One of my goals over Christmas was to read more fiction and I had been moved by a short excerpt from the 1st chapter of Crying in H Mart that was published in the New Yorker back in 2018.

When the book came out in 2021, and I heard that one my friends had a physical copy, I deemed it my fiction read of the Christmas season.

Overall, I loved her style of writing – the sensory details of Korean food and the way she weaved them into her complicated relationship with her mom. She did a great job teasing out the subtleties of Asian parent-child relationships, the role of food in showing love and the avoidance of grief.

If I could compare it to an art piece, it would be more impressionistic than having distinct shapes (i.e. more about imparting a feeling than having a strong plot-line) but overall a touching memoir that inspires you to cook Korean food.

When I told Victoria I was reading “Crying in H Mart”, she recommended “The Silence that binds us” as another good Asian-American memoir.

This one was written from the perspective of a Taiwanese-American high schooler, so reads more like YA lit more than the impressionistic memoir Crying in H Mart was.

It was obviously written in the wake of the BLM movement, and in response to the dialogue around racism towards Asians during COVID-19, bringing up important topics such as the black-asian relationship, what it means to be the model minority, and of course whether one should speak up or stay silent.

Plus points: real Chinese characters sprinkled amongst the English text, a small shoutout to Princeton (albeit in a way you might not expect)

Probably makes it up there as one of the best reads of 2022. I read this one through Christmas break and was absolutely entranced.

Meghan Sullivan and Paul Blaschko are 2 philosophy professors at Notre Dame who teach an undergraduate course on how to wrestle through the essential questions of how to live and what makes life meaningful.

It was fascinating for me to read the history of how the philosophy of what a well-lived life looks like and see the concepts I have found most compelling in my faith journey (desiring truth, living generously, wondering about God, taking leaps of faith) so clearly laid out in a rational and intellectually coherent way.

The book doesn’t tell what you to think; but rather teach you how to think well.

My current read – halfway through so final verdict yet to come, but I love Jonathan Haidt and the book has not disappointed so far.

The first book I ready by Haidt was “The Righteous Mind: why good people are divided by politics and religion.” Super insightful in trying to understand the psychology of why two well-intentioned people who both believe they are completely right could be so opposed to each other.

In “The Happiness Hypothesis”, Haidt goes through the history of modern psychology, from ancient philosophers like the Stoics to Freud to modern happiness research, to give us an overarching view of what both science and philosophy can tell us about the pursuit of happiness.

Also a current read – this book was polarizing, to be expected as Helen Joyce meticulously and (in my opinion) brilliantly comments on one of the most controversial socio-political movements of this generation.

Joyce is a journalist at the Economist and she writes purely from a secular perspective (that was unique for me), detailing the history of the trans movement, where trans ideology comes from and the inevitable outworkings of this ideology on society.

Well researched and backed by multiple scientific studies, while also drawing on various case studies, Joyce addresses issues such as gender reassignment surgery, public safety, fairness in sports and womens’ rights, while being fair and compassionate to the nuance and complexity surrounding gender dysphoria.

Chill singer/song-writer