I didn’t do a round-up for March, as I spent most of the month in despair because of the political developments in Estonia and consequently too distracted to read much. What I did manage to read was fortunately great, so I am adding the March books to the April ones. Things have picked up considerably, despite the time I’ve spent on my Marvel re-watch.

1. Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjej-Brenyah. An intense collection of short stories taking some of the scary trends of today (racism and consumerism in particular) to the extreme. The first story especially is a gut-punch that might take some time to recover from. It’s a dark and provocative book, but often also funny – not that it necessarily provides much relief. Not recommended to people who say ‘social justice warrior’ like it’s a bad thing.

2. In the Vanisher’s Palace by Aliette de Bodard. I have a strange relationship with Bodard – on paper, I should love her books, but didn’t really get along with The House of Shattered Wings, despite its fallen angels in ruined Paris. I liked In the Vanisher’s Palace better: it is a retelling of The Beauty and The Beast, inspired by Vietnamese mythology and culture. But although I’m a sucker for lesbian romance, it just didn’t work for me. Fanatasy or not, it should take more than two pages to fall in love.

3. Insomnia by Marina Benjamin. This is beautiful, lyrical non-fiction about sleep – or the lack of it, mostly. I enjoyed it a lot and it must be even better for people who suffer from insomnia themselves.

4. Winners Take All by Anand Giridharadas. This is an excellent read on why outsourcing the problems our societies’ problems to the private sector is not a good idea. The subtitle of the book is “The Elite Charade of Changing the World” and while it sounds much less nuanced than the actual book, it does convey the gist of it. Some say the book is too close to what it criticises, the sleek TED talks and neutralised ‘opinion leaders’. I don’t have a problem with this, especially as I think this needed to be written by an insider. Required reading for everyone who think we will solve everything with more technology and positive thinking.

5. Black Sea by Caroline Eden. Regulars know that I love Caroline Eden’s previous book, Samarkand. It’s therefore not surprising I love Black Sea as well, although you need to keep in mind that when Samarkand was a cookbook with some added vignettes on the region, this is a travel book with added recipes. It is not an in-depth investigation of countries around the Black Sea, but it’s interesting, intelligent and a bit nostalgic, in a good way.

6. The Future is Asian by Parag Khanna. If you are interested in an introduction to modern Asia that goes beyond ‘China is coming’, this is a very good contender. It is well written, but rather dense, as Khanna is keen to prove his point with data – and I approve. I really appreciated the broad scope of the book and was especially glad to see a summary chapter on Asian history.

7. Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse. I find it somewhat surprising that this is a Hugo award nominee – not because it’s a bad book, but it’s a rather easy read, although occasionally dark. Be it as it may, it’s a great story about a Navajo monster hunter and her enigmatic sidekick, in the relatively near future after a climate apocalypse. There are native goods, a Mad Max vibe and some romance on top.

8. Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi. Freshwater is an ambitious book by a Nigerian-born young trans writer who mostly manages to pull it off spectacularly. Both the form and content are experimental and the latter is triggering for almost everything you can think of – rape, violence, self-harm, suicide. By page 20 I was seriously worried whether I can go on, but I did manage and have no regrets. The way the story is told – through the voices in the protagonists’ head – establishes some distance with the reader and that helps.

9. The Only Harmless great Thing by Brooke Bolander. This is another Hugo nominee and another extremely experimental piece of writing. The Only Harmless Great Thing takes two unrelated events in the early 20th century and turns them into a slice of alternate history, examining what we do to people, animals and the environment (in short – horrible things). Intellectually, I realise this parable – involving elephants and radiation – is admirable. Practically, I found it too messy and not as engaging as I expected.

10-11. Rosewater and Rosewater Insurrection by Tade Thompson. I picked the first instalment in this Afrofuturist trilogy up because it was mentioned in many 2018 Best Ofs. And with a good reason, this first contact/ biopunk/government conspiracy story is unique and difficult to put down (although not everyone agrees). While it involves many innovative and fresh elements, it’s in some other ways rather old-fashioned: I was repeatedly thinking of The X-Files while reading this. Both books are good, but I preferred the first, mostly because the second has too many narrators for my taste.

12. The Other by Ryszard Kapuściński. If you are used to reading Kapuscinski’s journalistic work, this is a bit different: a book based on his lectures on the concept of The Other. If you are fully briefed on modern social theory, you might be underwhelmed by this. Still, it is written by a great humanist and proof that tolerance is not a horrible Western import, as some forces in my homeland like to claim.

13. Closely Watched Trains by Bohumil Hrabal. To finish, here we have another Great Man from my part of the world. I think his work has, in fact, this distinct Central European flavour – existential, comical, lyrical, strange all at the same time. After reading huge amounts of modern female writers, this was very refreshing. And just masterful, too.

What have you been reading lately? Any amazing discoveries?