Goodbye 2021: My Favorite Books of 2021!

Here comes the most excruciating part of any year…

I read so many fantastic books in 2021 that I couldn’t imagine deciding on my top books of the year. But as I was scrolling through my many positively-rated books, there were 11 books in particular that stood out the most to me, and I truly believe that every single one of them is written impressively well and .

Some quick observations: I love how this list ended up being so diverse in genre, and I love how my top 6 were all absolutely emotionally devastating! I may not have much going for me but at least I’m consistent with my book tastes (books that hurt me).

25 Personalized Book Recommendations (& Upcoming Releases) Pt 2

Better late than never I guess…?

I am like 3 months late in this second part of my personalized book recommendations. It took me a bit of time to find all the books and put together this list, and honestly by now I think you all know how terrible I am at being punctual with part 2s of my posts (see: my blogiversary Q&As). 

But my last installment of my personalized book recommendations is finally here, and I had so much fun creating this list! I’m repeating some prompts—I’m sure the more recommendations the better—since this one is open to any authors, and I’m really sorry that I skipped the ones that I couldn’t find any books for. But let me know if you’d be interested in more personalized recs like this in the future!!

Content warnings for the books I’ve read are at the end of this post for readability.

Recommending Some of My Favorite Queer Asian Books Paired with Rina Sawayama Songs

You all know some of my favorite books are queer Asian books.

And since it’s Pride month, I really wanted to do something related to them on my blog. But since I’ve already talked a lot about my favorite books, I thought I’d switch it up a little and recommend/discuss them according to songs by Rina Sawayama! If you don’t know who she is, Rina is a Japanese British pansexual pop singer, and I don’t listen to too much pop music anymore but I absolutely adore her songs.

It was a lot harder to do this than I expected, especially because Rina’s songs all have such specific, personal meanings, which is why I was only able to do 8 books and songs. But I had a lot of fun pairing these books and songs together and doing something new!

30 Personalized Book Recommendations (& Upcoming Releases) Pt 1: Asian Edition!

Today I’m back on my Asian author support brand!

Earlier I asked for kinds of books that you’re looking for so I could do personalized book recommendations, and I decided to make this list only books by Asian authors. I’m always wanting to support Asian authors, and especially right now!

There were lots of prompts I couldn’t get to, so I’ll be doing a part 2 (open to any authors). Since I felt bad about not doing all of them, I decided to do both a recommendation and an upcoming release, if I could find one! Of course, disclaimer that I haven’t actually read them so I can’t personally recommend them—but definitely put them on your TBRs!!

If you’d like to ask for a(nother) book recommendation for part 2, feel free to comment or use this. And of course, if you’d like to support Asian people beyond supporting their creative work, consider donating to one of these organizations.

Content warnings for books I’ve read are at the end of the post for readability!

Goodbye 2020: My Favorite Books of 2020! The Best of the Best + Honorable Mentions

To seek escape from 2020, I found a lot of comfort in good books.

Granted, last year gave me my lowest average rating for books, which I’ll be talking about in my end of year reading wrap-up next. But! Today is not for negativity! (I posted about my least favorite books of 2020 already—check out here.) Today, I’m only bringing positivity and talking about my favorite books of the year!

I am terrible and don’t allow myself to truly love many books, but there were so many 2020 reads that I really enjoyed and wanted to highlight, even if I didn’t love them enough to call them favorites. So in the post, you’ll see my 7 honorable mentions (haha…), and my top 4 books of the year!! All of these books touched me in some way, and I would recommend all of them.