25. Randy Ribay – Patron Saints of Nothing
Duterte’s war on drugs has been known for its basic human rights violation. Randy Ribay’s Patron Saints of Nothing tries to shed a light on notorious practice from a perspective of Filipino-American teenager whose cousin was murdered amid the war. The book explores how he deals with grief, finds new meaning of family, and learns that even the closest person to us sometimes hides dark secret.
24. Holly Jackson – Good Girl, Bad Blood
Holly Jackson follows up her solid debut with more impressive Good Girl, Bad Blood. Her sequel still features investigative elements that perfectly work in the first installment, but Jackson raises the stakes here. She elaborates the aftermath of Pip Fitz-Amobi’s discovery after she unraveled the truth of her hometown’s homicide case, all the good and bad things that happened to her. Never a young adult thriller book can get my heart rate up and make me cry at the same time before.
23. Leigh Bardugo – Six of Crows
Six of Crows has become the go-to series for people who wants to read something with chosen family and heist tropes. It’s become so ridiculous that any other attempts with similar tropes by BIPOC authors will be accused as some copycat. Regardless of how wrong that is—what next? Ocean’s 11 is a copycat of Six of Crows?—I can understand them. Featuring lovable, brooding misfit characters, Six of Crows is definitely memorable. But people need to remember that chosen family and heist tropes are not Bardugo’s monopoly.
22. Jericho Brown – The Tradition
In The Tradition, Jericho Brown tells what it feels like to be a queer African-American man. His poems are brief, but each word feels sharp and revelatory.
21. Melina Marchetta – Saving Francesca
Saving Francesca, as expected from Melina Marchetta, is an excellent and beautiful piece of a young adult book. It’s an emotional character study of a young girl who tries so hard to keep her life together amid her crumbling foundations of life. As she watches her mother succumbing to nervous breakdown, she’s also faced with adapting to new school, boy problem, losing her old friends, and, ultimately, losing who she really is.
20. R. F. Kuang – The Poppy War
In the epic The Poppy War, R. F Kuang borrows some elements from the real-life Sino-Japanese war and concocts it with fantasized Chinese mythology, making the book built atop of strong foundation of convincing worldbuilding, characters, and plot.
19. Kamila Shamsie – Home Fire
Nothing in this world can prepare me for the ending of Home Fire that strikes like lightning, so sudden, so unexpected, so singeing. But if you’re aware that Home Fire, aside from being a novel about immigrants and the discriminative system that works against them, is also a novel that explores the tough love of a paternal figure, then you will notice the warning signs. But again, being surprised by the ending of the Home Fire is probably what we’re supposed to do.
18. José Saramago – Blindness (translated by Giovanni Pontiero)
There’s a scene in Blindness where the characters, filthy and disgusting from grease, finally took a bath using rainwater. This is a mundane scene, but I can’t hold my tears. In the hands of less experienced water, the scene will be placid and insignificant, but in Saramago’s hands, he’s able to make it an emotional journey. If you can stand the experimental comma-splice galore here, then you will realize its interesting take on humanity robbed off their visual sense gives you some food for thoughts.
17. Ursula K. Le Guin – Lathe of Heaven
Lathe of Heaven has interesting premise: what if you can change the reality just by dreaming. But this book is actually, first and foremost, a romantic story. So, the book becomes a man’s journey to get back to his true love where the only thing separating them is his unique superpower.
16. Mochtar Lubis – Senja di Jakarta
Senja di Jakarta is a complex work featuring many characters from different classes. Like a clairvoyant, Mochtar Lubis provides an eerie outlook on how government often fails its people that still feels relevant now, especially during this pandemic.
15. Octavia E. Butler, Damian Daffy & John Jennings – Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation
If told from the perspective of white people, time travelling is not life threatening, except if they’re transported to the middle of battlefield or during black death pandemic, but the same thing doesn’t apply for Black people where their situation is even worse than now. In Kindred, Octavia E. Butler aptly turns a time travelling journey to a social commentary. The stunning illustration in the graphic novel gives you visceral image on Black people slavery at Civil War era.
14. Norman Erikson Pasaribu – Cerita-Cerita Bahagia, Hampir Seluruhnya
The title of Norman Erikson Pasaribu’s latest short story collection is a bit misleading if you take it literally: the book collects multiple stories about grief, loss, and heartbreak. But if you look beyond the surface, happiness is not always explosive nor flashy thing; it can be muted and hidden and found in mother’s love, or inside our heart after nasty breakup, or acceptance in someone’s sexuality. And again, if you’re willing to see it from lexical analysis where gay originally means happiness, then these gay stories (almost everything), will even make more sense. Maybe he wants to reclaim that definition.
13. Alice Oseman – Heartstopper
In this bleak year, there comes Alice Oseman’s Heartstopper that shines like beacon of light. Heartstopper is cute, fluffy, but complex at the same time. Oseman’s works often portray her characters’ sexuality with such normalcy, like whatever your spectrum is, it’s normal and not a big deal. But she doesn’t take “I-see-no-gender-and-sexuality” approach because these two things are what shape our identity. In Heartstopper, she explores teenage sexual confusion and how to navigate this journey.
12. Arthur C. Clarke – Rendezvous with Rama
Rendezvous with Rama is a romantic title. The word rendezvous suggests exotic and clandestine meeting with an enigma, and he likens us, the Earthlings, to Sita from the epic Ramayana. Just like the epic itself, there’s some cinematic quality in the way Clarke describes the inside of the mysterious Rama and structures the plot. Reading Rendezvous with Rama is like watching a Villeneuve film.
11. Angela Y. Davis – Freedom Is a Constant Struggle
If you’re wondering where to start to understand more about Black movement, then Angela Davis’ Freedom is a Constant Struggle may be a good start. This accessible collection of Davis’ interviews and speeches helps us understand the urgency of ending racism, abolishing police and prisons, and freeing Palestine.
10. Rebecca Makkai – The Great Believers
Rebecca Makkai’s The Great Believers follows two different main characters in two interspersed timelines. There’s Yale, an art gallery development director who lived in 1980’s Chicago. Thirty years later, Fiona, his dear friend, sought her daughter in modern day Paris. Here, Makkai juxtaposes the mise-en-scène of 1980’s Chicago during AIDS epidemic that kills Yale’s friends one by one and the chaos of modern world that Fiona faced. In the end, these separate storylines will tie up nicely in a rewarding conclusion.
9. Ken Liu – The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories
The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories comprises stunning works of Ken Liu. His fantasy stories are grounded, often blending Chinese folktales with subtle fantasy elements, and his science fictions don’t confuse his readers with convoluted concepts and rules. Liu also offers his criticism through his words, but it’s amazing to read something that’s as politically charged as this can be poignant at the same time.
8. Yusi Avianto Pareanom – Raden Mandasia si Pencuri Daging Sapi
In this epic, Yusi Avianto Pareanom borrows myriad elements from real-world historical events, Biblical tales, and local folklores and legends, from Prophet Jonah’s iconic adventure inside whale to black death pandemic in Constantinople, to create some colossal epic. His mastery makes all these multiple things not anachronistic, but instead he weaves them all to a tapestry of storyline that’s complete and adventurous.
7. Thi Bui – The Best We Could Do
Everybody gangsta until they see the photos of Thi Bui’s family in her devastating graphic memoir The Best We Could Do, and all hell suddenly breaks loose. This memoir records her family’s harrowing experience in escaping Vietnam war that displaced so many Vietnamese from a firsthand account. This is real story, but it’s not until those photos that I realize that this is real, and it’s opening our eyes on how war affects lives of many people.
6. Cormac McCarthy – The Road
The Road is an atmospheric read in a sense that its bleakness and hopelessness are able to creep in your mind. Here, McCarthy clashes the innocence of a kid with the cold and carnal human instinct to survive in an apocalypse of a loving father who’s willing to sacrifice everything for his child. There’s no happiness in The Road, but the most hopeful thing about The Road appears in its ending where it shows the ultimate form of love. Despite the burning world, the paternal love between them is what keeps them alive.
5. Ken Terate – Minoel
One of the notable qualities that you always notice in Ken Terate’s is how ordinary her characters are. But this is what make their stories impactful, they feel like our real friend that we know all along. The same thing can be said about Minoel whose titular character was just regular teenage girl who had dreams and wanted to experience love. But Minoel has a story, and her story resonates with many rape survivors in this world. Minoel is written like a collection of Minoel’s journal entries, as one of her ways to cope with the traumatic event she experienced, that helps us understand the impact of abusive relationship and gaslighting. #JusticeforMinoel
4. Wiji Thukul – Nyanyian Akar Rumput
This collection of poetries is ironically called grassroot songs that gives you exuberant and happy vibe. But in fact, Wiji Thukul wrote them under the oppressive New Order regime. This book will suit better if it’s called grassroots lament as this portrays their poverty and hunger amid government’s prosperous propaganda. This is one of many ways Wiji Thukul used to criticize the corrupt government and his resistance eventually led to his missing. Yet, in Nyanyian Akar Rumput his words, alongside millions of other grassroot people’s voices, will be immortalized.
3. Patrisse Khan-Cullors & asha bandele – When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir
People who want to make a world a better place, people who want to bring justice often uses extreme measures just to make sure their voice heard, and the oppressor always mistakes them for a terrorist and tries to persecute them. Just ask Angela Davis who was once included in FBI’s Top 10 wanted list because of her alleged involvement in murder and kidnapping, but again it’s just because she just demands justice for Black people, or Patrisse Khan-Cullors, one of the co-founders of the Black Lives Matter. In this poetic memoir, Cullors tells us what it feels to be a Black woman in a racist America and her reflection on why she founded Black Lives Matter. It is an empowering account of survival, strength and resilience and a call to action to change the culture that declares innocent Black life expendable
2. Ted Chiang – Exhalation: Stories
Ted Chiang’s stories often push the boundaries of scientific principles much further. In his masterpiece, Story of Your Life, for example, he takes the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and develops its cognitive impact to the fourth dimension of time. It’s as if Chiang wants to test how far he can push. So, his latest collection of stories in Exhalation still follows the similar airtight scientific notions, but here Chiang often juxtaposes them with faith. From a story about time-machine that adheres Einstein’s law set in medieval Arabic world, or the existential crisis of mechanical beings that are driven by air pressure, to faith-shattering science discovery, stories in Exhalation involve paradoxical elements. His stories make you question what human (or humanlike) is actually capable of doing and he proves that after all, humans are still fascinating.
1. Hanya Yanagihara – A Little Life
Even months after I closed Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life, I still grimace when I think of Jude’s life. The heart’s pang still lingers long after you finish the book. In A Little Life, Yanagihara takes my breath away quite literally as I sobbed at some part of Jude’s tragic revelations. People say that A Little Life is a torture porn, it’s as if she wanted to see how much man can endure. But I think A Little Life is more a meditative look on pain and love. Yanagihara captures a journey of a broken man named Jude as he navigated his adulthood, searching for his life’s worth, while haunted by the ghosts of his dark past. Through Yanagihara’s rich and trenchant prose, she allows me to feel Jude’s misery and travail as if I’d seen his life events unfurl before my eyes.
Land of Pretentiousness 