“A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.” - Graham Greene
Jamie Huang's 2023 Book Recommendations
Pillow Thoughts by Courtney Peppernell - Let’s be honest – 2022 was no one’s year. We’re starting 2023 off in an era of healing. Find reassurance and comfort in Courtney Peppernell’s collection of poems about love, emotions, and more. Resonate with Courtney’s prose and let yourself feel. It's a self-healing month!
One True Loves by Taylor Jenkins Reid - Lonely, single, and depressed? Fear no more, spend this month of love with TJR. She’s got your back with one of the most heartfelt, painful, and top tier romance books there is out there. Emma Blair marries her soulmate, Jesse, but loses him to death within a year. Emma finds true love again years later but soon discovers her supposed dead husband is actually alive. One True Loves unravels the painful decision Emma makes - who will she choose? Get your tissues ready for this one, it’ll pull at your heartstrings.
The Inheritance Games by Jennifer Lynn Barnes - Just keep reading! This fast-paced, thriller-mystery will have you on the edge of your seat the whole time. Avery Grambs inherits the fortune of a billionaire despite having no connection to him. Avery must face the Hawthrone family and work with the charming Hawthrone brothers to uncover why she was chosen. Deadly stakes, exposed secrets, exciting plot twists — this book is popular for a reason!
Love And Other Words by Christina Lauren - favorite word, anyone? for romance novel lovers! Love And Other Words is a warm friends-to-lovers, second chance, and childhood friends romance. Even better, the book’s protagonists are avid readers! What more could you want in a romance novel?
Before The Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi - cut those toxic AP exams from your life and jump through time with this book. A cozy, time-traveling cafe. Changes are made and risks are taken. But once the coffee gets cold, you’re forced back into the present. What could possibly happen?
Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid - drop hot girl summer and replace it for reader girl summer! Taylor Jenkins Reid is coming in hot with a unique approach to unraveling the story of a 70s rock band. If you love music and bands, this one’s for you.
Just Kids by Patti Smith - Patti’s pulling up with receipts – she’s got pictures as proof! In her creative memoir, Patti incorporates pictures from her past and proves herself to be an artistic genius. This is not your normal memoir though. Just Kids is a masterpiece of art about art; an all-consuming art.
Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky. - end summer feeling philosophical with Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground. Packed with complex ideas and thoughts, Notes from Underground communicates a man’s experiences and gained lessons from life. It may be hard to get into, but trust me when I say the read is worth it!
The Song Of Achilles by Madeline Miller - This one speaks for itself. Whether you like greek mythology or not, pick up this five-star read if you haven’t already. It’s worth the read and lives up to its hype - I promise!
The Secret History by Donna Tartt - This modern day classic will have you feeling pretentious and prestigious. Dark academia, a group of annoyingly smart students, philosophical discussions, and murder. Donna Tartt does it all in this book. It’s a must read!
Alternatively: If We Were Villains by M.L Rio - I adore Donna Tartt but us gifted and talented students don’t have much time to ourselves with this gifted and talented student workload. If We Were Villains is an eerie dark academia book centered around a group of pretentious students who love Shakespeare - this book is easier to read than The Secret History and much shorter but very, very similar!
Burnout by Annika Wolanczyk
In his essay, "Video Games: The Addiction," author Tom Bissell said that for many years of his life, his overworked thalamus went on a rumspringa, impairing him from inspired and absorbed writing. In other words, he was burned out. Writing this now, I feel rather uninspired. The city is gray and cold; the sidewalks are wet from the rain. The cuffs of my jeans drag through the slush as I carry my bitter deli coffee to class. Whenever I feel burnout, I think, "it could be worse." When I traveled to Japan, I would walk through the streets at 8:00 pm and pass high school students still hard at work in after-school programs. My dad explained that the typical Japanese student's life was sports practice from 4:00 am till the start of school. After school, more sports, extra academic courses, and finally home by 10:00 pm. Their life was an unrelenting cycle of Kumon. In contrast, my American "burnout" is pitiful.
On the F train yesterday, I sat next to a young girl, no older than ten, and her father, who held her scooter. The girl was sobbing, visibly overwhelmed by her math homework. She was plotting points on a coordinate plane, and her frustration grew exponentially with each X and Y value. Nevertheless, her father stood firm, insisting that she finish the homework. Instinctively I asked, "can I help?" empathizing with the child's struggle. He replied, "no, she's fine." His blunt response took me back, and I remembered all the times I wept over homework. Finally, the girl and her father got off at the same stop as me, and we both entered the dark, cold night.
I was on the train in the first place because I was heading back home from a college interview. They herded the interviewees into a holding pen, where we awaited our interview. It reminded me of my twelve-hour audition for Laguardia high school—a grueling, prolonged, and anxious wait. I talked to a few students in the room, and their resumes were intimidating: 4.0 GPA unweighted, 1530 SAT, ten APs, three after-school programs, leader of two clubs, science olympiad, captain of the soccer team, and a nonprofit founder. Listening to them, I felt like I was in a room with children playing as adults. The sea of crisp white button-downs and blazers added to this sentiment; I was also wearing a blazer. One of the students I met followed me on Instagram the following day. His bio was a resume: Name of high school '23, Cornell summer program '22, Columbia program '23, Questbridge prep '22, Questbridge Finalist '23.
Perhaps my burnout is less attributed to the hard work itself but more to presenting myself in an adult way. I have been roleplaying as an adult, subsuming this version of myself that has the foresight and intellect of someone many years my senior. But I wonder, in contrast to Japan, does America truly value hard work? Or do we reward the people who can best fake it? I think of the articles calling AI word-generating software "the end of term papers." One Ivy League student told me that she used the software for a class. My immediate response was: is that not counterintuitive to why you are at university in the first place? But then again, if everyone is cutting corners, is it foolish not to? She argued that sometimes you're in a crunch for time, and you do what you have to do.
A student in one of my classes said to me, "English just isn't my thing." We are not asked to read a book a week in English, so from my perspective, this was equivalent to saying, "thinking just isn't my thing." Yet, the student excelled in school and was successful in the college process. We fostered a culture where students are better equipped to complete math drills, and textbook notes are of higher stock. But in the process, we have diluted childhood characteristics imperative to development, such as curiosity, creativity, and, most importantly, fun. It is not lost on me that education is a privilege, and I have been extremely fortunate to have one. But are we teaching kids to think creatively and critically or to turn in assignments diligently? Am I destined to overwork myself to the point of burnout? Much like Tom Bissell's overworked thalamus on rumspringa, overworked students are in desperate need of a rumspringa. Before we subscribe to grind culture, perhaps we should know an alternative—allow ourselves to diverge from the path set for us and open our eyes to a new beginning.
Once a Host, Once a Ghost by Fagr Aboudaka
I close my eyes every time I’m on the balcony of my home in Alexandria, Egypt. Sometimes I wonder why we call New York the city that never sleeps when mine can’t stop roaring. Blinking lights from the black and yellow taxis that have seats of brown leather, the smell of cigarettes, and Middle Eastern songs blasting on the radio. The little corner stores that make it easy to pick up your favorite chips and Chiclets on your way to drop off your grandma’s groceries. Others try to sell packs of tissues and luffas to every passing pedestrian. I open my eyes to the street vendors. The scent of fruits doesn't reach the 6th floor as clearly as their voices.
When I look down, I see people whom I’ve never met but they are my people carrying untold stories. I stand, thinking about the other families behind their own balconies. My aunt’s balakona watches over the chickens, and on Eid, the sheep. My grandma’s old balakona looked over Gala’ street. We repeatedly look up when we pass it, to remember what once was. Mona’s balakona isn’t entered very often but when everyone is asleep, I sneak off to listen to the silence of her street.
My balakona carries the responsibility of reuniting friends and family. It has the privilege of inviting my mom’s childhood friends to sit around the mahogany tea table, adding sugar to their cups while the smell of mint leaves squeezes its way in between. Arabic words roll off their tongues in the background as I look at the black and white tiles and pretend, for a moment, that I can stay there forever.
My balakona is the host of card games with Sara, Reem, and Shahd until it reminds us that it’s 5 am and offers us front-row seats to watch the sunrise accompanied with the melody of the call to prayer it knows I’ve longed to hear. It’s where my grandma tells me stories while she hangs her laundry to dry and where my mom takes her prayer mat in the middle of the night. It’s the first place I go when I arrive in the motherland to convince myself I’m really there.
It welcomes me with open doors, filling me in on all that I’ve missed. It tells me that the pharmacy and mattress stores are still there and the palm tree is still slightly curved. It reassures me that the carpenter still sits on a white plastic chair in front of his shop and that the three bodegas on my street are still open.
I fill the purple bucket with water and walk into the balakona barefoot, pour it on the floor, and press the squeegee down. With the music of a nearby wedding filling the neighborhood, I dance, splashing my feet in the water beneath me and using the end of the pole as my mic as I sing along. The wind accompanies me as I twirl and jump and run, sliding the water into the drain and laughing.
It’s the least we owe after closing its doors for years at a time, left alone to the sound of cars in traffic, and with no one to fill it until we return. My balakona is loved when my relatives dangle over it to watch us unload our luggage and wave eagerly before we head into the elevator. My balakona is hated when it’s what’s keeping them from us when we load our luggage back into the van and they wave weakly until it can’t help them see us any longer.
I’d like to think it waits for us to come back too. So when I stroke the chips on the white handrail and say goodbye, I hope it knows I don’t mean forever. And maybe when they pass by, my cousins will look up at my balakona and remember what once was.