November Wrap-Up: My Favorite Reads of the Month
- The Bossy Bookworm
- 7 minutes ago
- 6 min read
Bossy Favorites of the Month
Here are my six favorite reads of November. I hope if you're heading into a long weekend that you find time to cozy in and read something wonderful.
What were some of your favorite reads this month?
01 A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar
I can't stop thinking about this fascinating near-future climate-change story of desperation, loyalty, and determination in Kolkata, India, and how a tiny bit of empathy might have unraveled the increasingly devastating whirlwind of conflict between the two main protagonists, who are each both hero and villain.
In a near-future Kolkata, India, Ma is the manager of a food pantry for those in need. She's days away from bringing her daughter and aging father to meet her husband in Michigan. But the famine is devastating in Kolkata, and Ma has been skimming food supplies for her own household. She justifies this to herself as a temporary measure before her departure.
But a desperate client of the food pantry has noticed her theft and becomes determined to strike back. And by happenstance, this revenge also threatens Ma's family's ability to travel to a land of plenty.
Majumdar twists the situation between thief and mother, continually shifting the reader's loyalties as each character makes decisions that spin off into increasingly destructive consequences. The more each digs in--bitter, resentful, greedy, desperate--the worse each of their situations become.
I can't stop thinking about this book and the mirror it holds to a reader, forcing an uncomfortable examination of excess, generosity, empathy, loyalty, but also greed, grasping, scarcity, and, in the end, encouraging a critical look at what we feel is our duty to one other in this world.
This was stressful, often claustrophobic, and fascinating.
I received a prepublication version of this title courtesy of NetGalley and Knopf.
For my full review of this book please see A Guardian and a Thief.
Megha Majumdar is also the author of A Burning.
02 Hemlock & Silver by T. Kingfisher
Based on my two Bossy reads so far, T. Kingfisher writes my favorite kind of fantasy novel: a wonderfully oddball main protagonist, a strange adventure, a mystery to be solved, and simmering romance with No Swooning or Annoying Drama whatsoever. I loved this story about an expert in poisons, with banter and clever deduction in an imagined world.
In Hemlock & Silver, Anja is a healer who since her young cousin's preventable death has obsessively focused on learning about, combating, and teaching others about poisons. To determine antidotes and treatments, she must regularly ingest deadly substances, but duty calls.
She's somewhat of a loner, part of a beloved family, and a merchant's daughter, but she's plainly dressed, tall, work-driven, and uninterested in social niceties, so she spends her time exhaustively researching and trying to help those who have ingested a potentially harmful substance.
But when the king personally arrives at her workshop, desperate for help with his sole surviving daughter, who he suspects is being poisoned, Anja must not only navigate the ins and outs of royal customs, adjust her practical wardrobe, and leave her personal research behind to travel to the king's distant palace.
I am allllll in on Kingfisher's novels. Everyone who recommended this author's work to me was correct, and I have no one to blame but myself for the delay in diving in.
Kingfisher imagines richly imagined fantasy worlds, and within them she slots fantastically imperfect and wondrous main protagonists whose thoughts, dialogue, motivations, and actions have me completely hooked. Romantic undercurrents are wonderful, and there is No Swooning or Ridiculousness. This is my fantasy sweet spot.
For my full review of this book please see Hemlock & Silver.
03 Awake: A Memoir by Jen Hatmaker
Jen Hatmaker's memoir explores her shock, grief, then growth after the end of her marriage, which she tells in her signature bold, frank, lionhearted manner while always displaying her deep love for her family and friends.
Jen Hatmaker, who was married before she could legally have a drink and who built her identity as a woman dedicated to her family, her religion, and her community, found her world turned upside down when she discovered in 2020 that her husband of over 25 years, the father of their five children, was having an affair.
Hatmaker's frank, sassy, conversational tone and her focus on authenticity, joy, and enthusiastic growth are evident here. She doesn't shy away from exploring heartbreak, betrayal, and shock, nor does she mine those experiences for drama or sit in them for a gratuitously long time. She protects her children's privacy. While sharing what she learns was her husband's extended infidelity and her world-stopping surprise at discovering it, she doesn't excoriate him, and she acknowledges the weaknesses in their marriage that existed prior to their split.
I love reading the stories of lives lived, so I frequently read memoirs. If you're interested in the stories of famous or little-known people's lives, you might want to check out these Bossy reviews of memoirs.
For my full review, please check out Awake.
04 The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai
Desai's first novel in decades is a 688-page tale that meanders through India, New York, family and romantic relationships, and career false starts, with missteps, mysterious, powerful magical realism elements, and an undercurrent of darkness and despair. The messy resolutions felt appropriately hard-fought after the characters' extended struggles.
Sonia is living away from her Indian family while she studies writing in Vermont, and after growing up used to having multiple family members around, feeding and speaking to her constantly, Sonia is still adjusting to the quiet of college, only having one housemate, and the cold and snow.
Sunny is a journalist in New York City, eager to escape his overbearing family home in India.
This is not a straightforward novel. Desai offers an ambitiously meandering tale in which many issues stretch out, increasingly twisted and unresolved, for much (sometimes all) of the book, often with little sense of progress for our characters.
Desai weaves darkness, powerful superstition, and magical realism through a wide-ranging story about family, tradition, fear, missteps, danger, and obtuse elements whose significance only in the end become clear(er) to our main protagonists. The situations around relationships and life choices are often messy, complex, mystifying, and frustrating. Current-day conflicts link to generational trauma, storytelling, and mysterious power.
Kiran Desai is also the author of The Inheritance of Loss.
I listened to the 688-page The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny as a 25.5-hour audiobook.
You can read my full review by clicking this link.
05 The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman
Grossman's reimagined Arthurian legend gives center stage to a ragtag band of misfits, celebrates diversity, and builds a patchwork of adventures, discovery, and widened horizons culminating in a satisfying new, reimagined path forward.
Collum is an instinctually gifted, strong knight who has literally fought for sword training as a lowly ward; his family has little use for him; and his heart is set upon joining King Arthur's court.
But when he finally makes his way to the Round Table, only elderly, impaired, has-been knights are left, and he learns that Arthur was killed weeks earlier. But Collum refuses to believe that a life as a knight is no longer possible for him. Along with Merlin's apprentice, Nimue, he becomes determined to usher in a new age, where Excalibur will be reclaimed, Camelot will be secure from would-be usurpers, and the kingdom will be inspired again by bravery and might.
I appreciated the epic length of the book (688 pages), in which each remaining knight gets page time and a recounting of key adventures. But the many points of view and meandering stories also felt a little broad at times, and I wished for more focus on Collum, while understanding that his early-days position didn't warrant the majority of the storytelling.
Grossman addresses issues of diversity in satisfying fashion; a transgender knight, a Muslim knight, and a gay knight are all represented. The full roster of knights--and the women who hold important roles in the tale--are all misfits who don't inspire great confidence, but collectively, they fight to find a path forward in a world that is changing around them.
I listened to The Bright Sword as an audiobook (it was twenty-three hours long).
06 In the Wild Light by Jeff Zentner
Zentner's wonderful young adult story of two Appalachian-born teen best friends plunged into an elite Northeastern boarding school allows for missteps and struggles as well as a satisfying boatload of self-discovery, growth, soaring success, and a path to a fulfilling future.
In rural Sawyer, Tennessee, teenaged Cash mows lawns and lives with his beloved grandparents since his mother's death from an opioid overdose. He loves the river, the wilderness, and the quiet of his Appalachian hometown, but he doesn't dare imagine a bright future for himself, here or anywhere else.
Cash's best friend Delaney is a genius who daydreams while working at Dairy Queen, and she's always braced for her mother's drug-addled, erratic behavior.
Zentner allows complex scenarios to wriggle and twist into something new. Characters stumble, struggle, grieve, and feel alone. They fight, find their inner strength, buck up, and go on. And they care for each other, dare to imagine alternate futures, take big swings, and allow for unanticipated joys and developments.
This ticked all of my boxes for a favorite young adult read.
I listened to In the Wild Light as an audiobook.
For my full review, please check out the page at this link.