Anna Wang's 3 favorite reads in 2024

• 2023
• 2024

I’ve heard a saying whose source I can’t quite track down: “Few people can be convinced by reasoning, but many can be influenced by a good story.” Matt Bell’s Appleseed is precisely the kind of story that can influence our worldview. Blending mythology, science fiction, and apocalyptic thriller, this epic novel explores the complex relationship between nature and humanity.
The novel unfolds through three interconnected plotlines. The first is set in the 18th century, where two half-brothers plant apple trees across the uninhabited Ohio frontier. Inspired by early settlers, their ambition is to maximize the land’s productivity. The second plotline takes place in the near future, where a powerful corporation attempts to reverse global warming. To do so, it convinces the U.S. government to abandon the western half of the country, relocating citizens to the east and conscripting them into indentured servitude to farm modified plants and animals. The goal: to re-cool the earth. The third plotline is set in a distant future, where a hybrid creature capable of self-recycling follows a coded mission. While scouring ice fields, it makes a profound discovery, sparking a quest to repopulate the earth and restore humanity.
The novel cautions us against the well-meaning desire to “save” the world. This world, composed of both nature and humanity, is marked by an ongoing tension between the two. From the moment humans first impacted nature, we embarked on a journey to survive—prioritizing efficiency for the sake of survival—while nature has continued on its own course. Initially, humans seemed to win, but crossing a certain threshold has left us with a conundrum, just like the plot shows: our efforts to halt global warming may inadvertently trigger global cooling. Yet humanity seems unable to stop, and perhaps it’s too late to simply let nature take its course.
The only suspense left for us is this: in the battle between humans and nature, who will have the final say? It’s a question we won’t see answered in our lifetime. So, I propose we seal Appleseed in a time capsule and bury it deep within a cave. In the likely event of an apocalypse, Appleseed can be found by future beings, who could judge for themselves how much of Matt Bell’s vision came true.

I’m not typically a poetry reader because poetic language often requires a lot of work to unpack. However, I read The City in Which I Love You by Li-Young Lee because it was assigned in my “Writing Across the Genre” class. This book completely changed my perspective, making me realize that poetry might be the most revealing genre when it comes to a writer’s inner world.
Before we began our class discussion, our professor showed us a few minutes of Lee’s speech. The most profound part was his discussion of “the double life”—a life of scarcity versus a life of abundance. These concepts became essential clues for me in unraveling his poems.
My favorite poem in this collection is “Furious Versions,” consists of seven sections and spans 17 pages.
In section 1, the speaker “waken in the used light / of someone’s spent life, to discover” that he is burdened by memories (“I was born in Bandung, 1958; / on my father’s back, in borrowed clothes, / I came to America.”) and he faces his sense of inadequacy (“I’d answer in an oceanic tongue / to Professor, Capitalist, Husband, Father.) As time passes by ("I feel the hours. Do they veer / to dusk? Or dawn?"), memories "revise" him.
The rest of the poem continues to explore the entanglement of history, memory, and time—the complex conditions the poet seeks to understand and transform into art. The poem is rich with metaphors, and the one I appreciate most is: “the mind... snagged on the world.” The speaker sees the world and cannot unsee it, much like a woman’s stockings caught on a thorny plant as she wanders through a garden.
In section 6, the speaker hears the sound of the trees in a landlocked place, but he is “full of the sound of water.” Why? Because “To think of the sea / is to hear in the sound of trees / the sound of the sea’s work, / the wave’s labor to change / the shore, not for the shore’s sake, nor the wave’s, / certainly not for me…unless you count / my memory, my traverse / of sea one way to here.” It is the poet’s imaginative mind that connects the sound of the sea and the sound of the “landlocked poplars.” Thus, the speaker declares: “I’ll tell my human / tale, tell it against / the current of that vaster, that / inhuman telling. / I’ll measure time by losses and destructions.”
This is how the poet navigates life: when he is “unable / to see in one darkness… [he] shut his eyes / to see into another.” As artists, we all like to claim we can see through the murky light. The truth is that some truly can, while some cannot, but pretend. Our anxiety arises when we fail to convince others that we can grasp what we claim is there even when we really can.
How do we handle it? Lee simply shrugs and says, “I have to live with that.” He has the confidence because he experiences the life of abundance himself while I often glimpse it secondhand—in great literature. I haven’t yet created great literature myself. I haven’t practiced my art form massively. I’ve dabbled, but not nearly enough.
The only way to truly see that life of abundance is to practice your art form, to understand yourself, the world, and the medium (media) in which you work. That’s what Lee’s poetry taught me.

Many scholars have answered “why read classics,” and I couldn’t answer better than, say, Harold Bloom. If I had the choice, I’d pick contemporary books for pleasure. I wouldn’t voluntarily pick up a classic. But this summer, I read Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham for my research.
As a literature student, my initial reaction was that its writing style felt outdated. It doesn’t employ experimental techniques, no stream-of-consciousness, no unreliable narrators, no free indirect discourse. It simply follows a boy growing into a man, told in straightforward chronological order. I thought it was going to be dull. But as I continued reading, I found myself drawn to the character development and, surprisingly, started to care about the protagonist, Philip Carey.
This book centers on self-discovery. How does one come to understand themselves? Maugham proposes two criteria: discovering what you love to do as a profession and finding the kind of companionship you seek. Philip constantly battles on both fronts, and much of his struggle is limited by money. Initially, he abandons a secure future as a priest and decides to study modern languages in Germany. He then spends a year as an accounting apprentice before pursuing art in Paris. After two years of drawing, he realizes he’s not the most talented and, reluctantly, turns to medicine. By this point, he’s exhausted half his inheritance. Still, if he economizes, he can support himself through the necessary years of medical school before securing a job in a hospital.
However, he falls in love with a waitress named Mildred, who has no interest in him. Philip spends a fortune pursuing her, eventually losing his last savings in the stock market, which leaves him homeless. At his lowest, his friend Athelny, a passionate but humble press secretary, helps him back on his feet. Inspired by Athelny’s zest for life, Philip resolves to travel the world once he earns his medical license.
When Philip’s uncle dies, he leaves Philip a small fortune, enough for him to return to medical school. Upon finishing his degree, Philip decides to find a position at cruise ships. His heart is set on “affronting and comprehending the manifold wonders of places more distant and more strange.” It is at this juncture he falls in love with Sally, Athelny’s daughter, who tells Philip that she might be pregnant. During this time of uncertainty, Philip wrestles with his decision and ultimately concludes that the honorable choice is to marry Sally, accept a local hospital job, and settle down. This choice, however, means abandoning his dreams of adventure.
As I followed Philip’s journey, I found myself constantly guessing what “Of Human Bondage” refers to. At first, I thought it might be vanity, which drove his infatuation with the unworthy Mildred, or perhaps greed, which led him to lose his fortune in the stock market. But Maugham’s great insight, revealed in the book’s last pages, is that our ultimate bondage is our desire for meaningful human connections.
Why does Philip throw himself into Sally’s arms as he’s on the brink of his long-awaited adventure? It’s because the desire to connect deeply with another person is our strongest binding force as human beings. In retrospection, Philip realizes he couldn’t break free from this mental shackle and he mutters, “I’m so damned weak.” This confession captures the heart of Maugham’s message: our yearning for connection is both our strength and our ultimate human bondage.