November 2020 📚 Wrap up

I know that I'm very late for November's book wrap up, but I didn't have much time to read. And unfortunately, the last book that I picked to read in November took me a long time to finish. Nevertheless, I'm here now and I have three awesome books to talk about. 

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1892)

This is a short story about the experience of a woman being told to rest and keep physical and mental activity to a minimum. 

I had to read this for a literature course in my BA about two years ago and I reread it in order to use it for my MA assignment. I loved going back to it and focusing even more on the gradual mental deterioration of the protagonist due to the rest cure. Although it is a feminist, female-empowering focused text, I believe that any human can identify with the suffering of feeling controlled and restricted. So no matter your gender, just pick up this book because it is an enlightening and fast read. 

Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine (2014) 

This is a book I had to read for a class and I'm grateful for that because I doubt that I would have picked this one otherwise. It is hard to describe this book as Claudia Rankine experiments with the writing a lot; we have memory fragments, poetry, essays. Actually this book belongs to the still new and not yet completely definable genre of creative-critical essay. 

Either you are into experimental writing or not, I believe that all people must read this. It portrays how victims of racism feel in diverse and powerful ways. We get to experience these feelings by being presented with a wide range of racist incidents from microaggressions to black athletes being mistreated to ordinary black people being murdered. Honestly, I think that it is the perfect anti-racist read.

 A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara (2015)

We get to see four college friends, Jude, Willem, Malcolm and JB, growing old. They seem like the perfect friend group and the love among them is genuine and palpable. But there are some obstacles that even love might not be able to overcome. 

A Little Life is infamous for the traumatic and disturbing descriptions of physical and sexual abuse, pedophilia, self-harming and suicide. If any of these themes trigger you, you can let this book go. 

Personally, I liked reading about four ambitious and artistic young people and seeing them growing up as it was something that I could easily identify with as a young adult myself. Plus, the constant reminder that life isn't always perfect but a combination of depressingly sad, purely blissful and everything-in-the-between moments is very authentic and relatable. In addition to that, the huge size of the book -my edition was 720 pages- highlights the paradox that a character who keeps belittling the value of his existence needs a pretty hefty book in order to contain all -or most- of his life experiences. 

My only criticism is that there are characters, who despite their great significance to the story, are one-dimensional and without a memorable personality. The most typical example has to be Julia. Even though other characters talk highly of her and say how much they love her, we know almost nothing about her as a person. To conclude, this book is all about friendship and how much friends can help a self-deprecating and traumatised person to get through life. 

You can check my experience of reading A Little Life by clicking and reading this Twitter thread. 

Okay, I might have shared this post really late, but you have to admit that I talked about some really interesting and thought-provoking books. 

Check the blog's TikTok in order to get prepared for next month's wrap up. Don't forget to leave a comment below sharing your opinion on the books mentioned or telling me what book you're currently reading.