Katya’s reads in 2021
I love reading, I mostly read fiction and read strictly for pleasure, I love stories and hearing different voices in my head.
1
Just a silly read or rather listen as I listened to the audio version of it during the first couple of days of 2021. Diary of a righteous teenager in Tatcher Britain - very funny at times, I think this is one of the books that influenced ‘Bridget Jones’ Diary’, so can only recommend if you liked Bridget’s adventures.
2
Another strong female voice - this is a story of a young women struggling to finish her novel she has been working on over the last six years while living with the grief of her mother passing away recently, working as a waiter in one of the upscale Boston restaurants and trying to figure out which one of the two boyfriends she loves. Essentially a Bildungsroman - a novel about becoming an adult and fighting for what you believe in. If you like it read ‘Euphoria’ by Lily King - the love story loosely based on the life and death of the famous anthropologist Margaret Mead.
3
I love Paul Auster! This is how this one starts: ‘I was looking for a quiet place to die. Someone recommended Brooklyn, and so the next morning I traveled down there from Westchester to scope out the terrain.’ This is a story of how life always gives you another chance to create a family for yourself that might include your neighbors, distant relatives and just people that you accidentally run into in Brooklyn. I really loved this one for the great story and the feel of nineties in Brooklyn. Caveat: you might be a little bit annoyed by the narrator’s voice (somewhat Woody Allenesque - it belongs to the retired Jewish life insurance salesman) but it is still worth it I think. Read ‘4321’ by Paul Auster next!
4
Beautiful novel about love, female friendship and the roots of samba set in the thirties in Rio and in Hollywood. It is a story of two girls that met at the sugar plantation in North of Brazil and had a dream to perform - one of them became the first Brazilian movie star and singer in Hollywood and the other her producer and patron saint, she is the one who is telling this story, fiercely and honestly. It made me miss Rio and Brazil, I have been playing a lot of samba at home.
5
Ishiguro is one of my favorite authors and this is his fourth book that I read. I won’t go into the story - but this one of the best fictional explorations into why our memory betrays us and misleads us. I love Ishiguro’s writing but it is less emotional than most of the other works on this list.
