April Reading List

I binge-read a lot this past month. 13 books is a lot even for me although most of them weren’t intellectually strenuous. The ability to really focus on and digest challenging material is something I’ve been struggling with during this lockdown. Nevertheless, there were some good ones.

1. Conversations with Friends: I wanted to see if this was any better than Normal People. I didn’t think it was. Both books are easy, non-memorable reads about superficial characters.
2. Know My Name: A Memoir: God, this book made my stomach turn. Chanel Miller is so articulate even through her pain. I’m in awe of her and her incredible strength
3. Whistleblower: My Journey to Silicon Valley and Fight for Justice at Uber: This was an interesting read, but because I followed so much of it in real time as everything was going down, there wasn’t much I didn’t already know. I did like having an insight into what was going on in Susan’s mind during all of this though.
4. Reset: My Fight for Inclusion and Lasting Change: Obviously there’s a theme here, Ellen Pao’s story wasn’t dissimilar to Susan’s. I know I shouldn’t be surprised by how much discrimination exists in the tech/VC world but everything described in this book was abhorrent.
5. Queenie: The description of this book “Bridget Joness Diary meets Americanah” drew me in. Casual racism is well and alive in London if this book is to be believed. The protagonist Queenie wasn’t likable but I don’t think she was meant to be. A decent read.
6. Copperhead: This was a really interesting book about race in America, and gave me an insight into how people who are nothing like me think (white supremacists to be specific). It reads like a young adult novel but during the course of this book, I reevaluated some of my biases and preconceived notions.
7. Mrs. Everything: I’d believe it if you told me Danielle Steele wrote this book. I love that it’s a saga about women spanning across generations and it was a really easy, fun albeit pointless read.
8. Fashionopolis: The Price of Fast Fashion and the Future of Clothes: Kind of a yawn to be honest.
9. A Woman Is No Man: I enjoyed hearing the voice of an Arab-American woman, that was really new to me. Parts of this story were extremely relatable to me as an Indian woman.
10. Ninth House: Not sure why I even bothered to finish this book.
11. Recursion: I don’t typically read much sci-fi but the premise of the book seemed interesting enough, which is why I even got it in the first place. Sadly it dragged on for far too long, which I should have expected given the title.
12. The Gene: An Intimate History: I am probably really late to jump on this train but The Gene is an excellent book. The author Siddhartha Mukherjee paints such a clear picture of the gene and its evolution over the years. Suddenly all of tenth grade biology came rushing back to me, in a good way.
13. Homesick for Another World: This book by Otessa Moshfegh was full of deplorable people doing deplorable things. I tried to be the bigger person and accept it all but failed miserably.