Reads 365: No.8
December - Year in Review
A mix of literary classics & essential reads.
Some of the books features heavy subject matter, so please be mindful of the content warnings and research them fully.
Your mental wellbeing matters.
Orlando
by Virginia Woolf
A wildly imaginative romp through four centuries following a protagonist who changes gender midway through. Part fantasy, part satire, part love letter, Woolf's most playful novel explores identity, gender fluidity, and the nature of art with wit and audacity.
✨ Woolf at her most experimental and joyful
📚 Genre: Literary Fiction / Fantasy
🏳️⚧️ 228 pages of gender-bending fantasy
🔥 Modernist masterpiece
Queer classic that proves Woolf's genius extended beyond modernist innovation.
#MarginsXReads #Orlando #VirginiaWoolf #QueerLiterature #ClassicLiterature #ModernistLiterature #GenderFluid #LiteraryFiction #BookCommunity #Bookstagram #LGBTQ
The White Tiger
by Aravind Adiga
A darkly comic tale of class warfare and ambition in modern India. Balram Halwai narrates his transformation from servant to successful entrepreneur through murder, deception, and ruthless determination. Adiga's Booker Prize-winning debut exposes India's economic miracle's brutal underside.
✨ "I'll never say I made a mistake that night in Delhi when I slit my master's throat."
📚 Genre: Literary Fiction
🐅 Savage satire
🏆 Unreliable narrator who's simultaneously sympathetic and monstrous
A provocative, uncomfortable read that forces us to confront complicity in global inequality.
#MarginsXReads #TheWhiteTiger #AravindAdiga #BookerPrize #IndianLiterature #LiteraryFiction #SocialCommentary #ContemporaryFiction #BookCommunity #Bookstagram
The Inheritance of Loss
by Kiran Desai
A multi-layered narrative set in mid-1980s India during the Nepalese insurgency. An embittered judge, his orphaned granddaughter, and their cook whose son pursues the American dream—Desai weaves their stories into a meditation on colonialism's lasting damage, globalisation, and what we inherit from history.
✨ About what colonialism steals—and what remains.
📚 Genre: Literary Fiction
📖 Second-generation perspective on diaspora and belonging
🏆 Lyrical prose that balances the personal and political
#MarginsXReads #TheInheritanceOfLoss #KiranDesai #BookerPrize #IndianLiterature #LiteraryFiction #PostColonial #DiasporaStories #BookCommunity #Bookstagram
Midnight's Children
by Salman Rushdie
Born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947—the moment of India's independence—Saleem Sinai's life mirrors his nation's tumultuous history. Rushdie's magical realist masterpiece uses fantasy, history, and sprawling imagination to tell the story of modern India through one extraordinary family.
✨ "I have been a swallower of lives."
📚 Genre: Literary Fiction
✨ Magical realism
🏆 Booker Prize, Booker of Bookers
A landmark of postcolonial literature and one of the greatest novels of the 20th century.
#MarginsXReads #MidnightsChildren #SalmanRushdie #BookerPrize #IndianLiterature #MagicalRealism #LiteraryFiction #PostColonial #ClassicLiterature #BookCommunity #Bookstagram
A Suitable Boy
by Vikram Seth
At 1,349 pages, Seth's epic is one of the longest single-volume novels in English—and worth every word. Set in 1950s India, this sweeping saga follows four families as Mrs. Rupa Mehra searches for "a suitable boy" for her daughter Lata. Part romance, part social history, all magnificent.
✨ One of the longest novels in English
📚 Genre: Literary Fiction
📚 1,349 pages of magnificent storytelling
💕 A love letter to India's complexity and contradictions
For readers who want to fully inhabit another world—this is immersive storytelling at its finest.
#MarginsXReads #ASuitableBoy #VikramSeth #IndianLiterature #LiteraryFiction #EpicNovel #HistoricalFiction #FamilySaga #BookCommunity #Bookstagram
The Vegetarian
by Han Kang
After a disturbing dream, Yeong-hye stops eating meat—a small act of rebellion that spirals into something much darker in conformist South Korean society. Han Kang's spare, haunting prose explores bodily autonomy, violence, and one woman's radical rejection of the world's demands.
✨ Magical realism meets body horror.
📚 Genre: Literary Fiction
🌱 Pages of unsettling brilliance
🏆 Explores patriarchy, mental illness, and bodily autonomy with surreal power
#MarginsXReads #TheVegetarian #HanKang #InternationalBookerPrize #NobelPrize #KoreanLiterature #LiteraryFiction #ContemporaryFiction #BookCommunity #Bookstagram
Please Look After Mom
by Kyung-Sook Shin
When an elderly woman goes missing in a Seoul subway station, her family begins searching and discovering they never truly knew her. Shin's quietly devastating novel examines maternal sacrifice, filial guilt, and the invisible labor of women who hold families together.
✨ "How could we have believed we knew everything about you?"
📚 Genre: Literary Fiction
💔 272 pages that will wreck you
🇰🇷 Bestselling Korean novel of all time
#MarginsXReads #PleaseLookAfterMom #KyungSookShin #KoreanLiterature #LiteraryFiction #TranslatedLiterature #FamilyStories #BookCommunity #Bookstagram
December’s Year in Review list