Books like Jasmine Zumideh Needs a Win

I was wrung out after finishing this book and immediately looked around for someone else who’d read it. I needed a shoulder to cry on. If Endless Love is about lives undone by teenagers driven insane by love and lust, then this book is its counterpoint: two teenage outsiders whose love and understanding help them survive.

There’s awfulness in Eleanor’s life, but there’s also exchanging comics and listening to Joy Division with Park on a shared walkman on the school bus. I loved these characters completely and rooted for them with everything I had. 

Like Sarah in my book (and me at one point, too), the mysterious German woman in the pea-green coat who faints in front of an eclectic London music shop has a broken relationship with music. Ironically, she’s good at fixing things and begins an awkward friendship with the shop’s owner Frank, who has a magical ability to match music with people. With its wonderfully flawed characters, this book is a tender tale of healing—both from music and with music—and a celebration of all musical genres.

Though you couldn’t pay me one million dollars to wear giant shoulder pads again, I’m taking you there with this one because it’s all about eighties fashion with The Carrie Dairies. And who can resist, because those high-waisted acid-wash jeans seem to have come back full circle to haunt us.  

This book was a bit removed from my usual picks, but I couldn’t resist with all the hype about The Carrie Diaries TV show. It’s a Sex and the City flashback to Carrie Bradshaw’s 1980’s senior year. And like the wildly popular, decade-defining television show, this book series has everything for your guilty pleasures. Really, it’s a super-fun easy read and serves to answer those nagging questions we all had about Carrie’s past when SATC was at its height. But proceed with caution. You may find yourself slapping on some blue eyeliner and iridescent lip stick.  

This wonderful YA set in the seventies is part Booksmart with a bit of Judy Blume sprinkled in. I love humor in books and at times, this one will have you snorting your latte through your nose. The story follows Susan, an aspiring soccer player who just happens to have the hots for the foxy coach. What follows is a book that shines a light on a teenage girl owning her sexuality, building lasting friendships, and discovering what she really wants. I loved this book and though I read it a while ago, it has stuck with me in such a good way.

When I was growing up, there was zero queer Iranian representation to inspire me or guide me.

I felt quite literally invisible in the world, and my own mission has been to flood the world with queer Iranian stories to fill this void. Thankfully, a number of other authors are now doing the same, including Sara Farizan, Arvin Ahmadi, and Adib Khorram.

I chose the sequel to Adib’s masterful Darius the Great Deserves Better because I love how it leans into intergenerational family dynamics, which are a particular passion of mine (and of most immigrants who must work to unite the disparate parts of our histories).

Sick, Carter’s White House adviser on Iran, offers a cogent, deeply insightful account of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the seizure of American hostages in Tehran, and the Carter Administration’s inadequate response to the unfolding crisis. In a later book, The October Surprise, Sick falls just short of proving that the Reagan campaign conspired with the Iranian government to delay the release of the hostages until after the 1980 election. But he is convincing in his claim that the truth in this sordid affair has never fully come to light.

Firoozeh Dumas’ humor is so natural that it’s effortless on the page. Many immigrant stories are so dark as to simply become glorified moralizing, but here is a genuinely interesting and fun story that teaches a lesson without being so heavy-handed that it’s little more than a treatise.

I identified with Zomorod’s (“Cindy’s”) new kid on the block in California experience. Likewise, I was a nerd who had to move often, so it wasn’t always easy to make new friends, especially when it was the odd ones who were willing to take on the new kid! 

Parents complicated the situation as well, so seeing how Zomorod navigated during the difficult time of the Iran hostage crisis was personally encouraging. I guess all kids worry that they are weird and one mistake away from shunning, so in that respect, Dumas’ story should appeal to all kinds of kids, not just Persian-Americans. 

For me, Argo is one of those rare finds in spy books. It is a book about an actual intelligence operation that went as planned, written by a living CIA intelligence officer who took part in it.

One of the hallmarks of intelligence operations is making the enemy believe what you want them to think. Misinformation and disinformation comprise a large part of the work, but sometimes, it all comes down to good old-fashioned deception. That's what makes Argo work.

And, hey, any book good enough to be made into a movie that wins an Oscar for Best Picture is worth my time.

Dr. Habib Levy, the author of this book, is my grandfather, who spent half a century researching and writing the first comprehensive source on the history of the Jews of Iran. 

I have often referred to this wealth of information for my historical novels. But never has it been a more important source and inspiration than for my most recent novel.

Against the backdrop of an unlucky courtship between two young students in today’s Tehran, this entertaining novel uses humour to ridicule the myopic mentality of contemporary Iran’s religious leadership that wishes to see itself as cultured and intellectual.