Ruminating

2025 Summer Holiday Reading Digest

14-29 December 2025

In an attempt to scroll social media less, I am not going to post reading threads and individual reviews (except on Goodreads) any more. Reading threads forced me to be online every time I would like to jot down a thought on a book I was reading, and going forward I would like to do things in a more analog way.

Instead, I am going to post this weekly/biweekly (I haven’t decided yet) digest about the stuff I have been reading, and my thoughts on them. I am also trying to write my thoughts down instead of reviews, because when I write reviews I tend to have an “audience” in mind and I would like to write more for myself.

Books read

An Archive of Romance - Ava Reid (2025)

This book provided documentations of Effy and Preston’s journey through events of the duology, complete with snippets of the in-world literary canons. Its contents were complementary to the novels, at times they could be superfluous, but mostly they enriched the worldbuilding and added extra depth to Effy and Preston’s relationship. My favorite part was seeing how the in-world literature works thematically echo each other.

Chess - Stefan Zweig (1942)

It was good, but I was not as impressed as I thought I would be. One of the reasons I tend to avoid hyped-books-of-the-moment was that they automatically set a high expectation in my brain and it’s harder to read without being overly critical or expecting to be truly gagged.

Yotsuba&! Vol. 16 - Kiyohiko Azuma

I love how this series has been going on for so long (since 2003!) so even though the story only covers roughly 5 months of duration, to keep the hyperrealistic tone of the series there was a significant leap on the technology used by the characters. Koiwai-san now has an iMac, an iPhone, and a Mini Cooper. Video calls instead of a long-distance landline calls. On another note, I am still getting used to all the new facial expressions of the characters. I don’t remember them being this expressive in the previous volumes.

The World for World is Forest - Ursula K. Le Guin (1972)

How many life-changing books can one person write … I’ve read at least three from Le Guin. While I agree with her Introduction that this one was more black and white compared to her other ones, the result was that it’s her most heartbreaking. It’s very heavy with grief and eerily relevant. Although in general, I find classic or older dystopian novels less and less scary when compared to our fascist capitalist algorithm-choked advertisement-blinded illiterate lives we’ve living today.

The Ten Year Affair - Erin Somers (2025)

I had to DNF this ARC after two chapters (21%). I expected a story about an affair and all I got (as far as I had read it) was the miserable routine of young people with newborns, which was something I have zero interest in knowing. I have no idea whether this was intentional but the characters and the narrative were very shallow and incomplete. This book had the audacity of making a story about unhappy characters boring. Like, I feel like the characters had nothing of significance going on in their heads and in their lives, and that’s not something I’m interested in.

Sihir Perempuan - Intan Paramadhita (2005)

Masterfully crafted short stories. Encapsulated the things I hate the most, the most horrifying things, about the reality of living as a woman at any age: devaluation, objectification, perfection, compliance, repression, shame. Most of them I (usually) manage not to think about, privileged as I am. But as far away as I am from any of them, they are always only one layer of reality away from me. I texted my sister to ask whether she had read it and of course she has. She had an in-class discussion about one of the stories, sometimes I forget she studied literature. A must-read book amongst Indonesian literature; international readers can read some of these stories in the English-translated collection Apple and Knife.

The Wood at Midwinter - Susanna Clarke (2024)

Gorgeous illustrations but it’s very short, even by short story standards, to leave an impression.

Current reads

Six of Crows - Leigh Bardugo (2015)

Already past the 50% mark and honestly? Boring. Not enough plot to satisfactorily explain the stake, and simultaneously too many backstories that distracted from the main story.

How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy - Jenny Odell (2019)

I think the book’s middling average rating came from people mistaking it for a self-help book filled with guides, tips, and practical whatnots. It’s actually a manifesto, a collection of philosophical and historical essays and musings, written by an artist. Each chapter took a lot of detours to get to its point and got linked to the book’s main thesis, and could feel quite abstract at times. I think the key word in the title should be “resisting”, not “doing nothing”.

Articles read

Added to TBR

#reading