. The novel shares some themes with Daniel Mason's North Woods (2023); this one moves slowly but gets weird (delightfully so).
I went on a fantasy kick and reread The Chronicles of Chrestomanci (1988) by Diana Wynne Jones, a series from my childhood. The worlds contained within are magical and sublime. I was tempted to draw them (maybe I still will). Cats play a prominent role here (as they should). I read two novels by Emilia Hart (Weyward, 2023, and Sirens, 2019) on recommendation of a friend who runs a wonderful brewery. Both traverse space and time, complete with overgrown gardens and craggy coastlines. Anna Smaill's The Chimes (2015), which I found at a book sale, introduces us to a world in which new memories cannot be formed, and the written word does not exist. Music is a form of control but also the means of liberation.
The Chimes was unlike anything I had read before, but shared some threads with two other novels I came across--Celeste Ng's Our Missing Hearts (2022) and Sōsuke Natsukawa's The Cat Who Saved Books (2017) (thank you to my neighbor for buying me a copy of the latter!). They may both break and warm your heart. Sara Nisha Adams' The Reading List (2021) is also, unsurprisingly, about books and the places that keep them.
I also read Sara Nisha Adams' The Twight Garden (2023), a wholesome tale about what gardens can mean to people. This leads me to the one non-fiction recommendation I'll share today. Camille T. Dungy's Soil: The Story of a Black Mother's Garden (2023) brings it all together: place, gardens, environment, politics, race, class, the whole spectrum of emotion. And it reads like it was written by a poet (which it was). I'd love to hear about the novels that have been inspiring you or challenging your perception of the world.
