Hello,
I’m Muhan, and I read a lot (some of the time).
Read With Mu is where I’ve consolidated over 120 reviews of books I’ve read since 2018. Have a browse, and happy reading!
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★★★★☆ Octavia Butler deftly weaves between the supernatural - the supernatural megalomania of Doro or the supernatural empathy of Anyanwu - and real historical devastations of slavery and its legacy on American society into the late 20th century.
★★★☆☆ This was good but not as good as everyone says it is? Well-written insofar as it’s a riveting tale, but can’t compare to the memoirs I’ve read by more seasoned writers.
★★★★★ My top read of 2021. A sweeping multi-generational medical and business drama about the Sackler family and the opioid epidemic from the family's humble beginnings as a band of immigrant Jewish brothers in New York to the shady marketing tactics that spawned the opioid crisis.
★★★★★ This book pre-dated and predicted the pandemic, manipulating the ruptures and revelations of a fictional plague event to comment on contemporary life and society. This book is set in my hometown of Vancouver and is deliciously local.
★★★★★ I don’t give out many 5 stars and books like this are the reason why - it’s so resoundingly good that I couldn’t bear to lump it in with lesser books. So beautifully composed, toggling between post-apocalyptic survivalism and an urban capitalist grind.
★★★☆☆ My experience reading the book was one of constantly being taken out of the story by how alienated I felt from the experiences and concerns of Offred as a white woman written by a white woman.
★★★☆☆ Unpleasant to read. Wong’s paints her recollections in lurid, sensational, and vindictive grotesqueness.
★★★★★ This book pre-dated and predicted the pandemic, manipulating the ruptures and revelations of a fictional plague event to comment on contemporary life and society. This book is set in my hometown of Vancouver and is deliciously local.
★★★★☆ Jia Tolentino is my absolute favourite cultural critic and essayist. She speaks to me and on topics I care about with such acerbic clarity and personality. My favourite essays from this collection…
★★★★★ TLDR: this is the best memoir I have ever read and you must read it, I cried in anger, in joy, in catharsis, I learned, I was moved, shocked, proud - Chanel Miller is a phenomenal writer and immensely talented, smart, sharp, emotionally mature person whose writings and experience on trauma and rape culture and justice you absolutely need to read.
★★★★★ I don’t give out many 5 stars and books like this are the reason why - it’s so resoundingly good that I couldn’t bear to lump it in with lesser books. So beautifully composed, toggling between post-apocalyptic survivalism and an urban capitalist grind.
★★☆☆☆ I am definitely too old for this book (which skews on the young end of middle grade) and found it pretty boring with no stakes or real character development.
★★★★☆ So so good, it’s called Dear Girls to her daughters but for me it was like reading a letter from an Asian American big sister.
★★★★★ Three apparently unrelated tales come together with an unexpected twist, in a modern fable that is hilarious, poignant and action-packed. American Born Chinese is an amazing rise, all the way up to the astonishing climax--and confirms what a growing number of readers already know: Gene Yang is a major talent.
★★★★★ The Emperor of All Maladies is a magnificent, profoundly humane “biography” of cancer - from its first documented appearances thousands of years ago through the epic battles in the twentieth century to cure, control, and conquer it to a radical new understanding of its essence.
★★★★★ Anne Anlin Chen is my hero. This book thinks through all my deeply personal/political but also academic/curatorial/editorial questions about race in America and proffers so many fertile morsels (some indubitably grotesque, some uneasily beautiful) through which to digest these questions.
★★★★★ Poet Ocean Vuong's debut novel is a shattering portrait of a family, a first love, and the redemptive power of storytelling. On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read.
★★☆☆☆ TLDR: If you’re into romantic tropes, historical fiction, plot spanning an entire lifetime, and epistolary writing, you might be into this. Do not expect much by way of Iranian history, realism, suspense, dialogue, or character development.
★★★★★ This is a book about time and history. Personal histories and national histories. Writing history and reading history. Experiencing history and experiencing time. Ultimately, the book makes a solid case against fixity in the narratization of time (whether personal or historical), and for the tender ephemerality of experiencing life here and now.
★★★★★ A phenomenally thought-provoking collection of essays, musings, and one or two more formalized reporting pieces on queerness and diasporic Asian identity.
★★★★★ So beautifully true to first gen Chinese immigrant experience. Many coincidental similarities to my life, but above all so wonderfully cerebrally chemically reflexive on what it is to be the child of Chinese immigrants, how it feels to navigate that relationship in adulthood and face the impossibility of their meteoric achievements.
★★★★★ It’s 2019 and I honestly forget sometimes that Mindy Kaling was one of the people who literally created The Office.
★★★★☆ Devoured this in a day after re-watching the movie recently, because I was interested in Molly Bloom and also wanted the dirt on the celebs she names. Not quite as self-critical as I personally would’ve preferred and more than a little self-congratulatory/self-absolving in the end.
★★★★☆ This book was painful, poetic, cinematic, chaotic, terrifying, elegiac...The intensity and totality of Morrison’s language is overwhelming, but it completely envelops you in the drama and horror of these characters’ stories.
★★★☆☆ Very enjoyable and funny read. Solid character development for ditzy protagonist Lucy and great cast of characters. Gets a little rape-culture-y with the nonconsensual kissing and girl falling in love with boy anyway. Contextual character stuff holds up though and makes the romance decently believable.
★★★★☆ So cinematic, so cool, spy goodness with no extra fat or fluff, just a preternaturally talented teen spy, shady spy agency, some of the coolest action sequences put to the written word, garishly hateful yet trim villains, high stakes world-saving hijinks, bulls-eye set-ups and pay-offs, sensational sensorial action-driven writing, and a complicated series-spanning teen spy/hired assassin rivalry.
★★★☆☆ Swashbuckling noir heist fantasy with an ensemble cast of broken tragic ne’er do wells who, between the lot of them, cover basically every type of damage. This book is...a lot.
★★★★★ Three apparently unrelated tales come together with an unexpected twist, in a modern fable that is hilarious, poignant and action-packed. American Born Chinese is an amazing rise, all the way up to the astonishing climax--and confirms what a growing number of readers already know: Gene Yang is a major talent.
★★★★☆ Found this pristine paperback edition at a thrift store in my hometown and semi-recognized the title and then just died laughing at the back summary which is so epic but then you discover a few sentences in its all RABBITS.
★★★★★ The full inside story of the breathtaking rise and shocking collapse of a multibillion-dollar startup, by the prize-winning journalist who first broke the story and pursued it to the end in the face of pressure and threats from the CEO and her lawyers.
★★★☆☆ A pretty silly, totally not to be taken seriously, quirky caricature characters, very golden age Drew Barrymore/Julia Roberts romcom-esque story about two young attractive slightly ditzy people who arrange a flatshare sleeping in 1 bed at different hours so they never meet (until it’s time to bang, obviously).
★★★☆☆ My experience reading the book was one of constantly being taken out of the story by how alienated I felt from the experiences and concerns of Offred as a white woman written by a white woman.
★★★★★ My top read of 2021. A sweeping multi-generational medical and business drama about the Sackler family and the opioid epidemic from the family's humble beginnings as a band of immigrant Jewish brothers in New York to the shady marketing tactics that spawned the opioid crisis.
★★★★☆ This book was a revelation. I love a book that peels back the lies marketing and Hollywood have shoved into our brains, and this book really does that for food.
★★★★★ TLDR: this is the best memoir I have ever read and you must read it, I cried in anger, in joy, in catharsis, I learned, I was moved, shocked, proud - Chanel Miller is a phenomenal writer and immensely talented, smart, sharp, emotionally mature person whose writings and experience on trauma and rape culture and justice you absolutely need to read.
★★★★★ I don’t give out many 5 stars and books like this are the reason why - it’s so resoundingly good that I couldn’t bear to lump it in with lesser books. So beautifully composed, toggling between post-apocalyptic survivalism and an urban capitalist grind.
★★★★★ This might be the best book I’ve read all year, and certainly the best and smoothest reading experience I’ve had in MONTHS. Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia is an adventure fantasy/myth retelling set in Mexico in the 1920s Jazz Age.
★★★★☆ A bright, vivid, super fuckin’ funny contemporary novel about a teenage boy named Junior who leaves his reservation to go to a white school many miles away.
I listened to this as an audiobook, narrated by the author herself, and remember I did in fact cry in a grocery store (not H Mart).