Books of The Month — February 2020
1. Becoming by Michelle Obama
Becoming was my first audio book and I am glad I chose this experience. So many of my friends had suggested that I prefer the audio book over the book for this one and I am so glad I did. Michelle Obama’s read in her voice touched me deeply.
Becoming is the story Michelle’s life from being a black girl who grew up in a poor family in the south side of Chicago to her overcoming her boundaries and getting into Harvard, working as a lawyer and then her term as the First Lady of USA. I loved how honest, touching and emotional this book was. The book isn’t about politics but political experiences do come into picture. It wasn’t about what Barack Obama did or did not do as a president but rather how a family of four had to still maintain normalcy in a job that was mostly chaos. It’s a book that inspires you push your boundaries and do more. The book is extremely well written and I loved it with all my heart.
2. Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
I absolutely loved this book! The book won the Booker Prize in 2019 and tells the story of 12 women, all from different backgrounds and different struggles. All women are black and British and very different characters from each other. She presents us with a broad and diverse spectrum of black women’s voices, all distinct, from differing backgrounds, ages, roots, class, occupations, families, from many parts of the country and sexuality in all its forms.
We have characters who have struggled with homosexuality, sexual assault, being trans, poverty, abusive relationships and characters who have dealt with patriarchy their whole lives. The book is as feminist as gets.
I loved how each story is independent yet there are glimpses of each character in each other’s life. That sends out a message that women can uplift women in so many small ways.
The only thing which irked me about the book was it’s unusual punctuation. The sentences end midway and abruptly move to a new line. This sort of makes it difficult to read the book in the beginning but you kind of get used to it.
3. Educated by Tara Westover
Educated is both a tale of both hope and horror. Tara Westover was the youngest of the seven children in her family. She grew up in rural Idaho. Tara’s dad was a diplomat, he never believed in a formal education or doctors or anything developed by the Government. Tara’s siblings believed they were being “homeschooled”. At 17, Tara decided to pursue college after advice from her elder brother Tyler. She went to BYU then to Cambridge and then to Harvard. Tara’s story is touching in so many ways, and how an education helped her escape her predestined future at Idaho. The world in which Tara was raised was one in which a powerful patriarchy, fed by a fundamentalist religious beliefs, applied its considerable pressure to push her into what was considered the proper role for a young woman, namely homemaker, mother, probably following in her mother’s dual careers as herbalist and midwife. It took her years to process her upbringing and to break her mindset out of it. She was abused by her eldest brother Shawn and she had been denying it her whole life. The day she finally decided to confront her family about it, they broke their ties with her. They were deeply fed by misogyny.
Tara’s process of self-discovery is beautifully captured in Educated. It’s the kind of book that I think everyone will enjoy, no matter what genre you usually pick up.
She ends the book on the sentence, “You could call this selfhood many things. Betrayal. Metamorphosis. Fatality. Brutal. I call it an education” and that signifies how an education can help you decide a better future for yourself.
4. Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat by Oliver Sacks
The book is a collection of stories of people with rare neurological disorders and the writer’s reasoning of them. The book was originally published in 1985, and for that I will give it credit that it was way ahead of its time.
Since it’s just a collection of incidents with quite less factual information or in depth understanding of the cases, you don’t really understand if the author is trying to make a point. The book starts of intriguing but gets redundant slowly. By the time I reached the end, I was bored and nothing about these unique cases kept me interested anymore.
This has been a month of good books! Tell me what you guys read in the comments below!
