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Reading Recommendation

19 items

Christina

Here are some book recommendations that I've read, or are on my to-read list 📚

Han Kang’s The Vegetarian is a haunting, surreal dive into bodily autonomy, societal pressure, and quiet rebellion. Split into three distinct perspectives, it follows a woman’s sudden refusal to eat meat as she unravels from societal expectations. Th...

The Vegetarian - Han Kang

A devastating, polyphonic portrait of the 1980 Gwangju Uprising and its enduring aftermath. Han Kang gives voice to the victims, survivors, and restless souls, examining the fragile boundary between human cruelty and tender dignity. Reading this fel...

Human Acts - Han Kang

A warm, slice-of-life Korean novel about Yeongju, a burned-out woman who leaves her high-pressure career behind to open a small neighborhood bookshop. It’s a tender exploration of pacing down, finding comfort in quiet routines, and the gentle power o...

Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop

A plainspoken, documentary-style portrait of an ordinary Korean woman navigating systemic misogyny, corporate glass ceilings, and the suffocating domestic expectations placed on mothers. It serves as both an intimate character study and a searing cri...

Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 - Cho Nam Joo

A mysterious, atmospheric Korean novel centered on a covert agency that arranges premium, temporary contract marriages. When an enigmatic trunk washes ashore, it unravels the hidden obsessions, secrets, and fragile ties between two people bound by co...

The Trunk - Kim Ryeo Ryeong

Set in a quiet basement café in Tokyo, this charming and wistful novel follows patrons who can travel through time by sitting in a specific seat—under strict rules, including the requirement to return before their cup of coffee grows cold. Even thoug...

Before the Coffee Gets Cold - Toshikazu Kawaguchi

Set on the tin-mining island of Belitung, this acclaimed Indonesian coming-of-age novel chronicles the lives of ten poor students and their devoted teachers fighting to keep their dilapidated village school open. With its mix of lyrical folklore, ecc...

The Rainbow Troops - Andrea Hirata

Part comic collection, part survival guide, Anxietyland maps out the absurdity of modern stress with unpretentious charm and biting satire. Gemma just hands you a warm drawing of a nervous pug or a badge for surviving social interactions and says, "Y...

Anxietyland - Gemma Correll

A spare, philosophical masterpiece of feminist speculative fiction. Stripped of all societal frameworks, memory, and men, the narrator documents the quiet endurance of life alongside her fellow captives across an endless, empty landscape, probing wha...

I Who Have Never Known Men

A candid, non-fiction hybrid memoir mapping transcribed conversations between the author and her psychiatrist as she navigates dysthymia (persistent mild depression). Stripping away polished facades, it explores social comparison, perfectionism, and ...

I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki - Baek Sehee

A quiet, life-affirming fable by Allen Levi about an enigmatic older man named Theo who arrives in the small Southern town of Golden. Armed with curiosity and quiet generosity, he starts buying pencil portraits off a local coffee shop wall and giftin...

Theo of Golden

An antidote to modern hustle anxiety, exploring what it means to come into your own outside rigid societal expectations. Through thoughtful reflections and real-life examples, it reframes later-stage success not as a delay, but as the rich byproduct ...

Later Bloom - Laurie D.R.

An intimate, multi-generational saga spanning Paris and Jakarta, tracing the lives of Indonesian political exiles stranded abroad after the 1965 anti-communist purges. Years later, their children return to Jakarta on the cusp of the 1998 Reformasi st...

Home - Leila S. Chudori

A charming and thought-provoking blend of domestic comedy and modern social essay. Kim and Hwang document the practical realities of co-housing—from securing mortgages as single women to negotiating chore splits—demonstrating how mutual respect and s...

Two Women Living Together - Kim Hana and Hwang Sunwoo

Set against the kinetic, neon-lit alleys and humid evenings of Taipei, it examines an estranged returnee navigating the fragile space between foreignness and belonging, unraveling how memory, colonial residue, and personal ambition intersect in an ev...

Taipei Story (Deluxe Limited Edition) - R.F. Kuang

This novel explores the fragile peace between the picture-perfect Richardson family and an enigmatic artist and single mother, Mia Warren, who rents their apartment. When a custody battle over a Chinese-American baby divides the town, long-buried sec...

Little Fires Everywhere: Reese's Book Club - Celeste Ng

This is the ultimate comfort read when you need a quick mental vacation. The friends-to-lovers slow burn is electric, and jumping between their past chaotic road trips and their tense present reunion makes every shared glance ache with nostalgia. It’...

People We Meet on Vacation - Emily Henry

Crying in H Mart captures the bittersweet experience of losing your anchor to your heritage and slowly cooking your way back to who you are through memory and tradition. The way food serves as an unspoken dialect of love, guilt, and reconciliation be...

Crying in H Mart - Michelle Zauner

A breathtaking, multi-generational epic by Min Jin Lee following a Korean family across nearly a century of displacement, resilience, and survival in twentieth-century Japan. Anchored by the steadfast Sunja, who leaves her seaside village in Japanese...

Pachinko (National Book Award Finalist) - Min Jin Lee