These are the books I read in November 2020 with a rating reflecting my opinion on them. I am leaving books not available in English out for your convenience. At the bottom, I will be sharing some recommendations that fall under the category fiction, non-fiction, or non-fiction political. These recommendations are books I have not read myself, so proceed with caution as I cannot speak to their actual quality.
Read
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
A visceral look at America through the lens of a memoir. This is a story about a man and his son, but it is also a story of a country and its people. If you seek a short book to see America through the eyes of a black man, this is a great one to start with. “One cannot, at once, claim to be superhuman and then plead mortal error”.
Fox 8 by George Saunders
A short tale told by a fox who sees the good and bad of humanity. While the main character, Fox 8, is pretty entertaining and sympathetic, the narrative style is so hard to read since it is entirely told through phonetic spelling. Plus the story was very meh, nothing special at all. The language seems like a gimmick rather than an asset, and without it the story is pretty basic, and honestly kind of boring.
Don’t Even Think About It by Sarah Mlynowski
What if you could hear everyone’s thoughts? And what if a group could hear yours, too? To 22 high school students that’s exactly what happens. What follows is high jinx, a lot of unwanted revelations, and a mystery of how exactly they acquired this power. While the mystery was very compelling and the writing style unique and engaging, the characters were a little cookie-cutter.
It Gets Better edited by Dan Savage and Terry Miller
Reading this one for VC Book Club, I had high hopes, even though essay collections can be difficult since there are so many different perspectives included, some of which will be more poignant than others. It Gets Better is a valiant effort to show LGBTQ+ kids a brighter future as well as support and understanding. Still, I couldn’t really connect with this collection, finding a lot of it dreadfully repetitive. The non-LGBTQ+ people’s essays, largely politicians, felt more or less hollow, while beyond repetition some of the other essays had messages that worried me, that didn’t quite walk the line between gloomy and hopeful, realistic and depressing.
Girl Made of Stars by Ashley Herring Blake
A powerful story of love and loss, betrayal, and the mortifying realities of life. Mara has just broken up with her girlfriend Charlie when a party changes everything. Her friend Hannah says Mara’s twin brother raped her. What follows is a heartbreaking series of events centered around who gets believed, how much girls and women suffer in this world, whose actions get excused and whose gets punished. This book does not hold any punches. Mara, having to accept that her brother, one of the closest people in her life, is capable of violence like this, while also dealing with her own sexual assault at the hands of her middle school teacher 3 years prior, on top of her complicated relationships. On top of this messy and complicated and human story there is great representation with Mara being bi and Charlie being gay and nonbinary. This is a painful read but a beautiful one, too.
Sorted: Growing Up, Coming Out, and Finding My Place by Jackson Bird
An educational as well as moving memoir about finding yourself and your place in the world. I highly enjoyed the narrative style, the humor, dynamics, and heartfelt insight into the author’s life. From educational materials for cis and trans people alike to an unflinching look into the effects of strict gender roles, repression, and mental health, this is a great read, especially for those seeking to learn and expand their horizon.
Troilus and Cressida by William Shakespeare
This book centered around the Troyan War took me about 30 times the time to read a book of this length usually. It was boring, dragged out, filled with too many characters, and simply a chore. It felt like a worse Romeo and Juliet. A few good lines here and there could not save this one for me. Glad to finally be done with it.
The Minuteman by Greg Donahue
An interesting look into Nazism in America through the lens of one man fighting against it in early 20th century Newark, New Jersey. The story was quite fascinating and vividly narrated. The level of detail varied quite a bit, and a few assumptions were treated too much like gospel. Still, very compelling audiobook.
Only Mostly Devastated by Sophie Gonzales
I feel kind of conflicted about this novel. It’s got a lot going for it, great side characters, some lovely representation and discussion of social issues (being out vs being in the closet, how to deal with grief and death, bisexuality, PCOS), good family dynamics, and characters having their own passions outside of their relationships. Still, I wasn’t invested in Ollie and Will’s relationship at all, the flashback scenes to their summer romance barely added anything to the story, while other issues were not discussed enough. Some dialogue felt a bit wooden, too, and not that much actually happens in the book. Not 100% why exactly this didn’t resonate with me as much as I wanted it to.
Animal Farm by George Orwell
Read for VC Book Club. This is a short, yet incredibly succinct and moving tale of a group of farm animals that rebel against their cruel master, only to have the ideals they fought for be corrupted by a new ruling class. It is hard to read this and not feel dread and sorrow at the animals’ fate, to not marvel at how incredibly well this is written, simple yet powerful.
Lock & West by Alexander C. Eberhart
Wow. Just wow. I had been warned that this is so much more than a cute love story, but I wasn’t warned how incredibly brilliant and encompassing it is! I devoured this book in mere hours and loved it all the way through. Lock and West are incredibly compelling characters, troubled, passionate, funny, and most of all real. I rooted not only for their relationship but for both of them individually. Besides an A+ love story, an A+ coming-of-age story, and an A+ family story, this book also deals with an incredible amount of issues and does so gracefully. From disability to racism to mental health to sexual assault and rape to parental neglect and abuse, a lot gets addressed. I really loved this book and its unique storytelling, from the post-it notes to the narrative voices. A stand out and I’ll be sure to read the author’s other works asap!
Devine Intervention by Martha Brockenbrough
Maybe it’s because I’ve already read a book with a similar concept (The Catastrophic History of You and Me), but I really didn’t connect with this book. The general plot and the direction it went in, a girl who has a guardian angel looking over her until she dies and tries everything to have a decent goodbye, was interesting, but the execution was quite poor. The characters were across the board either unsympathetic or incoherent, the world building felt heartless and cold, and the ending was anticlimactic. The only thing this book had going for it was its originality (you don’t see a human soul possessing a dog’s dead body every day) and its humor. Still, I was left disappointed by this book.
Recommendations
Fiction
The Law of Inertia by Sophie Gonzales
“When James’s boyfriend died by suicide, no one questioned what happened. A foster kid with a checkered past and a history of suicide attempts, Ash was just another number in a system that failed him. But to James, Ash was never just a number, and the facts around his death no longer stack up so neatly.
Now James has plenty of questions, and the one person who might have held the answers—Ash’s older brother, Elliot—has left town. And if anyone knows where he is, they aren’t talking. As James searches for Elliot and uncovers the tangle of lies and false alibis he left in his wake, he grows suspicious of what really happened on Ash’s last day.
After all, innocent people don’t run.”
Golden Boy by Abigail Tarttelin
“The Walker family is good at keeping secrets from the world. They are even better at keeping them from each other. Max Walker is a golden boy, with a secret that the world may not be ready for. This novel is a riveting tale of a family in crisis, a fascinating exploration of identity, and a coming-of-age story like no other.”
Political
Separated: Inside An American Tragedy by Jacob Soboroff
“Donald Trump’s most infamous decision as president, to systematically separate thousands of migrant families at the border, was in effect for months before most Americans saw the living conditions of the children in custody at the epicenter of the policy. NBC News and MSNBC correspondent Jacob Soboroff was among the first journalists to expose the truth of what their lives were like on the inside after seeing them firsthand. His widely shared reports in June 2018 ignited public scrutiny that contributed to the President reversing his own policy by Executive Order, and earned Soboroff the Cronkite Award for Excellence in Political Broadcast Journalism and the 2019 Hillman Prize for Broadcast Journalism.
In Separated, Soboroff weaves together his own experience unexpectedly covering this national issue with other key figures in the drama he met along the way, including feuding administration officials responsible for tearing apart and then reuniting families, and the parents and children who were caught in the middle. He reveals new and exclusive details of how the policy was carried out, and how its affects are still being felt. “
This Is an Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt Is Shaping the Twenty-First Century by Mark Engler and Paul Engler
“From protests around climate change and immigrant rights, to Occupy, the Arab Spring, and #BlackLivesMatter, a new generation is unleashing strategic nonviolent action to shape public debate and force political change. When mass movements erupt onto our television screens, the media consistently portrays them as being spontaneous and unpredictable. Yet, in this book, Mark and Paul Engler look at the hidden art behind such outbursts of protest, examining core principles that have been used to spark and guide moments of transformative unrest.”
Nonfiction
Astrophysics for Young People in a Hurry by Neil deGrasse Tyson
“From the basics of physics to big questions about the nature of space and time, celebrated astrophysicist and science communicator Neil deGrasse Tyson breaks down the mysteries of the cosmos into bite-sized pieces. Astrophysics for Young People in a Hurry describes the fundamental rules and unknowns of our universe clearly—and with Tyson’s characteristic wit, there’s a lot of fun thrown in, too.”
Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s by Frederick Lewis Allen
“From Frederick Lewis Allen, former editor-in-chief of Harper’s magazine, comes a classic history of 1920s America, from the end of World War I to the stock market crash and the beginning of The Great Depression. Originally published in 1931, Only Yesterday has an exuberance and proximity to its subject—the Roaring Twenties in all its scandal and glory—that uniquely captures the feel of the era.”
The Congressional Report 