Favourite books of 2013 a la Priscilla

Since I always love getting book recommendations, I thought I'd share some of mine here. These are some of the wonderful books I got to read last year:

Pi Patel becomes a castaway after a shipwreck that cost him his entire family. He must learn to survive the Pacific Ocean and Richard Parker, the Bengal tiger that is his fellow castaway.

I've heard about Life Pi for a very long time, but it wasn't until my book club picked it as a topic that I bought it. I expected it to be difficult and maybe tedious due to the philosophical nature, but it's only a little difficult and not at all tedious. I adore books that make me believe in the fantastic, and Pi did just that.

"If you stumble about believability, what are you living for? Love is hard to believe, ask any lover. Life is hard to believe, ask any scientist. God is hard to believe, ask any believer. What is your problem with hard to believe?"

 

Brilliantly synthesizing philosophy, literature, science, and his own undercover detective work, Eating Animals explores the many fictions we use to justify our eating habits-from folklore to pop culture to family traditions and national myth-and how such tales justify a brutal ignorance. (Goodreads)

I could never explain just how brilliant this book is. It doesn't set out to guilt meat-eaters into being vegetarians (though it comes very close to converting this meat eater and convinced Natalie Portman); it just lays out all the facts and stats and points out the deliberate forgetting of where our meat comes from and the process it goes through until it reaches our table. That sounds boring, but I promise you it isn't. I had a hard time getting through it because at times the topic is uncomfortable to read, but I'm glad I did. 

“We can't plead ignorance, only indifference. Those alive today are the generations that came to know better. We have the burden and the opportunity of living in the moment when the critique of factory farming broke into the popular consciousness. We are the ones of whom it will be fairly asked, What did you do when you learned the truth about eating animals?” 

An astonishing technique for recovering and cloning dinosaur DNA has been discovered. Creatures once extinct now roam Jurassic Park, soon-to-be opened as a theme park. Until something goes wrong...and science proves a dangerous toy. (Goodreads)

When people write off popular fiction as shallow, I think of my experience with Jurassic Park. I didn't expect it to be good at all; I never watched the movie (I hate large-animal-eating-people movie) and expected it to be a plain old thriller with man-eating dinosaurs, despite my parents' constant recommendation of Michael Crichton. My bad. What I found most fascinating was the theme about the ethics of science -- if you could do something, should you? It's a little tough going if you - like me - are unfamiliar with dinosaurs and dislike gore, but stick with it.

“But now science is the belief system that is hundreds of years old. And, like the medieval system before it, science is starting not to fit the world any more. Science has attained so much power that its practical limits begin to be apparent. Largely through science, billions of us live in one small world, densely packed and intercommunicating. But science cannot help us decide what to do with that world, or how to live. Science can make a nuclear reactor, but it cannot tell us not to build it. Science can make pesticide, but cannot tell us not to use it. And our world starts to seem polluted in fundamental ways---air, and water, and land---because of ungovernable science.” 

Passionately argued, impressively researched, and filled with indelible stories of real people, Quiet shows how dramatically we undervalue introverts, and how much we lose in doing so. (Goodreads)

If we read to know we're not alone, then I've found the perfect book for me. I could relate to so many things, and I learned plenty too. I can't recommend this enough for the introverts out there, and for extroverts who want to learn more about what it's like for those on the other side of the spectrum. 

“Or at school you might have been prodded to come “out of your shell”—that noxious expression which fails to appreciate that some animals naturally carry shelter everywhere they go, and that some humans are just the same.” 

Emma Morley may be my literary twin

"We should get some sleep."
"What for? Nothing tomorrow. No deadlines, no work..."
"Just the whole of our lives, stretching ahead of us," she said sleepily, taking in the wonderful warm, stale smell of him and at the same time feeling a ripple of anxiety pass across her shoulders: independent adult life. She didn't feel like an adult. She was in no way prepared. It was as if a fire alarm had gone off in the middle of the night and she was standing on the street with her clothes bundled up in her arms. If she wasn't learning, what was she doing? How would she fill the days? She had no idea.

- One Day, David Nicholls

Sometimes you read the right book at the right point of your life, and you feel less alone. I haven't finished it yet, but One Day struck me as that book for me right now. I see bits and pieces of myself in Emma Morley. It makes me anxious, and at one point I felt like crying because what if this is what my future looks like? 

My graduation is in 13 days, and while I plan on going on to get another degree and thus my independent adult life is still a bit further away than that, I'm scared. I'm 22 with no glittering award or publication to my name and an almost-great-but-not-quite-there results. My friends are scattered all around the globe and in 13 days, even more of them would be too far away. Some days I'm struck with this panic that one day I would just fade away, and no one would have more to say than 'she was a good girl'.

What are you going to do with your life?" In one way or another it seemed that people had been asking her this forever; teachers, her parents, friends at three in the morning, but the question had never seemed this pressing and still she was no nearer an answer.. 

My imaginings of the future haven't changed too drastically at the core. In primary school, I thought I'd live with Thania and she'd be making music while I write novels for a living. In high school, I still thought I'd be writing novels, but I'd be running a private practice as a psychologist too. Now, I still write and dream of doing it for a living, I still want to be a psychologist, but I'm missing the starry-eyed optimism I used to infuse this picture with.

Still, I do try remind myself that I'm only halfway through the third chapter of One Day, and I'm only 22. I'm rooting for Emma to find some confidence and achieve the life she wants and deserves, and I'm going to keep breathing through the panics and make myself do the same.