2024 Wrapped: Another Year in Reading
hi everyone! it's already 2025 where i am, so happy new year :) i hope this year is full of love, fun, and fortune for us all.
this year, my main resolutions are to bird more, write more, and read more.
speaking of reading more, towards the end of 2023, i posted a wrap up of that year's reads on my substack. i was planning on doing the same for 2024, except i got too busy to post it yesterday, so here we are... greeting the new year with a post on all the books i read last year...
this is gonna be a long one folks, so please bear with me <3 also, potential spoilers up ahead in the reviews!!
traverse with care, dear traveller!
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#1 Ghost Forest, Pik-Shuen Fung
Finished: January 1, 2024
Rating: ⭐4.25/5
First on the list is a book I’d wanted to read for a long, long time. I’ve removed the price so I can’t tell you how much it costs anymore, but when I first saw it, I remember putting it back down because it was “too expensive” for me then. The price never really changed, so I ended up just buying it anyway. I read this in a single day. I opened it on the morning of the first day this year and I’d finished it before the day had even ended. It wasn’t very long, words wise, but Pik-Shuen Fung makes full use of the pages to creatively lay out her message. It’s not really a book you should read digitally, unless you want to miss out on the way she uses spacing to her advantage.
Favourite line/s: I closed my eyes, imagining each piano note as a fruit-flavored hard candy, drifting out of the speaker and floating around the room—cherry red, apple green, berry blue, and lemon yellow—dancing, hovering, from time-to-time flashing in the sun, and falling, falling to the ground one after the other, clinking here and there in the bright light of the morning.
As my mom and I sat there, eating the bright yellow vermicelli, I saw a flicker on the balcony, on the other side of the glass. My dad was standing there, waving at us, smiling. I could tell that he was happy, and that it was the first time in a long, long time. I smiled back.
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#2 Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, Satoshi Yagisawa
Finished: March 16, 2024
Rating: ⭐4.0/5
A very lighthearted book that gives off the vibes of “girl who will be okay,” a very moment (core? feeling? meme? I don’t even know anymore) that was trending and stuck around for a while earlier this year. I bought this copy in Kinokuniya in Malaysia last year, where I, inarguably, spent most of that trip. I don’t remember where I’d initially heard of this book, but I remember waiting for FullyBooked to stock this for so long. When I saw a copy in Kinokuniya, I just went for it. I enjoyed reading this book. It’s a book where time simply ambles by and there aren’t any big bumps or hiccups. Some people might find that type of thing boring, but I enjoy media that fall into that type of vibe/category. Things definitely picked up in the book’s second act, though, and it was that part that pretty much bumped up the rating for me.
Favourite line/s: Maybe it takes a long time to figure out what you’re truly searching for. Maybe you spend your whole life just to figure out a small part of it.
It’s important to stand still sometimes. Think of it as a little rest in the long journey of your life. This is your harbor. And your boat is just dropping anchor here for a little while. And after you’re well restedm you can set sail again.
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#3 The Premonition, Banana Yoshimoto
Finished: March 20, 2024
Rating: ⭐3.25/5
I love a cheeky little Banana Yoshimoto book, okay. I love her writing, what can I say? It’s always so lyrical and there’s always a sense of magic in her writing, but by God I mean it when I say that East Asians need to just stop with the pseudo-incest. Like, was this book’s plot good? Yes. Did I enjoy the prose, the writing? Also yes. Did this need the type of romance included in this book? No. Absolutely not. I’m begging you, Banana Yoshimoto… no more weird love interests for your characters please… I’m fighting for my life over here.
That aside, this was a fun and interesting read. Sometimes a reaction like this is what makes the reading journey fun and interesting, haha!
Favourite line/s: Listening with eyes closed, I felt as though I were at the bottom of a green ocean. All the world seemed to be lit up by shafts of light. The current moved limpidly, and in it, my troubles skimmed past me like schools of fish lightly brushing against my skin. I had a premonition of setting out on a journey and getting lost inside a distant tide as the sun went down, ending up far, far away from where I started.
I looked up at the sky, trying to get a grip of my own existence before it vanished into the darkness.
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#4 Bluets, Maggie Nelson
Finished: August 25, 2024
Rating: ⭐3.25/5
I don’t remember where I saw this book first, but I read it digitally. It’s crazy how much someone could write about a singular color and how much it can be related to a person’s day-to-day life. A tad boring and slow at times, but all around a quick and easy read. In the book club my friend Nessy invited me to, I said in my review that this book is the personification of “thought daughter” (yet another thing that popped up in “recent times” lol). I wrote a little blog post about it here.
Favourite line/s: I may not have known then that “etch “ derves from etzen or ezjan—to be eaten—but in the days since, I have come to know the full meaning of the root.
I would rather have had you by my side than any one of these words; I would rather have had you by my side than all the blue in the world.
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#5 Opening Theory, Sally Rooney
Finished: August 26, 2024
Rating: ⭐4.25/5
Learned about this piece from my dear friend Martha. It’s an excerpt of Rooney’s latest novel, Intermezzo, which I’ve bought and have started, but put down because I “wasn’t feeling it just yet,” but that is a can of worms for another day. I read the entirety of this while getting my nails done. I enjoyed it thoroughly. I love the way Sally Rooney writes characters and the inner workings of their mind (which is much more evident in Intermezzo). Of course, as with nearly all her works, the lack of quotation marks to signify dialogue is ever present. ‘Tis a pain, but for my girl Sally, I persevere.
Favourite line/s: What if life is just a collection of essentially unrelated experiences? Why does one thing have to follow meaningfully from another?
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#6, Woolgathering, Patti Smith
Finished: August 31, 2024
Rating: ⭐4/5
Yet another work I read digitally. I tried filling up my reading challenge with shorter books since I had a period where I was just dormant reading-wise. I’d always wanted to read Patti Smith’s Just Kids, but because I’m anal and a snob, I want to read the physical copy of that one (so I have yet to read it). Anyways, that work aside, this one was short and sweet. In my review of it in the book club I’m in, I wrote that it reads the same way I imagine a “stuck-in-your-head” video game character/adventurer’s travel log would read, which I enjoyed quite a lot!
Favourite line/s: I sat in the changing light in the center of the rool, copying out the Lord’s Prayer in Armaic, hoping something would be revealed in the process.
I was young and crazy, so crazy I knew I could break through with you, so with one hand I rocked you. With one heart I reached for you. Ah, I knew our youth was for the taking.
But my writing desk awaits, my open journal, my quills, inks, and there are precious words to grind. So I leave myself to wonder and begin, for I always imagined I would one day write a book.
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#7 Banana Heart Summer, Merlinda Bobis
Finished: September 21, 2024
Rating: ⭐5/5
What can I even say about this book? I’m completely and utterly obsessed with the life Merlinda Bobis breathes into this story. I bought this book in 2019 for 770 pesos. I haven’t seen another copy since. There’s so much to say and so little words to use in order to describe my love for this story. Each chapter is titled after a Filipino dish, which just so happens to be the centerpiece of the said chapter. It’s wonderful how Bobis manages to relate a dish, be it a snack or a meal, to an emotion. She manages to paint such a vivid image of the dish/the scenery with her words. I can’t even begin to explain how envious I am of that type of skill. It’s one thing to paint a scene out clearly and another to manage to have your reader sit down and make them feel like they’re in the exact moment; that they can hear the crackling of the oil and smell the sweet scent of burnt sugar. Bobis does that so well. If there is a book that you will read from this rundown, please let it be this one.
Favourite Line/s: When you eat the heart of the matter, you’ll never grow hungry again.
How to shred a heart. It must be the right heart, it must be the soft core of the right heart, it must be the yellowish part of the soft core of the right heart.
How I wished we could prick my father's tongue back to speech and even hunger, but of course we couldn't, because it had disappeared. It had been served on the devil's platter with garlic, onion, tomatoes, bay leaf, clove, peppercorns, soy sauce, even sherry, butter, and grated Edam cheese, with that aroma of something rich and foreign.
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#8 Forget About My Husband, I'd Rather Go Make Money, Ju Hyeon
Finished: October 16, 2024
Rating: ⭐2.75/5
… Do I have any words for this one? Not particularly. I was annoyed the manhwa wasn’t updating frequently and decided to read a translation of the web novel. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t necessarily that good. It did satisfy my curiosity though! I love when a revenge manhwa delivers. That’s all, really… not much to see here folks…
Favourite Line/s: n/a
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#9-10 Return from Death: I Kicked the Bucket and Now I'm Back at Square One With a Boyfriend Who Doesn't Remember Me volumes 1 & 2, Eiko Mutsuhana
Finished: October 23, 2024
Rating: ⭐3/5
Yes, I finished both volumes within a day. And yes, this is another light novel I read because the manga wouldn’t update… what about it? This one’s a lot better than the last one, though, because the plot was a lot more interesting and not necessarily the cut-and-paste ones most Romance-Fantasy (rofan, for short) manga/manhwa more or less have. I loved seeing the POV of Vincent (the male lead/ML) in the second volume. It captures a certain loneliness that’s not really present in the first volume, which was mostly in the POV of Oriana (the female lead/FL). The art in the manga is a lot more charming than the lightnovel art (sorry) and suits the storyline a bit more. I would have given this a higher rating if they pretty much just solved the major plot in the 2 volumes, but alas… I have been hung over a cliff. I liked how the second volume allows us to solve the plot holes the first volume couldn’t though! The sweet potato:cider ratio was decent.
Also to this literary universe’s God… free my girl Oriana from losing her dignity in every lifetime (iykyk).
Favourite Line/s: If there was a God who punished people for the gravity of their lies, Vincent would've been struck down right then and there.
Vincent had so much riding on his shoulders: his lands, the people living there, his parent's expectations, and his bloodline. He couldn't understand how Vince had compromised on all of those in order to date Oriana.
People always want something from me, but she's the one and only thing I want for myself.
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#11 The Cat Who Saved Books, Sosuke Natsukawa
Finished: October 26, 2024
Rating: ⭐4/5
This was my palate cleanser… I tried reading Ottessa Moshfegh’s Lapvona after reading Return from Death and quickly regret it. I spent the first hours of my birthday crying, screaming, throwing up (quite literally). In my desperation to find an escape from the absolute disgust that ransacked my body, I picked this one up. Instantly, I felt soothed. As if I’d been to confession, my soul felt cleansed. This story was quite cute. It felt a bit dragging at times, but I think that’s just because I came from a reading high and was entering a cooling period. The storytelling was simple, but it felt as though it added to the overall charm of the book. I saw a bit of myself in Rintaro.
Favourite Line/s: Books have a soul. A Book that sits on a shelf is nothing but a bundle of paper. Unless it is opened, a book possessing great power or an epic story is mere scraps of paper. But a book that has been cherished and loved, filled with human thoughts, has been endowed with a soul.
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#12 The Goodbye Cat, Hiro Arikawa
Finished: October 26, 2024
Rating: ⭐4.5/5
This was a collection of short stories by Hiro Arikawa, the same author of one of my all time favourite (and one of the few 5-star reads I have) novels, The Travelling Cat Chronicles. This wasn’t nearly as devastating as the first book of hers that I’d read, but did I cry a bunch anyways? Yes. I think that if you’ve ever loved an animal in your life, be it a cat or a dog, or even a lizard, Arikawa’s books are something you should definitely read. Two of the stories here connect to The Travelling Cat, but the rest are stand-alones which have their own charm.
Favourite of the Bunch: The Goodbye Cat, Finding Hachi, Life is Not Always Kind
Favourite Line/s: My name too, has the character for hiro in it. We’re a matching set. There is no other name that could connect you so completely to your family.
But there was a cat who loved Dad unconditionally, so if you were to have the good-father/bad-father debate, this would be enough to push him over to the good-father dad.
When Satoru no longer needed the photos anymore, they found their way back to me.
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#13 Moshi Moshi, Banana Yoshimoto
Finished: December 6, 2024
Rating: ⭐4.25/5
Another Banana book for me this year! The cover art and the art inside this book was so delightful. The writing of this novel just sucks you in completely. I was in an absolute trance while reading this one. I’d sit down to read after lunch and think I’d just read a few pages, but then I look up and it’s 3pm. There aren’t any chapters to mark your progress, which just allows you to lose track of time as you read and read and read. This book is best read quickly, in the span of a few days or a week at most. The pacing is a bit strange at first, but in the afterword, Yoshimoto says that this was initially serialised in a newspaper, which clears up why it may seem oddly paced (not for me, though). As with many of her stories, this book is also delicately flavoured. It’s always a treat to see the way her characters interact with the world beyond them and how they flow with the story’s timeline. As someone whos’ experienced (what felt like) world ending grief, some of the dialogue/prose just hits you straight in the heart.
Favourite Line/s: I guess the body lives, even when the heart dies.
The physical experience of living as the three of us, our bodies in the same space: the way we breathed when we passed by each other in the hallway, the touch of our hands when we handed over a glass, the smell of clothes hanging in our closets, the feeling of his leather shoes when I accidentally stepped on them as I left the house, the awareness of someone’s presence in a space—that was what family meant.
I started walking again, and even though I was wearing grown-up shoes on a grown woman’s feet, the lightness of my step just felt the same as they had been when I'd walked in my favorite childhood sneakers, which Dad had taken me to buy.
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#14 Lizard, Banana Yoshimoto
Finished: December 11, 2024
Rating: ⭐4/5
Third and final Banana book this year. Next year, my aim is to finish off the ones I have on hand. This was a collection of short stories that revolve around the way people live within their realities and experiences. In the afterword, Yoshimoto mentioned that she wanted to explore time, healing, karma, and fate in this collection. I think she managed to do a good job of incpororating those themes in the stories included in this work! Short and charming, like many of the other books I’ve read this year (consider me guilty of enjoying short reads).
Favourite of the Bunch: Lizard, Helix, A Strange Tale from Down by the River
Favourite Line/s: As with people who have a family history of cancer or anemia, I felt burdened by the blood flowing in my veins, my inevitable destiny. I was who I was and could never become the child of another mother and father.
The way we think may be completely different, but you and I are an ancient, archetypal couple, the original man and woman. We are the model for Adam and Eve.
I felt sure, though, that it had summoned me to its banks, to this window, with the same pull as things that attracted me when I was younger.
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#15 In the Country, Mia Alvar
Finished: December 14, 20248
Rating: ⭐5/5
This was a book I’d bought together with Banana Heart Summer in 2019. This is also one of the 3 books I’ve rated 5 stars. It was such a good read. Like with Banana Heart Summer, I don’t exactly know how to feel about the book. Even though there were some stories in this book that I didn’t super enjoy, it was still a very fun read. Alvar paints an image of what the different lives of Filipinos may look like, regardless of socioeconomic status. We have OFWs, wives of expats, the families OFWs leave behind, etc. And like with our daily lives, catholicism is an ever present theme. So is the martial law/people power, whether as the focal point or just a reference. Adore how certain stories interlink with each other.
Favourite of the Bunch: The Miracle Worker, Esmeralda, Old Girl, In the Country
Favourite Line/s: In this adopted Muslim country, we worshipped with a vengeance. We fanned our sweating faces with the service bulletins through the scorching open-air Masses. What was a little desert heat, we figured, next to the fires that consumed Joan of Arc; the hair shirt under St. Cecilia’s wedding gown, the martyrdom of Agnes?
You lay there—Esmeralda, daughter of the dirt, born to toil in God’s name till your hands or heart gave out—reclining like an infant or a queen, a hundred levels aboveground. Priests had promised you this kind of peace in heaven.
I could spend my whole life writing, version upon version, none of which would turn the man in jeans and aviators at our door into Andoy.
Finally, he stood and looked down, like a City Hospital doctor would when one of her kids had passed. “That’s what martial law sounds like. I guess.”
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#16 This Is a Book for People Who Love Birds, Danielle Belleny
Finished: December 26, 2024
Rating: ⭐4.5/5
My last read of the year! It was a very short and fun book about birds my aunt gave me last year, after I’d gotten into birdwatching. It’s not super applicable to me since it’s mostly about North American birds, but it just gives me that desire to want to travel to North America one day to see them! This isn’t as textbook as I’d thought, but Belleny was funny and made it easier for us laymen to read. I had a bunch of fun reading through the selected birds included in this book!
Favourite Line/s: Scientists think the White Terns developed this nest-free strategy to avoid parasites. Or maybe White Terns are powerful members of the occult and simply passing down familial traditions to the next generation.
ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻ੈ✩‧₊˚ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻ੈ✩‧₊˚ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻ੈ✩‧₊˚ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻ੈ✩‧₊˚ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻ੈ✩‧₊˚ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻ੈ✩‧₊˚
thank you for reading this extremely long post about what i've read this year! if you have any recommendations, please feel free to let me know in my guestbook or shoot me an email at bowlofmisua@proton.me
this year, i'm only setting my reading challenge at 12. i'm trying to get through my thicker books and most of the series i have. you can check what i'm up to (in terms of reading) in my storygraph.
here's a song, as always, to mark the new year.
happy new year, everyone! thanks for coming along this little journey of mine. to greater heights this year, and to more writing!