Best Books Read, November

A selection of the best books I read in November, which, admittedly, still isn’t done yet but close enough:

• Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nahisi Coates.  A series of essays, framed as a letter written to his son, on the poisonous Dream of a white America.  Just amazing.
• The Omnivore’s Dilemma, by Michael Pollan.  This is not a screed on what types of food are healthiest for the body.  This is a book on how industrial agriculture is affecting the planet (hint: it depends on oil, so we better start thinking about changing it).
• The Girl Next Door, by Jack Ketchum.  I can’t really recommend this.  It was a great book about everyday evil spiraling out of control, though.  A genuinely horrifying book.  I started out on audio with the author reading, but had to switch to text because I knew I wasn’t going to make it through every detail being slowly read out like that.
• The Hour of the Star, by Clarice Lispector.  A really short, weird, meta book, very Kafka-esque.  I laughed all the way through it, but then that’s usually how Kafka takes me, too.

Runners up…I also read the complete Death Note saga (finally) but was massively disappointed about the ending, which should have occurred about 2/3 of the way through the series.  Meh.  In Cold Blood was good, but didn’t particularly hold me, and I had to skim a bit toward the end.  The Hot Zone was very dramatic, but I wished it had given more details.  Affinity was fun, but not up to the level of Fingersmith.  The Ruins was a one-trick pony but did that trick well.  I just didn’t care for the trick.