Lillian Li’s Recommended Reading List
Photograph of Lillian Li by Margarita Corporan
Lillian Li is the author of the newly released novel Bad Asians, and Number One Chinese Restaurant, which was an NPR Best Book, and longlisted for the Women’s Prize and the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize. The Sun (UK) stated that her latest novel Bad Asians “is a must-read: beautifully messy and uncomfortably real.” Further praise, such as the author of the Rental House, Weike Wang, who we have also interviewed here at Sunny’s Journal and Press, declared: “Bad Asians is a sharp, propulsive novel about ambition, identity, and the bonds that shape us—whether we choose them or not.” Lillian’s work has been published in the New York Times, Granta, One Story, Bon Appetit, Travel & Leisure, and The Guardian.
Lillian shares her recommended reading list with us below!
To learn more about Lillian and her inspiring career, visit here.
“At a dinner, someone asked the table about a book that ruined their lives, and this immediately sprang to mind. Ruin in the sense that I couldn’t go back to normal living after I finished it. One of the only books in recent memory where I just stared into space and felt the last line resound through my chest. Gladiator-style death matches of incarcerated people for the pay-per-viewing masses - it’s shocking and also, sadly, frighteningly, not.”
“Nobody writes anger - pent-up, tongue-biting, white-knuckle gripped anger - like Wang. This murderously funny novel is centered around the rental houses an interracial couple lives in over the years of their marriage, with four key moments revealing the layers of their love and conflict.”
“I don’t normally read horror, but this gothic haunted house novel combines Filipino history with folklore, delivering a thrilling, and poignant story about the cost of desire. Josephine is lured into a game of life and death with her brother, his girlfriend (and Josephine’s former friend), and her childhood best friend Hiraya on Hiraya’s family estate, a labyrinthine mansion with eerily veiled servants and rooms full of dark corners and secrets. You’ll stay up too late reading this, and then stay wide awake to keep the monsters out of your dreams!”
“This book doesn’t come out until June, but it’s such a charming, philosophical read that I had to include it. Georgie, an office drone, ends up quitting his job to go travel the world for a year, only to end up mugged before he even gets to the airport. Recovering in a hostel in his hometown, he ends up posting pictures that are misinterpreted as being from his travels, and he becomes a social media sensation. I loved the reflections on success, human connection, and the false promises of not only social media, but also world travel, at least the type commodified by Instagram.”
“I love a book about a friend group (as evidenced by my own book), and Hornak’s was a fun, frothy, and still emotionally resonant read about college friends reuniting at a wedding. Old resentments, secrets, and misunderstandings are revealed and rehashed, and by bringing all these ugly feelings out in the open, it proves the old adage true, that the best disinfectant is oxygen.”
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