Imagine you are a middle school science teacher and one day you wake up you are on a spaceship and you don't know why, you don't even know your name and as your memories slowly return you understand the improbability of your task, you are on a mission to save the Earth from an extinction-level event.

I won't spoil too much.

Not only this book had me on a chokehold (can't breathe with the twists and turns) 👇

A book I almost gave up but I persevered and it turned to be one of my most memorable reads. When "good" was"guid" and "maybe" was "mibbe", and "woman" was "wummin", I had a rough start because of the challenging Scottish dialect but I got used to it before long. Glad, I did. Shuggie Bain, Douglas Stuart's Booker Prize winner and debut novel was masterful, but ????? ????? - it was so much better, so much depth and ?

Appearances lie. Looks can be deceiving. You will never know what‘s inside the mind of another person. These are the themes of this book, The Golden Couple by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen. Reading it on audio, I find it really good and the narrators (Karissa Vacker and Marin Ireland) are incredible. Their passion and enthusiasm 👇

𝚃𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚗𝚘𝚟𝚎𝚕𝚕𝚊 𝚒𝚜 𝚊 𝚐𝚎𝚖! 𝙰 𝚠𝚘𝚗𝚍𝚎𝚛𝚏𝚞𝚕 𝚠𝚊𝚢 𝚝𝚘 𝚛𝚎𝚖𝚎𝚖𝚋𝚎𝚛 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚜𝚖𝚊𝚕𝚕 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚍𝚊𝚒𝚕𝚢 𝚔𝚒𝚗𝚍𝚗𝚎𝚜𝚜𝚎𝚜, 𝚠𝚑𝚎𝚗 𝚊𝚍𝚍𝚎𝚍 𝚞𝚙, 𝚌𝚊𝚗 𝚐𝚘 𝚊 𝚕𝚘𝚗𝚐 𝚕𝚘𝚗𝚐 𝚠𝚊𝚢. 𝚂𝚎𝚝 𝚒𝚗 𝙸𝚛𝚎𝚕𝚊𝚗𝚍, SMALL THINGS LIKE THESE 𝚋𝚢 CLAIRE KEEGAN 𝚝𝚎𝚕𝚕𝚜 𝚊 𝚑𝚘𝚛𝚛𝚢𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚙𝚊𝚛𝚝 𝚘𝚏 𝙸𝚛𝚒𝚜𝚑 𝚑𝚒𝚜𝚝𝚘𝚛𝚢 𝚝𝚑𝚛𝚘𝚞𝚐𝚑 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚕𝚎𝚗𝚜 𝚘𝚏 𝚊 𝚖𝚊𝚗 𝚠𝚑𝚘 𝚍𝚒𝚜𝚌𝚘𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚜 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝 👇

I don‘t read graphic novels until today and I guess there‘s no way but to read more. Not only that Heartstopper by Alice Oseman is my first graphic novel experience, it also evokes themes that I am most interested: identity, sexual orientation and expression, desire, belonging, love, being who you want to be and not feeling guilty about it, because in the end, 👇

Where to even begin? I had no idea what this book was about other than the news that it will be a major motion picture soon starring 𝙷𝚊𝚛𝚛𝚢 𝚂𝚝𝚢𝚕𝚎𝚜. 𝘔𝘺 𝘗𝘰𝘭𝘪𝘤𝘦𝘮𝘢𝘯 𝘣𝘺 𝘉𝘦𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘯 𝘙𝘰𝘣𝘦𝘳𝘵𝘴 is an exceptionally beautiful and yet tragic novel. This is a love letter, an invocation of the power of love in its purest, maddening, intoxicating and satisfying form. Marion, Tom and Patrick are 👇

This book did not land on my radar until few days ago after hearing it on MomAdvice podcast (Thanks Amy). I thought I‘ll give it a try and glad I did. Hugely readable, A Little Hope by Ethan Joella is so rich in themes, characters are so intimately real, imbued with a fullness of human spirit as well as a celebration of the limitless varieties of human experience: pain, regrets, secrets we keep, unresolved issues, well-meaning hopefulness.👇

👊I read this on audio, through 𝘚𝘊𝘙𝘐𝘉𝘋 app and it was a fascinating experience! Rebecca Lowman‘s narration was on point and compelling and bursting with emotions. I loved her style. 𝚃𝙷𝙴 𝙻𝙰𝚂𝚃 𝚃𝙷𝙸𝙽𝙶 𝙷𝙴 𝚃𝙾𝙻𝙳 𝙼𝙴 𝚋𝚢 𝙻𝚊𝚞𝚛𝚊 𝙳𝚊𝚟𝚎 had been on everyone‘s radar last year. It garnered hundreds of thousands of ratings and won the Goodreads choice for mystery 👇

👊I wish I didn‘t read this book but then I wish this book didn‘t end. I tore through it with a heavy heart but with a sense of comprehension. This was jawdropping and even after reading I still had awe-speechless-moments. What a story of perseverance and bravery Mr. Browder and your team! But what I meant when I said I wish I didn‘t read this book was because it somehow altered my perception of Russia. I traveled to Russia in 2019, both in 👇

Done reading this thriller, THE MAID by Nita Prose, on a rainy holiday friday! I did not love it; I liked it enough, though. Maybe I was expecting too much as this was highly marketed as mystery thriller early this year, and I could see that aspect but I thought there was not much thrill towards the end or I may have lost it along the way. I adored the nuggets of wisdom thrown frequently on the page and 👇

Truism 👊

My Furbabies 😊 Oreo, Gizmo and Pasha ❤ 🐕

An impressive achievement, Honor by Thrity Umrigar is canny in its moral intelligence and lyrical and flowing in prose. Reading Umrigar feels like you are being taken cared of and assured of a well thought of story. She is prolific and I am glad to have discovered her. On almost every page, you can smell and imagine 👇

After reading Bewilderment by Richard Powers, I thought the book is deep and masterful. My first foray into the works of Powers, I can see why he won so many awards, including the Pulitzer for his opus The Overstory. Bewilderment is ingeniously structured with a hint of literary crossing over to science fiction. I don‘t think it matters but I guess what is remarkable is the astonishing force that Powers delivers his 👇

It has been a long time since I read a book like THESE SILENT WOODS by Kimi Cunningham Grant: startling plot twists, riveting, unexpected, tender and heartrending. Not a word is wasted in this larger-than-life story of a father and a daughter who must do everything in their own terms to live through life against all odds, against a horrible past and a bleak future. Brimming with wisdom about the human condition, Ms. Grant is setting the bar 👇

Wow! If you are on bookstagram, you know that this book was massively popular last year. You can't miss this book. It's on everyone's radar, for sure, and best books of 2021. I am not really into joining the bandwagon (still haven't read The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, The Invisible Life of Addie La Rue, Midnight Library) unless I have some familiarity with the author, but man, what a journey reading this book! I cried 👇

How is it that as early as January I may have read one of the best non-fiction books this year! Outstanding! BETWEEN TWO KINGDOMS by Suleika Jaouad is one of those books that will stay with me for quiet a long time. Poignant, beautifully written, and a searing narrative, Suleika is born a storyteller. She has this unbelievable command of words. Whe she strikes, she meant it, her words and thoughts so propulsive I can't help but be wowed. 👇

"We're always striving for more: growing a business, getting that promotion, making the big bucks, finishing the project. On this never-ending pursuit of more, when do we ever stop and smell the flowers?" ?? Happy New Year fellow Readers ???

😲 This book is so moving, I am of out of breath, really! What a woman you are, Ruth Coker Burks! You are unbelievable. A heroic story of selflessness, compassion, altruism and unconditional love, All The Young Men breaks my heart but it also gives me hope that people like Ruth is out there, helping people living with AIDS in getting the dignity they deserve while equally grappling how to live the remaining days of their lives. 👇

I read 30 books in 2021. Short of my goal of 50 and way behind of what I accomplished last year (47) but still full of remarkable discoveries: new authors, books I would not have picked on my own, themes I found out I fascinated the most a.k.a. astronomy, and genre I am quite fond of this year - narrative non-fiction. There were so many ups and downs this year that halted my daily readings but I got up and persevered and reminded myself 👇

It took me more than a month to finish reading this massive book (580 pages) and Mr. Franzen delivers his story magnanimously. Like his previous novel, The Corrections, which I have loved, Crossroads is an exploration of fractured family dynamics, spiritual and religious tensions, infidelity, jealousy, 👇

Hello, my name is Oreo. I am a Chihuahua 😊

Done reading this massive book, 576 pages long, and I thought The Lincoln Highway is brilliant in every sense of the word. A family affair, a travelogue, a coming-of-age saga, a grand adventure both real and mythological and lastly a really affecting look at the interplay of lives both young and old, the innocent and the guilty, the events we can and 👇

Opening salvo is just breathtaking 🙏 🙌

I am quite struggling what to make of this book. I do not particularly like the writing style where narrations and conversations are lumped into one whole paragraph that readers may not be so keen enough to follow who is speaking what. But I sort of understand where this novel is coming from. This is as much about adulting: how we maintain and nurture friendship, how we draw the line 👇

Wrapping up my August reads with this movingly written book, The Rise and Fall of Osama Bin Laden by Peter Bergen. This is a great follow up to Jean Sasson‘s opus Growing Up Bin Laden. Mr. Bergen has produced a narrative that is both deftly constructed and meticulously researched. With the recent withdrawal of US forces in Afghanistan, the war on terror narrative is 👇

At once funny, cleverly honest, and achingly sad, this fierce and thought-provoking debut deserves to be read widely, if only to discover an amazing writer brimming with imagination and vision. Guapa by Saleem Haddad illuminates so precisely, so humanely, about being different in a world full of beliefs, judgments and prejudices. I loved this book! The tone reminds me of The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen. That witty, wistful and 👇

Breaking my reading slump with this book: Growing Up Bin Laden by Jean Sasson. Gripping and heartbreaking, Ms. Sasson takes us to the domestic world of the infamous Osama Bin Laden through the eyes of his first wife Najwa Bin Laden and their fourth son Omar Bin Laden. What life was like for the first and most important wife of Osama? What kind of father and husband had Osama been? Had he love his wives (5) and children (24)? 👇

Glad to have read this book, And The Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini, that had been on my radar for quite some time after reading his two remarkable and succesful novels, The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns. Although, I loved those two books, And The Mountains Echoed was my least favorite. It was a little disorienting and there was a feeling of inadequacy right towards the end. 👇

Hello, my name is Jokoy 😊 I think I'm cute 😄

3 hits and 1 miss - my #JuneWrapUp

The whole month of June I had an opportunity to armchair-travel to Nigeria, South Sudan, Rwanda, Sri Lanka, Haiti, Angola and Afghanistan. These books were all over the world yet profoundly brilliant, observant, and an unputdownable tale of survival, belonging, altruism, identity, violence, social and economic injustice across culture and tradition, across all facets of life. 😊👊

Superb! Narrative and investigative non-fiction of the very highest order. No Good Men Among the Living by Anand Gopal is wholly absorbing. Mr. Gopal's storytelling is imbued with a sense of understanding and moral seriousness of the broad landscape of Afghanistan's war through the lives of ordinary people all trying to survive. His close observations and delicate renderings of the war on terror is sad but true that, ultimately, the war 👇

Damien Brown, an Australian doctor, suceeds in depicting the day-to-day experience of a doctor working for the MSF (Doctors without borders) in places where poverty, conflict, tragedy are prevalent and a fact of life. He worked in Mavinga in Angola, dubbed as the "edge of the world" and in South Sudan where tribal or clan wars were the norms. He navigated cultural differences both in health care and personal upbringing. ?

Hello, its me 😊 I'm reading on my Onyx Boox Nova 3 Color 😊

A compelling narrative, Chasing Chaos had me from first page to last. Reading this book is likely to make the would-be aid worker feel both awed and a little frightened. I have always been fascinated by humanitarian workers and I thought: "They have the best job in the world." They get to travel everywhere and help alleviate people's unimaginable suffering. Here, Jessica Alexander recalled ?

Recording the history of her country, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie created a civil war story packed with gory details, intricate characters, unsavory circumstances, malnourised refugees, complicated romance. In short, Half of a Yellow Sun was a portraiture of human emotions as a cost of war. While it started really engaging and promising, I felt detached towards 👇

#MayWrapUp Five books I devoured in May! Beautifully written yet also compellingly page-turner, these books remind me why I fell in love with reading. 😊👏📚

Utterly heartbreaking and impossibly beautiful work of narrative non-fiction, TheLemonTree by SandyTolan is an extraordinary, harrowing account as seen through the eyes of a Jew and an Arab in perhaps the most unstable and fragile place in the world today. To read this book is to understand, if not total but at least quiet enough, Palestine and Israel as they exist today. It stunned me how myriad of events that unfolded from 1948 up to 👇

This book is deeply unsettling on every level as it is thrumming with suffering, violence, and injustice. But this is a story of resilience and survival, and, ultimately, love. I really admire the unrelenting bravery of this book. Susan Abulhawa writes passionalety and lyrically about the ugly realities of war as well as the beauty of family, friendship and community. 👇

My current reads: Mornings in Jenin by Susan Abulhawa and The Lemon Tree by Sandy Tolan. These could not have been more timely and, yes, heartbreaking! 🙏

My 3rd book this month: This is How it Always Is by Laurie Frankel. Ever heard of Gender Dysphoria? This book is about it and how it plays in the lives of an ordinary family living in an unforgiving, sometimes ignorant, and terrifying world where being different, being non-binary, being queer is not tolerated. Gender Dysphoria, simply put, is that strong desire to be of another gender. You are born a boy 👇

My 2nd #audiobook this year: #EatPrayLove by #ElizabethGilbert, read by the author herself and it was fantastic! I first read this book on paperback in Bali, in Ubud, circa 2017, and I enjoyed it so much. Rereading this after 4 years, it resonates well from where I was to where I am now. Not that I sufferred what Liz experienced, but that journey of trying to become a person of maturity, evenhandedness, curiosity and 👇

Done reading Before Night Falls by Reinaldo Arenas and I thought it was sad, grisly, unsettling but ultimately moving memoir in the midst of repression and fear. Told in chronological account of his life, Reinaldo Arenas was quite a character; a larger than life persona, who endured dictatorships from Batista to Castro in Cuba. As a gay writer, he was particularly pursued by the government and tagged as counterrevolutionary. 👇

Finished reading this book tonight and I enjoyed it! A pretty common premise: a woman from a small village who went to the city and endured so much, the highs and lows, the ups and downs, in life. But what fascinated me was the strong Indian culture, tradition, and gastronomy, depicted in this book from henna-making to 👇

Wow! This is one of the most profound and impactful books and I read much of it through tears. Filled with remarkable people and reads like a legal thriller, this book is about the application of the law to suit the tides of time so as not to trample the fundamental rights of every person enshrined under the Constitution - the right to marry, that right whom to marry, that right to choose whom to love and have a committed relationship with. 🙏😊

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 What a beautiful, remarkable book! The Code Breaker by Walter Isaacson is about fathoming the joyful and inspiring wonders of life through the lens of CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) which are the hallmark of a bacterial defense system that forms the basis for CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing technology. Scientific in nature, but Isaacson's approach is akin to a detective novel where 👇

#MarchWrapUp: These are the books I immersed myself with and enjoyed immensely this month. 😊

Another Astronomy book ticked off from my never-ending reading list. The discovery of Exoplanets (planets outside our solar system) paved the way to debunk or abandon at least some of our old, chauvinistic thinking of the universe, such as Stellar Chauvinism which states that planets, at least capable of supporting life, have to be in orbit around stars, and Surface Chauvinism which provides that in so far as water is necessary for the 👇

Blown-away! I am still soaking with enormous information that I might need to take a moment to process everything. I am delighted that I decided to pick up this book. The Future of Humanity by Michio Kaku is very readable and packed with fascinating information. It is an examination of the possibility of life outside our own world, the possibility of unifying the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics, 👇

I am really glad to have read this book because it unveils heaps of information about the cosmos, the space, time, planets, and galaxies in relation to humanity and the laws of nature. Katie Mack has a way of making daunting concepts accessible and ultimately fascinating. Her style is superb! She provides more questions to extrapolate our understanding, or the lack thereof, of the origins of the universe. I may not have understood everything 👇