A Reading List to Resist the Machine

Slowness, Strangeness, Survival | Books to help us be more human during inhuman times

As we head into the holidays, we wanted to share a reading list with you. Maybe you’ll want to add some of these books to that ever-elusive TBR. Maybe you’ll acquire some physical copies from your local bookshops. Or maybe you’ll just look at these and know: here is literature I can find refuge in.

None of these are classified by (sub)genres, because, we believe that as writers and readers we ought to rage against all sorts of borders. And there’s no hierarchy nor publication years noted. Read elliptically, randomly, spiral if you must. Welcome the maze of literature into your life and get lost in it. Reading is resistance.

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1. Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill

2. The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

3. The Vegetarian by Han Kang

4. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

5. Fever Dream by Samantha Schweblin

6. Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

7. “Bartleby, the Scrivener” by Herman Melville

8. Severance by Ling Ma

9. The Wizard of Earthsea Ursula K. Le Guin

10. Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor

11. The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami

12. Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky

13. Paper Crown by Heather Christle

14. The Invention of the Darling by Li-Young Lee

15. Luminous by Silvia Park

16. Ice by Jacek Dukaj

17. The Book of Disappearance by Ibtisam Azem

18. Solenoid by Mircea Cărtărescu

19. On the Calculation of Volume I by Solvej Balle

20. Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov

21. Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

22. Standing in the Forest of Being Alive by Katie Farris

23. The Wax Child by Olga Ravn

24. Thistlefoot by GennaRose Nethercott

25. Dan Joanna Ruocco

26. Wild Milk Sabrina Orah Mark

27. Water Look Away Bob Hicok

28. Impossible Creatures Katherine Rundell

29. The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin

30. All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders

31. The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa

Yours,

Shannan & Karan

P.S.: If you know any of these books and want to share your experiences with them (good or otherwise), please do so below. Additionally, if there are books you’d like us and others to read over the winter and beyond, do mention them in the comments, please!