December 2021 reading wrap-up

Other highlights

When We Cease to Understand the World / Benjamin Labatut

This short, genre-defying work of science writing first came onto my radar when it was named one of the New York Times’ Top Ten Books of 2021. Each section of this book delves into the lives and discoveries of our most famous scientists, exploring the ethics of scientific progress and where the line between genius and madness lies. The book itself falls somewhere between the worlds of fiction and nonfiction, imagining the inner lives of these men and probing what made them tick. Labatut and his translator Adrian Nathan West turn the complexities of mathematics into poetry, and I was surprised to find myself enjoying this book as much as I did, and by the end it made me look at the world a little differently.

A Master of Djinn / P. Djèlí Clark

This was the year I discovered P. Djèlí Clark, reading his four published novellas before finally picking up his debut novel at the end of the year. This book serves as an expansion of his Dead Djinn Universe, and I’m so happy I got to read a novel-length work set in Clark’s Cairo. One of my only critiques of the novellas I read was that I wanted them to be longer, and A Master of Djinn delivers on that and more. Following Agent Fatma as she investigates the (possible) return of al-Jahiz, one of the most famous men in this alternate history and the person responsible for the introduction of magic into the world. Murders, conspiracies, cults, and more make this book a fun ride from start to finish, and I can’t wait to read what Clark has in store next!

The Golem and the Jinni / Helene Wecker

Last month, I read Station Eleven, which had been sitting on my shelf for a number of years, and this month I knocked another mainstay on my TBR pile out by finally reading Helene Wecker’s The Golem and the Jinni. Wecker’s magical-realist saga follows the titular magical beings as they both try to make their way in turn-of-the-century New York City as immigrants in an unfamiliar land. The magic leaps off the page, yet the story feels grounded in its time period, an impressive feat for a debut novel. Despite its length, coming in at nearly 500 pages long, the story flows in the way childhood fairy tales do. It was worth the wait. (Bonus: for some reason I read three novels centered on Djinn/Jinn/Jinni this month.)