Books to Check Out: November 2020 Reads

This was a fiction filled month for me. I’m all about reading many different styles and genres of books, and I think I did a good job this month of finding three books to satisfy my tastes. Hopefully one of them catches your attention, because they’re each thoroughly enjoyable in their own way.

Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

This has been on my TBR for years, since the book was released in fact. Why did I wait so long to read it then? Who knows. But I finally did it. Fangirl is about a girl named Cath, and how she makes her way through freshman year of college. There’s a lot for her to tackle: a rift growing between Cath and her twin sister Wren, the new relationships with her roommate Reagan and her friend Levi, a fiction writing class that gets more challenging by the day, and the stress of Cath’s father living alone with the two girls away at college. And of course, there’s Cath’s popular fan fiction of Simon Snow she has to upkeep through it all.

I absolutely adored this book, and if you haven’t read it yet you really need to. This isn’t just a book about what it’s like to be dedicated to a fandom. More importantly, this book is about growing up, putting yourself in uncomfortable situations, and trying to navigate what’s best for yourself. The character development Cath experiences in this book is amazing. I love watching her grow, because she’s so relatable in her fears and anxieties.

Cath is certainly the standout, but all of these characters are well fleshed out. You relate to each of their issues while being able to see their flaws, and I really appreciated that complexity. It was engaging, emotional, and fun. This is a great young adult book, but it can easily be enjoyed by anyone curious enough to pick it up.

Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill

This was a book that took me by storm. If you want to talk about tight storytelling, believable characters, and incredible writing talent, this is the book for you.

Dept. of Speculation has no named characters. It’s just a wife, her husband, and their child. This book is about their relationship, from when they meet, to years down the line as they endure hardship after hardship. It sounds very uneventful, but in fact there are plenty of interesting things that happen.

What makes this book so good is that it takes everyday relationship drama and writes about it in a compact yet impactful way. For a short book with no named characters, the details and emotions are so in depth and honest. I loved reading this, and I felt for these nameless characters. Every sentence was beautifully written and sharp. The writing was phenomenal, both in its metaphors and in how it managed to tell such a complex, long story in such a short amount of time. If you want to see some good writing, you have to read this book.

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

You can thank last month’s Shirley Jackson biography for getting me to sit down and finally read this one. Hill House is a well known and well respected horror novel, and with good reason.

This book is relatively simple, a small group of people live in a haunted house for a while, but that makes it all the more scary. Like Offill’s book, Hill House is quite short, and it packs a powerful punch. While it’s a ghost story, it’s also a psychological thriller, and one that I was glad to have finished on a rainy, windy night. This one is all about atmosphere.

Hill House is everything you want in a good horror novel. Watching the protagonist, Eleanor, slowly start to unravel as small things build up will put you on the edge of your seat. The way Shirley Jackson built anticipation in this book is so well done, and it’s easy to see why this is her most popular book. Every little thing, from disorienting room changes to doors opening and closing by themselves, is enough to spook the reader. In a way, you feel a bit similar to Eleanor while you’re reading. Not to mention, the way it catapults to the end is something you need to read to believe.

The bottom line is that there's a ton of great fiction out there, and this is just a taste of all the styles out there for you to read. Maybe give one of these a shot and see what you like!