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Book 36 for 2026: “Supersaurio”, Meryem El Mehdati

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Several weeks ago I wrote a post about young people and asked if the problems they are having are global. It is this novel which caused me to ask that question. The author lives in Gran Canario, the largest of the Canary Islands which is the setting of this novel. The novel is written in first person from the viewpoint of Meryem, a twenty-five year old young woman who at the beginning of the novel is still living with her parents because she cannot afford a place of her own. She has a college degree and speaks multiple languages but cannot find a good job even close to what she thought she would be doing at twenty-five when she was younger. She is unhappy and disappointed.

She acquires an internship with Supersaurio, the largest super market chain in the Canary Islands. She finds the work boring and tedious. She cannot stand her boss, a woman 20 or so years older, a woman who will not even look at Meryem when she is talking to her and who never bothers to learn to pronounce Meryem’s name correctly even though Meryem explains repeatedly. Nevertheless, Meryem endures, produces excellent work and never complains–at least not at work. However, as she informs the reader endlessly, she hates her job, feels her colleagues look down on her, and nothing is going ok. To pass time she writes fiction about her work mates, tries to find a nice guy to date, and because she needs the money, keeps working.

As the novel progresses, her life does sort of get better and she adjusts sort of, but you have to read it to find out.

I kept thinking the same thing over and over–how is her life different from that of a lot of young people in the US? Meryem seems to think it is because of where she lives at least in part and because the island is dependent on Spain and tourism, but are these the real causes?? Do a lot of young people in Europe and other places in the world feel as she does, struggle to “make it”?

Book 33 for 2026: “The Stationery Shop”, Marjan Kamali

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I said I was going to read all her novels. This one is the middle novel but they are not a series. The time span in this one goes from 1913 to 2013. The political events are more detailed in this novel, including how the toppling of Mossadegh by the Shah’s forces and Britain and US, the later revolution, and the Iran-Iraq War affects various characters and their families. The novel’s title comes from the stationery shop owned by Mr. Fakhri where the other two main characters in the novel meet when both are 17. They love books and fall in love via their visits to this shop. Then the events of 1953 occur, family’s histories create havoc, and people’s pasts catch up with them in unexpected ways.

This novel also goes into greater depth about how Persian traditions affect lives, how much social class matters, arranged versus love matches, modern families versus more traditional families and how all these issues affect individual lives for better or worse. As in the others, the reader learns a lot about Persian food with some details as to how to make various dishes–no recipes, just descriptions. My reaction to the events and characters in this novel were stronger than for the others. I would even call this novel a sort of tear jerker if you are inclined to react emotionally to what you read.

Note: I recommend all three of her novels. They are entertaining, well written, and an excellent way to learn a lot about the last 80 or so years of Iranian history that still affects all of us.

Book 32 for 2026: “Together Tea”, Marjan Kamali

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The previous book I read is the author’s most recent novel. This one is her first novel published in 2013. Like the Lion Women novel, this one tells the story of Iranian families. When the novel begins in 1996, an Iranian couple who have lived in NYC for decades are trying to find a man for their daughter to marry. Well, the mother is, not so much the father, who is a successful doctor. He has adapted very well to the US, is into self help books, optimistic and enthusiastic. Although she has a job she likes, she misses Iran.

Part II begins in 1978 when their children are younger–they have two older sons and a younger daughter–and the Shah’s power is crumbling but its sequence is in question. Some of their relatives suddenly become so religious that they hardly recognize them. Then the revolution occurs, their daughter’s school has become all girls with mandatory hijab. Then the Iran/Iraq war occurs and the grandmother is killed by an Iraqi bomb while out buying pomegranates. They cover their windows with aluminum foil so Iraqi pilots cannot see the lights in houses. Finally, in desperation they leave for NYC after medical colleagues the father knows in NYC help them find a place there. While studying to take the test for his US medical license the dad works in a pizza parlor making pizza.

Then back to 1996, the daughter, Mina, decides she needs to visit Iran even though her father does everything he can to dissuade her. Mother, who still misses Iran and her family there, decides it is ok if she goes too. This part of the novel relates their visit to Iran, Mina’s reconnecting to her best friend who never left, how people there manage to live double lives with parties, Western clothes, and alcohol at home, but hijab and conservative behavior in public, including avoiding the morality police.

Like her other novel, this one is a good way to learn recent Iranian history while learning about Iranian food, family, friendship, love, and every day life.

Book 31 for 2026: “The Lion Women of Tehran”, Marjan Kamali

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This novel narrates the lives of two women who became best friends in elementary school in Tehran in the 1950s. One, Elaheh, who has lived in luxury until the death of her father forces her and her mother to move to a poor part of the city. Two, Homa, a rambunctious seven year old who lives nearby. Elaheh’s mother has no choice but to enroll her in the nearby public school where they meet and become best friends against the objection of Elaheh’s mother who thinks the people there are tacky and beneath her. Because Elaheh’s (Ellie) prefers to spend time at Homa’s house where there is an entire family–father, mother, children, who are warm and loving, her mother does various things to keep her from Homa’s family. It does not work and Homa’s mother teaches Ellie how to cook and they treat her as one of the own.

Their happy friendship is disrupted when Ellie’s mother marries her former husband’s brother and they move back to the wealthy part of town and Ellie is enrolled in one of the best schools in Tehran. Ellie works hard at her studies and becoming popular and succeeds. She is very embarrassed when Homa gets a scholarship to this school and shows up. Nevertheless, they reestablish their friendship and everything seems to go well until political turmoil occurs. They finish high school and enroll in the University of Tehran. Then betrayal and disaster ensues.

I could not stop reading because of the story. For those who know little of Iranian history in the last 100 years, through the events in the novel, the reader not only learns how difficult life can be in Iran but also a lot of recent Iranian history. It reveals the determination of Iranians to live the best they can regardless of the circumstances and how life can change instantly because of someone’s misguided words. After I finished this novel, I went to the library and requested Kamali’s other two novels.

Book 26 for 2026: “The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny”, Kiran Desai

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By an author whose previous novel won the Booker Prize, this novel was long listed for the most recent Booker Prize. Although 670 pages long, it did not take me as long as I expected to read this because I found I kept going because I wanted to know what was going to occur. It is the tale of two families and two young people, both of whom have studied and lived in the United States. The background city for both families is the Indian city of Allahabad. The two, retired, family patriarchs get together frequently to play chess even though their families are sometimes rivals for status and influence.. The two do not live far apart and all the older family members know each other, including those who have moved away to Delhi and other places. The youngest members do not know each other and accidentally meet on an overnight train. At that point they do not know that their two grandparents had tried to match make them in an arranged marriage. Later, this becomes an embarrassment.

Sonia wants to become a novelist and is attending college at a small liberal arts college in New England where she becomes involved with a famous but cruel artist who becomes obsessed with her and whose influence she has become unable to escape, initially literally and later psychologically. Sunny lives and wants to stay in NYC to escape the overbearing influence of his mother and the violence between her and the two brothers of her deceased husband.

Not wanting to reveal all the complexities of the lives of these two young people who come to love each other but whose lives keep tearing them apart and the challenges they face as they try to make sense of their lives, I will simply say this is a novel I recommend. The reader learns a lot of about Indian culture and its variances, about the huge differences among different parts of India, e.g. Goa and Delhi, but also how universal family and personal struggles really are.

Books 15 and 16 for 2026: “The Wrong End of the Telescope” and “The True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother)”, Rabih Alameddine

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This award winning author has a writing style all his own–both serious and very funny. How anyone can make serious topics so entertainingly funny is a unique gift. The setting of the first is the island of Lesbos when masses of Syrian and other refugees are landing and many NGOs go there to help the refugees. Mina Simpson is a Lebanese American doctor who goes on a two week trip there to help a friend who works for an NGO. Mina is a trans woman who has been rejected by all her Lebanese family except one brother with whom she is very close. He goes there to meet her. This is also the story of a refugee family, the mother of whom is dying from cancer, her small children, her husband, and the NGO people and others who do everything to help this family.

The second is his most recent novel and tells the life story of a philosophy teacher in Beirut. It starts in Beirut in 2023 then goes back to the Covid pandemic and the banking collapse in Lebanon from 2001 to 2021. Then it skips back to his childhood in 1960 to 1975, the Lebanese Civil War in 1975, and later to the port explosion that destroyed much of Beirut. This novel is Lebanese history from the viewpoint of this main character. We learn all about his mother, her best friend who seems to be some kind on international criminal gang leader, some of his students, classmates, and others. While much of it relates horrors of living in dire circumstances, it is also very funny. I found myself frequently laughing.

Note: I enjoyed these two books so much that I intend to read other novels by this author.

Book 7 for 2026: “Never Let Me Go”, Kazuo Ishiguro

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Categorized as science fiction, this novel relates a story so possible, it no longer seems like science fiction. Because it is so possible, I found it one of the most disturbing stories I have ever read. The first person narrator relates her personal story, the story of two of her best friends, and that of several other students at the boarding school where they have lived all their lives until they turn 16. Her feelings, her relationships with the other students and with the guardians who run the school are described in great detail and always from her point of view. At the age of 16, they are all sent to various places called Cottages where they experience their first interactions with anything beyond the perimeter of the boarding school where they have always lived and begin the training for the rest of their lives.

As I read this novel, I kept thinking of Epstein and his international ring which seemed to be out of the public eye until recently. If he could do this for decades without the general public knowing, I kept wondering if something like what occurs in this novel is actually occurring internationally and we just do not know it. I do know there is a black market for what occurs in the novel and that little to nothing is done about it. And given how little reaction officially overall has occurred regarding the Epstein files, would the general public accept what occurs in this novel if they felt it would benefit them personally. I do not want to say too much because it might ruin the novel for those who might want to read it and find out.

Book Four for 2026: “Playground”, Richard Powers

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Another intriguing novel by an author who has won both the Pulitzer and the National Book Award. Initially the four main characters do not seem to have any interactions with each other. 12 year old Evie’s life is changed forever when her father, the inventor of the first aqualung, makes her submerge in a pool to prove it works. She becomes one of the world’s most famous divers and oceanographers. Ina, an artist, grew up in US naval bases all over the South Pacific and eventually finds herself at a university in Illinois. Rafi, a genius black child, is pushed by his dad to apply to a private Jesuit high school where he meets Todd, a rich kid whose whose family provides scholarships to the school. The two become best friends in spite of different interests. Rafi loves literature and Todd loves computers. They bond over a thousands of years old Chinese game with which they become obsessed. They become roommates at the same university where Ina is a student. The three become best friends.

Decades later all these lives become intertwined on an island in the South Pacific–Makatea in French Polynesia, an island where the harvesting of giant phosphorus deposits nearly ruined it while furnishing the rest of the world with fuel to make planets grows faster and better and feed the world. Because of Evie’s obsession with the sea, I learned enormous amounts about the ocean and the varied animals that live there, some of which I had never heard of before. Because of Todd’s obsession with computers and his invention of an AI game, I learned a lot about how gaming works and how people become addicted. For Rafi, the agony and anger of often being the one left out, the one seen as the smart Black kid, and the only one in many circumstances affect how he views the world and himself and where life eventually takes him. From his character I learned new things about literature and how books and writing affect people and their relationships.

I could not stop reading this book. Years ago, when it first came out, I read the author’s novel, “The Overstay”. While the topics and characters are totally different, in some ways this novel reminded me of that story, of how our lives are often intertwined in all sorts of ways we never expected.

Book 50 for 2025: “The Well of Loneliness”, Radclyffe Hall

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Published in the US in 1928, banned in England, this is the first, well known lesbian novel and without doubt one of the saddest books I have ever read. Hall was already an award winning and popular novelist when she decided to write this novel. The main character, Stephen Gordon, was born to upper class English parents. Her parents had hoped for a boy and chosen the name Stephen. When she was born a girl, they decided to call her Stephen anyway. From an early age, she was different and preferred to ride horses and do outside activities with her father who adored her rather than wear frilly dresses and do the activities common for English girls at the time. Her mother found all this off putting and never showed any love or nurturing toward her. Later in life, after an unpleasant incident with a young woman who uses Stephen as a distraction from her boring life, Stephen’s mother throws her out of the family home and she moves to London where she writes a highly successful novel.

During WWI, they are desperate for ambulance drivers and Stephen is assigned to an all female ambulance regiment in France. There she meets another young woman who becomes her lover.

An English friend, a successful playwright, convinces Stephen to move to Paris where there are no laws against homosexuality and where there is a large community of similar people, many of whom are highly successful in their careers. She and her lover live there for many years, and Stephen successfully continues her career as a writer. Then an old friend from her childhood shows up and everything changes.

Book 46 for 2025: “Norwegian Wood”, Haruki Murakami

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This is the novel that shocked him by selling over a million copies and made him famous. It is the story of Toru, a young college student, whose two best friends from childhood change his life. One, his best male friend, commits suicide unexpectedly. Afterwards, the other friend, Naoko, a beautiful and mentally fragile young woman, and Toru spend their weekends just walking together all over Tokyo. As her mental health deteriorates, he increasingly falls in love with her and tries to help. Meanwhile, as Naoko becomes mentally more unstable, he meets another young woman, Midori, who is adventuresome, outgoing, and mentally stable. He does not want to give up on Naoko but is also drawn to Midori with whom he attends college.

The novel is written from the viewpoint of Toru. He tells not just about these women but also his very eccentric roommate at a dormitory and his friend, Nagasawa, who is very smart and disciplined but also quite immoral by Toru’s standards. Although the novel takes place in a Japan of several decades ago, Toru’s narrative and life seem quite modern and realistic.

One thing a reader from the US might notice is that all the characters go everywhere using public transportation. No cars are ever mentioned. Since several of the characters commit suicide, I decided to research the suicide rate in Japan. For decades the suicide rate of young people in Japan has been quite high and continues to be a concern there.

Although I am many decades older than all the main characters, I could not stop reading. This is a meaningful, very well written novel which I highly recommend. It is my second Murakami novel recently and I will read more.

Note: The version I read has the author’s notes from 2023 which are very informative and interesting. He apparently has to leave his home in Japan and go elsewhere, e.g. Greece, to write.