Well, January has been a bit grey and cold-but-not-snow-cold, but on the plus side I have torn through books this month. I finished 10 books – four of them in the first week. A lot of them were good but I think my favourite was Darius the Great is Not Okay by Adib Khorram.

As has become habit now, we watched a lot of films. I’d say the best were Don’t Look Up (the recent big budget sci-fi film on Netflix) and Only Yesterday (an old Studio Ghibli film about a city woman who takes a holiday to the countryside and reminisces about her youth).

I also turned 41, went on a lot of dog walks and finally, after a few months’ break, started watching another K-drama (Cinderella and the Four Knights), which was…fine.

Maybe next month we’ll actually leave the city at some point. Who knows?

Books read

Love in the Big City by Sang Young Park
translated from Korean by Anton Hur
This is meta fiction, inspired by people and events in the author’s own life, with a narrator called Young Park, but still fiction. It opens with Young in his 20s, sharing an apartment with his best friend Jaehee in Seoul, living life to the full. Some people frown on an unmarried man and woman living together, but Young and Jaehee figure it’s fine as he’s gay (though not technically out). They’re having a grand time until Jaehee falls in love with one of her beaus and everything has to change. I really liked this book.

Heartstopper volumes 1, 2 and 3 by Alice Oseman
Heartstopper is a web and print comic about a young gay couple at secondary school in the UK (it’s implied to be Kent, or at least South East England, but the exact location isn’t named). It’s a sweet, charming story. It’s clear from the start (indeed, from the cover of book 1) which two boys are going to get together, so it’s hardly a surprise when it happens. The point, though, is how they get there. And it’s not all light and fluffy – it deals with homophobia both open and covert, and later on with depression, anxiety and eating disorders.

Keeping the House by Tice Cin
This novel is about drug dealers in North London, centring around a Turkish Cypriot family. Three generations of women, and some of the men around them, narrate this tale of complex family and community dynamics. The narrative covers around 12 years, but centres around one specific drug deal. It’s a funny slice-of-life drama but so heavily stylized that I always felt held at a distance.

Orange is the New Black by Piper Kerman
This is the memoir on which the Netflix TV series is (loosely) based. Kerman spent 15 months in prison in the early 2000s, most of it in Connecticut. She is very clear throughout that as a rich, white woman with a good education and supportive family and friends, hers was far from a typical story of a prisoner in the US. She tries to display what she learned about the US prison system – how the private prison system works, the life that led most inmates to prison and that awaited them when they left – but it’s hard to get away from the fact that she personally didn’t experience that life. Which is probably why the bits that work best are about the kindness and generosity she encountered, the coping mechanisms she developed. I actually enjoyed this, but I certainly wouldn’t turn to it as a primer on the US prison complex.

This Winter by Alice Oseman
A novella spin-off from her Heartstopper series, this is set over a Christmas break when the Spring family are going through something difficult. It’s not great, to be honest. I think Oseman’s forte is in comics, not prose. There’s nothing problematic here, I just didn’t get any extra depth from the change of format, and Oseman’s writing style is…fine. I also think it stands out more in this format that she’s touching on some very serious subjects and not really convincing me that these characters are going through those things.

Storm Front by Jim Butcher
This is the first book in a long ongoing series about the crime-solving wizard Harry Dresden. My brother and one of my close friends are fans so I was happy enough to try this out. It’s perhaps for the best that my friend warned me the first couple of books aren’t great, as Butcher was finding his feet as a writer. This does, however, establish Dresden and the cast of characters around him, as well as the world he occupies, in which magic is known to exist but remains something most humans never see and tend to be sceptical about. It’s heavily influenced by writers such as Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, with very purple prose, but transplanted to 21st century Chicago. I’m intrigued enough to try more of the Dresden Files, as they’re known.

Exit West by Mohsin Hamid
I have loved all of Hamid’s books and this is no exception. In an unnamed city on the brink of civil war, a young couple meet and fall in love. As their hometown becomes increasingly dangerous, mysterious doors start appearing all over the world, portals that instantly transplant you to another place on Earth. Nadia and Saeed must decide whether to take a chance on their city or a mysterious door, either option putting to serious test their fledgling relationship. A gorgeous speculative-fiction exploration of mass migration, refugees and nationalism.

Darius the Great is Not Okay by Adib Khorram
Now this is what YA should be – a fantastic, intelligent book filled with completely real characters, with problems and other minutiae that rang totally true. Darius is a half-Persian (half-white American) teenager who struggles with depression and is bullied at school. He’s also a massive Star Trek fan and generally geeky, which I loved. The book centres around a family trip to Iran to visit his grandparents. Darius must face insecurities about his identity, his relationships with his father and grandparents, and his ability to form a true friendship. I cried so much while reading this and am eager to read the sequel.