How does the narrative we construct about mental illness influence our understanding of others and their experiences in the world? This is an insightful and thought-provoking book that offers a valuable opportunity to broaden our understanding of mental health.

A Land Without Jasmine is a short magical realism mystery that centered around the disappearance of a female student called Jasmine at Sanna University, and the conspiracies around her disappearance. This is a thrilling book discussing a girl's coming of age journey in a heavily male-gazed and sexually repressed land.

Nujood Ali is the youngest divorcee in the world. Arranged by her father, she married to a man three times her age and was abused and assaulted in her new “family”. This is a brave memoir of Nujood, who’s willing to tell her stories to protect more girls from getting into her situation.

This is the third full-length novel in the Miss Marple series. Following Jerry Burton who was injured in an airplane accident, he follows his doctor’s advice, moving to a small village where nothing happens called Lymstock with his sister Joanna to have some quiet recovering time. Little did they know what they would experience.

This is a collection of city life in the United States.

This is a historical fiction about the musicians on Titanic, about their stories and how they started to play music and how they came together on the Titanic.

OKSI by Mari Ahokoivu left me with so many thoughts and feelings that I can’t articulate. This illustrated graphic novel centered around a pair of bear mother and daughter that is based on Finnish bear mythology.

I read this book because of LGBTQ in Translation Project hosted by Jen from Jen the Librarian. The book for February is to read The Membranes by Chi Ta-Wei translated from traditional Chinese. Therefore I read this short story collection that has The Membranes and many other stories.

This book is a warning of how nationalism is coming (back) to us globally more popular than before, the signs we need to pay attention to, and the consequences that would follow if many countries failed to prevent the dissolution of democracy.

This is a short mystery story collection of Higashino Keigo’s early works. Aka the book that should not be published.

I loved this book so much. This is the second full-length Miss Marple novel, and it’s everything great about Agatha Christie. And it’s exactly what I needed in-between between heavy topic books. It has a weird, almost magical power that made me fully present in the reading experience.

This is a very peculiar and intriguing little book that perfect to read in one go. The story started with Dorothy, who is a housewife living a simple life in the suburbs. One day a monster appeared in her town who’s somehow related to Dorothy, and stirred a series of events in her routinely peaceful life.

This is Will Smith’s biography that’s very hard for me to process. On one hand, it fulfilled its mission being a biography and covers almost every aspect of Will Smith’s life. His personality shows through every page of the book. But on the other hand, this book makes me so stressed that I have to put it down for a long time.

This is a nonfiction book about the crime that changed the Japanese legal treatment of stalking. On October 26th, 1999, a 21-year-old student Ino Shiori, was stabbed to death on her way home. Journalist Shimizu Kiyoshi insisted on investigation and eventually found out the truth even the public thought this case was a random case targeting female students and called out the authorities for their dereliction,

I was intimidated by Vanity Fair for a long time, but I’m so happy I read it in January 2022. And I enjoyed the experience. Not only does it have two interesting main characters who are also completely different, but also the pacing and the twists of the story are really captivating as well.

Covers both politics and everyday life, the book started by recounting how many civilians died due to the continuous conflict and how many major changes happened in Lebanon politics in the recent 13 years. This book is very good for us to learn about the most recent Lebanon.

This is a set of captivating short stories set in Beirut, Lebanon, during the Lebanese Civil War. With a hair of magical realism, people’s lives are disoriented. The characters' minds and bodies are shattered by war, which makes this book dark and atmospheric. The book was longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize 2019, and I can see why.

This book was a fun surprise for me because, although I didn’t watch many of Tucci’s movies and shows, I liked him from the few that I watched. Also, I like food. So when I found out Tucci has a foodie memoir coming out, I had to read it, and also listen to his own narration on audio.

Cursed bunny is a horror and magicial realism short story collection. It was my first read of 2021 and redefined short stories for me.

Starts with an ordinary family trip, Leave the World Behind leads you into an isolated situation where you have no choice but to trust the people around you, strangers or family members until you figure out what’s happening. This is a book with an intriguing promise but characters fall on the bland category and the pacing can sometimes be off.

Sets in Laos in the late 1960s during the Laotian Civil War, where the field was being bombed, this is a book that follows people who were struggling to live and escape from their homeland. It's rich in the historical background, and heavy in the subject matter had great potential in story development but wrapped up too roughly.

What Are You Going Through is a wandering mind. It’s a book asking the titled question to each one of the characters in the book, and also the readers.