hot girl books 002

asking passersby for recommendations!

Personal taste is dying. And if it’s not dying, it’s already dead. I am sick and tired of seeing the same ten or so books being recommended on every other video on my algorithm. Self entitled intellects point out that books and publishing may become the next fast-fashion adjacent industry, yet despite their half-hearted outcries, they do nothing about it! Still, they recommend ACOTAR or The Secret History and I am BORED!!!!! What utter hypocrisy! I hope you know I’m rolling my eyes.

I currently work in a customer facing role and I see a lot of different people everyday. So I thought why not ask them if they have any book recommendations?! My aim was to gather recommendations that were unique and vastly different from my favourite genres and tropes. I made sure to ask people who were older than me and who looked like they aren’t chronically online in bookish echochambers.

Make sure to leave your own recommendations! I only want your most niche, underrated/slept on and guilty pleasure recs!

Without further ado, here are the recommendations I gathered:

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Psssst! Just a little heads up! This post is longer than what emails allow, so if you’re just as curious as I was to see what the results were, make sure you read this on the web! Thanks!

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— Asking Passersby For Book Recommendations —

The City & The City — China Miéville

When a murdered woman is found in the city of Beszel, somewhere at the edge of Europe, it looks to be a routine case for Inspector Tyador Borlú of the Extreme Crime Squad. But as he investigates, the evidence points to conspiracies far stranger and more deadly than anything he could have imagined.

Borlú must travel from the decaying Beszel to the only metropolis on Earth as strange as his own. This is a border crossing like no other, a journey as psychic as it is physical, a shift in perception, a seeing of the unseen. His destination is Beszel’s equal, rival, and intimate neighbor, the rich and vibrant city of Ul Qoma. With Ul Qoman detective Qussim Dhatt, and struggling with his own transition, Borlú is enmeshed in a sordid underworld of rabid nationalists intent on destroying their neighboring city, and unificationists who dream of dissolving the two into one. As the detectives uncover the dead woman’s secrets, they begin to suspect a truth that could cost them and those they care about more than their lives.

What stands against them are murderous powers in Beszel and in Ul Qoma: and, most terrifying of all, that which lies between these two cities.

Casting shades of Kafka and Philip K. Dick, Raymond Chandler and 1984, The City & the City is a murder mystery taken to dazzling metaphysical and artistic heights.

China Miéville is a new author to me: I have already heard the name in regards to the book he’s written with Keanu Reeves, which didn’t particularly interest me. The City & The City, however, piqued my interest immediately. I’m curious to see how Miéville has tackled the twin city setting.

The Helios Disaster — Linda Boström Knausgård

This modern spin on the myth of Athena plunges us deep inside the mind of an unlikely twelve-year-old goddess confined to a small Swedish town. Separated from her father just moments after bursting from his skull in full armor, Anna is packed off into foster care where she learns to ski, speaks in tongues, and negotiates the needs of a quirky cast of relatives. Unable to overcome her father’s absence, however, she finally succumbs to depression and is institutionalized. Anna’s rallying war cry rings out across the pages of this concise and piercing novel as a passionate appeal for belonging taken to its emotional extreme.

I forgot about this one until I found the bit of receipt that had this scribbled on and when researching the blurb to include for this post, I was reminded of Jenny Hval’s Girls Against God (though I much preferred Paradise Rot). Greek myth retellings are oversaturated within YA and BookTok literature and quite frankly don’t appeal to me at all, but this? A literary Greek myth retelling with similarities to Sylvia Plath, may just change the tide of my opinion.

Chip War — Chris Miller

An epic account of the decades-long battle to control what has emerged as the world's most critical resource—microchip technology—with the United States and China increasingly in conflict.

You may be surprised to learn that microchips are the new oil—the scarce resource on which the modern world depends. Today, military, economic, and geopolitical power are built on a foundation of computer chips. Virtually everything— from missiles to microwaves, smartphones to the stock market — runs on chips. Until recently, America designed and built the fastest chips and maintained its lead as the #1 superpower. Now, America's edge is slipping, undermined by competitors in Taiwan, Korea, Europe, and, above all, China. Today, as Chip War reveals, China, which spends more money each year importing chips than it spends importing oil, is pouring billions into a chip-building initiative to catch up to the US. At stake is America's military superiority and economic prosperity.

Economic historian Chris Miller explains how the semiconductor came to play a critical role in modern life and how the U.S. become dominant in chip design and manufacturing and applied this technology to military systems. America's victory in the Cold War and its global military dominance stems from its ability to harness computing power more effectively than any other power. But here, too, China is catching up, with its chip-building ambitions and military modernization going hand in hand. America has let key components of the chip-building process slip out of its grasp, contributing not only to a worldwide chip shortage but also a new Cold War with a superpower adversary that is desperate to bridge the gap.

Illuminating, timely, and fascinating, Chip War shows that, to make sense of the current state of politics, economics, and technology, we must first understand the vital role played by chips.

A very topical recommendation due to the US tanking the global economy. I don’t have much to say about this one apart from sharing this Channel 4 interview:

Divine Rivals — Rebecca Ross

After centuries of sleep, the gods are warring again…

All eighteen-year-old Iris Winnow wants to do is hold her family together. With a brother on the frontline forced to fight on behalf of the Gods now missing from the frontline and a mother drowning her sorrows, Iris’s best bet is winning the columnist promotion at the Oath Gazette.

But when Iris’s letters to her brother fall into the wrong hands – that of the handsome but cold Roman Kitt, her rival at the paper – an unlikely magical connection forms.

Expelled into the middle of a mystical war, magical typewriters in tow, can their bond withstand the fight for the fate of mankind and, most importantly, love?

An epic enemies-to-lovers fantasy novel filled with hope and heartbreak, and the unparalleled power of love.

I was dubious when I was recommended this. Another dark academia YA retelling with enemies-to-lovers? It’s been done a million and one times now. But I’m including this nonetheless—particularly because I didn’t realise that it included themes of war and gods. I’m undecided whether to give this one a go, but I cannot deny I’m at least a little curious.

10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World — Elif Shafak

“In the first minute following her death, Tequila Leila's consciousness began to ebb, slowly and steadily, like a tide receding from the shore. Her brain cells, having run out of blood, were now completely deprived of oxygen. But they did not shut down. Not right away...”

For Leila, each minute after her death brings a sensuous memory: the taste of spiced goat stew, sacrificed by her father to celebrate the long-awaited birth of a son; the sight of bubbling vats of lemon and sugar which the women use to wax their legs while the men attend mosque; the scent of cardamom coffee that Leila shares with a handsome student in the brothel where she works. Each memory, too, recalls the friends she made at each key moment in her life - friends who are now desperately trying to find her. . .

First of all, shoutout to the lady who recommended me this as well as the next book!

Three Daughters of Eve — Elif Shafak

Peri, a wealthy Turkish housewife, is on her way to a dinner party at a seaside mansion in Istanbul when a beggar snatches her handbag. As she wrestles to get it back, a photograph falls to the ground—an old polaroid of three young women and their university professor. A relic from a past—and a love—Peri had tried desperately to forget.

The photograph takes Peri back to Oxford University, as an eighteen year old sent abroad for the first time. To her dazzling, rebellious Professor and his life-changing course on God. To her home with her two best friends, Shirin and Mona, and their arguments about Islam and femininity. And finally, to the scandal that tore them all apart.

I haven’t read any of Shafak’s work so having been recommended two, I want to see what the hype is all about.

— Honourable Mention —

The Moor dir. Chris Cronin

Out there, we are all lost.

Claire is approached by the father of her murdered childhood friend to help investigate the haunted moor he believes is his son’s final resting place.

Shout out to the person who gave me a film recommendation instead!

Here is my ranking of all the recommendations in order of how likely I am to read them.

1. The City & The City — China Miéville

2. 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World — Elif Shafak

3. The Helios Disaster — Linda Boström Knausgård

4. Divine Rivals — Rebecca Ross

5. Three Daughters of Eve — Elif Shafak

6. Chip War — Chris Miller

— Offering My Recommendations —

A Psalm for the Wild-Built — Becky Chambers

Centuries before, robots of Panga gained self-awareness, laid down their tools, wandered, en masse into the wilderness, never to be seen again. They faded into myth and urban legend.

Now the life of the tea monk who tells this story is upended by the arrival of a robot, there to honor the old promise of checking in. The robot cannot go back until the question of "what do people need?" is answered. But the answer to that question depends on who you ask, and how. They will need to ask it a lot. Chambers' series asks: in a world where people have what they want, does having more matter?

Ritualistically, I begin every year by reading a book I think to be 5 stars. 2023’s first read was Godkiller by Hannah Kaner; 2024’s first read was A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers and oh boy it did not disappoint! This philosophical adventure novella

The Tensorate Series — Neon Yang

The Tensorate Series, which has been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, Locus, and Lambda Literary Awards, is an incomparable treasure of modern epic fantasy.

Across four novellas, Neon Yang established themself as a fantasist in bold defiance of the limitations of their genre. Available now in a single volume, these four novellas trace the generational decline of an empire and unfurl a world that is rich and strange beyond anything you've dreamed.

In the Tensorate Series you will find: rebellious nonbinary scions of empire, sky-spanning nagas with experimental souls, revolutionary engineers bent on bringing power to the people, pugilist monks, packs of loyal raptors, and much, much more.

The Tensorate Series omnibus contains The Black Tides of Heaven, The Red Threads of Fortune, The Descent of Monsters, and To Ascend to Godhood.

Thanks to Chris for gifting this to me for my 20th (I think???) birthday! I read it a few to six months after and my mind keeps returning back to Yang’s world and characters.

Interestingly, the characters of The Tensorate Series can choose their own pronouns, and it’s so deeply engrained into their culture that everyone around them is just like ‘Aight. Respect.’ I read this before I was truly familiar with trans identities, before I learned non-Western cultures recognised a third gender before colonisation attempted to scrub this from them. For a while, I struggled to understand why I viewed Yang’s lore differently to actual trans identities, and I came to this conclusion: even in Tensorate where our queer characters do choose to exist outside male or female, it is completely normalised. Yet trans people have and (unfortunately) have to continue to exist knowing that some random person on the street may turn around and have a problem. Echochambers and un-diverse friendship groups are a glass bubble that can so easily be burst with negativity; negativity that does so much more harm than just reminding them that yeah, transphobes do exist. It is a direct attack on who they are.

If you are interested in a narrative, or four novellas, where those who fit outside of a gender binary can live their most truthful self WITHOUT the socio-generational trauma colonisation has caused, pick up Yang’s work. Please. I promise they won’t disappoint.¹

Roadside Picnic — Arkady & Boris Strugatsky

Red Schuhart is a stalker, one of those young rebels who are compelled, in spite of extreme danger, to venture illegally into the Zone to collect the mysterious artifacts that the alien visitors left scattered around. His life is dominated by the place and the thriving black market in the alien products. But when he and his friend Kirill go into the Zone together to pick up a “full empty,” something goes wrong. And the news he gets from his girlfriend upon his return makes it inevitable that he’ll keep going back to the Zone, again and again, until he finds the answer to all his problems.

First published in 1972, Roadside Picnic is still widely regarded as one of the greatest science fiction novels, despite the fact that it has been out of print in the United States for almost thirty years.

I read and bought this in October last year—shock, horror! Me: reading a book within a month of purchasing it? Why, that’s practically unheard of! And it’s all thanks to my partner, who has been recommending this to me every time that I complain that all the books I come across sound the exact same.

If you’re a gamer, chances are you may have heard of the franchise Stalker, well this is the book it’s based off! I was really into the SCP Foundation at the time so I accidentally read this at the perfect time.

october book haul

everything I read in october 2024

Nervous Conditions — Tsitsi Dangarembga

Two decades before Zimbabwe would win independence and ended white minority rule, thirteen-year-old Tambudzai Sigauke embarks on her education. On her shoulders rest the economic hopes of her parents, siblings, and extended family, and within her burns the desire for independence. A timeless coming-of-age tale, and a powerful exploration of cultural imperialism, Nervous Conditions charts Tambu's journey to personhood in a nation that is also emerging.

This is the first book I read for my Postcolonial Literature module in university and it ended up being one of my favourites I read over the course of the three years. It’s about the girlhood of Tambu as she comes of age in a colonial Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).

On Sun Swallowing — Dakota Warren

“On Sun Swallowing is a sweet and bloody collection of poetry, dancing in the spaces between skinned knees and red wine, satin and switchblades, rosaries and Dionysian ecstasy. Her writings are haunted by the ghosts of girlhood, god/s, lovers and the landscape of childhood, but Warren is unflinching - she haunts her ghosts in return, with sharp lyricism and cutthroat vulnerability.
On Sun Swallowing explores shadowy emotion, at times in a whisper, at times in a scream. Think: cheap cigarettes, even cheaper wine, and an oath to reach hell by midnight and be home in time for work in the morning.”

Compiling five years of poetry, prose and journal extracts, On Sun Swallowing is the debut release of Australian poet Dakota Warren. Winding through unflinchingly raw snapshots of her youth, Warren’s words are accompanied by original illustrations from Lydia Stone and curated photography from Francesca McConnell, Caroline Dare, Leche de Arte and Clara Slewa.

I have to thank Dakota Warren, her YouTube channel and most importantly On Sun Swallowing for my taste in books. Reading her debut collection was metamorphic and proved to me you can find a balance between classic and modern poetry.

Open Water — Caleb Azumah Nelson

Two young people meet at a pub in South East London. Both are Black British, both won scholarships to private schools where they struggled to belong, both are now artists -- he a photographer, she a dancer -- trying to make their mark in a city that by turns celebrates and rejects them. Tentatively, tenderly, they fall in love. But two people who seem destined to be together can still be torn apart by fear and violence.

At once an achingly beautiful love story and a potent insight into race and masculinity, Open Water asks what it means to be a person in a world that sees you only as a Black body, to be vulnerable when you are only respected for strength, to find safety in love, only to lose it. With gorgeous, soulful intensity, Caleb Azumah Nelson has written the most essential British debut of recent years.

I read this in the summer of 2024 and it truly changed my life and how I viewed love and family. Nelson has such a way with characters and emotion; he doesn’t just command them, he breathes life onto a blank page and it is a privilege to read his words. The young people remain unnamed in Open Water and I love that. Love is universal and comes in many forms and may not come when needed. Open Water is truly a beautiful piece of fiction.

If there is one book you read out of these recommendations, make it this one.

I also reviewed Nelson’s other novel Small Worlds as a personal essay. It’s one of my first Substack posts—I’d appreciate it if you could give it a read. <3

Be Not Afraid of Love — Mimi Zhu

A collection of powerful interconnected essays and affirmations that follow Mimi Zhu’s journey toward embodying and re-learning love after a violent romantic relationship, a stunning and provocative book that will guide and inspire readers to lean into love with softness

In their early twenties, Mimi Zhu was a survivor of intimate-partner abuse. This left them broken, in search of healing and ways to re-learn love. This work is a testament to the strength and adaptability all humans possess, a tribute to love. Be Not Afraid of Love explores the intersections of love and fear in self-esteem, friendship, family dynamics, and romantic relationships, and extends out to its effects on society and the greater political realm. In sharing their own intimate encounters with oppression, healing, joy, and community, Mimi invites readers to reflect deeply on their own experiences as well, with the intention of acting as a guide to undoing the hurt or uncertainty within them. In this heartrending and revolutionary book, Mimi reminds us, be not afraid of love.

When I ask to be a recommended a memoir, this is what I’m asking for.

Zhu blends their own experiences and lessons they’ve learned and it turns these essays into an intimate story of survival, healing and love. I started Be Not Afraid of Love on a whim and I was drawn in immediately. For few days I spent reading this, I was entranced. It was the only thing I thought of: how intimate and reflective Zhu came across. How she allowed herself to make mistakes, despite writing and recognising retrospectively. Anytime I had a spare moment, I was on my kindle reading. Yet I also took my time. The insight she’s gained from allowing herself to heal and forgiving her younger self proves her emotional wisdom and out of respect, I accompanied her through this, through reading.

The best memoir/collection of essays I’ve ever read.

Parallel Hells — Leon Craig

Some say that hell is other people and some say hell is loneliness...

In the thirteen darkly audacious stories of Parallel Hells we meet a golem, made of clay, learning that its powers far exceed its Creator's expectations; a ruined mansion that grants the secret wishes of a group of revellers; and a notorious murderer who discovers her Viking husband is not what he seems.

Asta is an ancient being who feasts on the shame of contemporary Londoners, who now, beyond anything, wishes only to fit in with a group of friends they will long outlive. An Oxford historian, in bitter competition with the rest of her faculty members, discovers an ancient tome whose sinister contents might solve her problems. Livia orchestrates a Satanic mass to distract herself from a recently remembered trauma and two lovers must resolve their differences in order to defy a lethal curse.

In this deliciously strange debut collection, Leon Craig draws on folklore and gothic horror in refreshingly inventive ways to explore queer identity, love, power and the complicated nature of being human.

This book called out to me, a pin in a haystack waiting to be seen. Prior to this, I hadn’t heard of Parallel Hells or its author Leon Craig. Turns out, Parallel Hells is a collection of gothic horror stories, with themes of queernesss, myths and folklore, and transformation. Also known as, my holy trinity of tropes and a perfect blend of genre.

Greta & Valdin — Rebecca K. Reilly

An irresistible and bighearted international bestseller that follows a brother and sister as they navigate queerness, multiracial identity, and the dramas big and small of their entangled, unconventional family, all while flailing their way to love.

It’s been a year since his ex-boyfriend dumped him and moved from Auckland to Buenos Aires, and Valdin is doing fine. He has a good flat with his sister Greta, a good career where his colleagues only occasionally remind him that he is the sole Māori person in the office, and a good friend who he only sleeps with when he’s sad. But when work sends him to Argentina and he’s thrown back in his former lover’s orbit, Valdin is forced to confront the feelings he’s been trying to ignore—and the future he wants.

Greta is not letting her painfully unrequited crush (or her possibly pointless master’s thesis, or her pathetic academic salary...) get her down. She would love to focus on the charming fellow grad student she meets at a party and her friendships with a circle of similarly floundering twenty-somethings, but her chaotic family life won’t stop her mother is keeping secrets, her nephew is having a gay crisis, and her brother has suddenly flown to South America without a word.

Sharp, hilarious, and with an undeniable emotional momentum that builds to an exuberant conclusion, Greta & Valdin careens us through the siblings’ misadventures and the messy dramas of their sprawling, eccentric Maaori-Russian-Catalonian family. An acclaimed bestseller in New Zealand, Greta & Valdin is fresh, joyful, and alive with the possibility of love in its many mystifying forms.

Greta & Valdin is down to earth, funny and a extremely well crafted novel about two siblings as they navigate life and their queer identities in their mid and late twenties. The chaos and intertwining relationships of everyone kept me coming back for more. As I write this, the adoration I felt whilst reading this is warming my chest. Despite the organised chaos, I truly did feel like I was apart of the family.

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Thanks for reading! I’ve been sitting on this one for a little while and I think it’s met my expectations. I gathered somewhat of a varied list—or at least, very different from what I usually choose to read.

Love from,

Hannah

(ig, spotify, goodreads, letterboxd)

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Current favourites:

• My frolicking t-shirt. It’s my new favourite. Cool Shirtz have literally the best, thickest t-shirts I have ever owned. Ever. Not sponsored² but I am continuously surprised about good their quality is. Despite their name, they don’t just do shirts. I have my eye on a certain skeleton puffer jacket, but alas it is out of my price range.

Me!!!! It’s tucked in slightly but the t-shirt says “I’d rather be frolicking in a field” and yes this was an spontaneous purchase, but can you blame me?!!

• I watched the John Wick TV Show The Continental and you can bet that I will be first in line when Ballerina is released in cinema. The Continental is a neo-noir thriller first and action second, yet it still has that goofy humour that the original film series has. The set design is stunning, very Peaky Blinders like. Seeing Winston and Charon years before the events of John Wick proves that the franchise is the Marvel of action films.

hot girl books 001

every book I read in 2024

1. Writing this has made me want to reread it, so if anyone wants to do a buddy read—let me know!

2. Lol, I wish I was though.