What I read in November

Below is my monthly sum-up of what I read the previous month. If you missed October’s, it’s here.

If you've listened to Wondermine podcast you've probably heard me rave about The Love Songs of WEB DuBois by Honorée Fannon Jeffers. I’ve talked about it a lot and it’s worthy of all the air time one could give it. The Love Songs phenomenal epic that offers both a compelling, breathtaking and impossible-to-put-down story but also a first novel that is technically perfect and incredibly well crafted. 750+ pages and y'all, there is no extra. Every element has a purpose. And don't get me started on feeling so hard for characters that you wonder if they're not somehow people you've fallen in love with once and by some terrible life accident, lost touch with. They are unforgettable and immediately beloved. Books like Love Songs are so brilliant that their shine will endure well beyond our lifetimes. BUY THIS BOOK! Yes, I'm shouting.

I put down Percival Everett's Telephone because apparently I can't do books about young children dying from a rare disease. Somehow I can do murder fine though. Everett's newest, The Trees, is a book about a murder in a small Southern town, and then another, and another, and another. And if that's not peculiar enough there are some disquieting similarities to a lynching that happened half a century earlier. The Trees is set in early t*ump administration which just adds to how unsettling this whole damn book is. If you like the "not what I expected" kind of feeling, you might like this.

The title, I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem, may have you scratching your head. Perhaps like me, you last heard of Tituba when you were in grade school learning about the Salem witch trials. When I was little the Salem witch trials fascinated me. But I haven't thought about them since and when I saw this novel at Rofhiwa Books I knew I needed it. Tituba was one of those characters that I always wanted to know more about and Condé brings her to life. And how! Condé's Tituba is a witch who is dynamic, flawed, touched and misunderstood, doomed to eke out a miserable life despite her exceptional gifts. If you're a historical fiction fan, you'll love this.

My daughter got me into The Land of Stories series. And I really feel her pleasure for this series. It's fun, clever, imaginative and the characters have depth. My latest read in this series, Beyond The Kingdoms, is all that and more. Bonus: Alex, the protagonist is also a refreshingly strong female lead. For anyone following alone, The Land of Stories series is juvenile fiction and it's a nice, relatively light break from anything heavy that you've been lifting, book wise. (See: my own struggle with These Bones are Not My Child.)

Head back here next week for December’s list and later in January, the sum-up of the year!