lectrixnoctis's reviews
57 reviews

"Eighteen" is a terrific coming of age novel by the award-winning author and illustrator Jenny Jaeckel. She has written the family saga "House of Rougeaux" with its sequel "Boy, Falling".

Thank you, Jenny Jaeckel, for sending me an advance copy of your book in exchange for an honest review!

Arriving in a rain-swept city after a lone bus journey, eighteen-year-old Talia's world breaks wide open. Soon she is hunting chickens, telling bad jokes to a forthcoming boss, fielding a roommate's insults about her décor, all the while homesick for a home that never existed. 

In a chance meeting, Talia meets George, a young man whose devotion to building sailboats flashes a chat that leads to much more. When a sailing job takes George away to Mexico, Talia struggles with phantoms from her troubled past until a growing faith in herself brings her to take a courageous decision, stepping into the unexplored and herself in a way she never has before.

This story is set between 1980 and 1990 in America and written in the first person narrated by Talia.

The central theme is growing up, coming to terms with your sexuality and just falling in love. All these things happen to Talia between the age of 16 till 21. We, as the reader, follow her along the way of having her first sexual experiences and experiencing her first-ever heartbreak. We are going to see her highest highs and the lowest lows. We see her graduating from high school and starting college. The entire book felt incredibly realistic, which was fantastic.

I especially loved that the representation was not forced. It was just a side-effect to a character and not the primary personality trait since sometimes you do get representation, but it seems forced. Of course, I can't speak about the gay or Jewish representation entirely since I'm not part of it.

The author's writing style was, as always, a delight to read, and the story you did keep captivating me. However, I have to say that up until the halfway mark. I was not fond of Talia's personality since I did not enjoy her constantly going out and making foolish mistakes she might regret, even knowing that she will. Still, I think that is a "me-problem". Furthermore, the age difference was a bit much for me. I highly recommend this book if you want a fast coming of age read with good representation. 

Winston Smith works for the Ministry of Truth in London as the chief city of Airstrip One. Big Brother stares out from every sign; the Thought Police discover every act of disloyalty. When Winston encounters love with Julia, he uncovers that life does not have to be tedious and deadening and revives to new opportunities. Despite the police helicopters that approach and circle aloft, Winston and Julia start to question the Party; they are drawn towards conspiracy. Yet Big Brother will not tolerate conflict - even in mind. For those with original thoughts, they invented Room 101...

"1984" is a political novel written to warn readers in the West of the risks of totalitarian government. Having seen firsthand the horrific lengths to which totalitarian governments in Spain and Russia would go to support and expand their power, Orwell designed "1984" to sound the warning in Western nations still uncertain about how to approach the rise of communism. In 1949, the Cold War had not escalated, many American intellectuals advocated communism, and the prudence between democratic and communist nations was highly unclear. The Soviet Union was often described as a great moral experiment in the American press. Orwell was deeply concerned by the widespread cruelties and oppressions he observed in communist countries and seemed to have been mainly affected by the role of technology in enabling oppressive governments to monitor and control their citizens. In "1984", Orwell portrayed the perfect totalitarian society, the most powerful realisation of a modern-day government with absolute power. The novel's title was meant to indicate to its readers in 1949. The narrative represented a real opportunity for the near future. If totalitarianism were not objected to, the title suggested, some variation of the world described in the novel could become a fact in only thirty-five years. Orwell portrays a state in which the state monitors and controls every aspect of human life to the extent that even having a traitorous thought is against the regulation. As the novel advances, the timidly rebellious Winston Smith sets out to challenge the limitations of the Party's power, only to uncover that its ability to manage and enslave its subjects dwarfs even his most paranoid visions of its reach. The reader understands through Winston's eyes that The Party uses several techniques to control its citizens, each of which is an essential component of its own.

The Party attacks its subjects with psychological triggers designed to overcome the mind's capacity for independent thought. The giant telescreen in every citizen's room fires a constant brook of propaganda designed to make the failures and weaknesses of the Party appear to be achieving successes. The telescreens also monitor behaviour—everywhere they go, citizens are continuously reminded, especially using the universal posters reading "BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU," that the leaders scrutinise them. The Party damages the family system by inducting kids into the Junior Spies, which brainwashes and enables them to spy on their parents and inform any instance of disloyalty to the Party. The Party even forces individuals to conceal their sexual desires, regaling sex as merely a procreative task whose fate is the creation of new Party members. The Party then directs people's pent-up frustration and feeling into intense, brutal displays of hate against the Party's political enemies. The Party has developed many of these opponents expressly for this goal.

Additionally, to using their minds, the Party also prevents the bodies of its issues. The Party always watches for any sign of betrayal, to the point that, as Winston watches, even a tiny facial twinge could lead to a detention. A person's nervous procedure becomes his grandest enemy. The Party pushes its members to undergo mass morning exercises called the Physical Jerks and then work long, gruelling days at state agencies, keeping people in a public state of exhaustion. Anyone who drives to defy the Party is disciplined and "reeducated" through systematic and brutal torture. After being subjected to weeks of this harsh treatment, Winston concludes that nobody is more powerful than physical pain—no emotional commitment or moral conviction can overwhelm it.

One of the authors most important messages in "1984" is that vocabulary is central to human thinking because it structures and defines the ideas that individuals can formulate and express. Suppose control of language were centralised in a political agency. In that case, Orwell proposes, such an agency could alter the very design of language to make it unattainable to even conceive of rebellious or rebellious thoughts because there would be no way they could think of it. This idea exemplifies itself in the language of "Newspeak". The Party has introduced to replace English. Moreover, it does simplify the langue. They even translate old litre like Shakespeare into "Newspeak".

The idea of "doublethink" emerges as an essential significance of the Party's massive movement of large-scale psychological manipulation. Doublethink is the capability to hold two contradictory views in one's mind simultaneously. As the Party's mind-control techniques fail an individual's capacity for independent thought, it becomes possible for that person to believe anything that the Party tells them, even while including information that runs counter to what they are being told.

For instance, at the Hate Week rally, the Party redirects its prudent allegiance, so the country it has been at war becomes its ally, and its former partner becomes its new enemy. When the Party speaker suddenly changes the government he refers to as an adversary in the middle of his address, the crowd accepts his words instantly. It is ashamed to find that it has made the ominous signs for the event. In the same way, people can get the Party ministries' names. However, they contradict their parts:

I have a lot of thoughts in my head, but I am not sure if I can put them into words correctly to describe the feelings I felt while reading this book. I am still not a person who enjoys dystopian fiction. However, I say that George Orwell has a beautiful writing style. Likewise, I wondered if all these concepts he has written down in this book could happen. In conclusion, I believe it is possible, and however, if you do read this book with open eyes, you can clearly see the strategic methods they are using and could probably see through them if it would happen in real life. I highly recommend this book to pretty much anyone who wants to read about the dangers of a controlled society.

Naomi Alderman is the author of three previous novels; "Disobedience", "The Lessons" in "The Lair's Gospel" she has one orange award for a new writer and the Sunday Times young writer of the year award. she presents science stories on BBC Radio 4 she's also a professor of creative writing at Bath Spa University she is the co-creator and leader writer off the best selling smartphone audio adventure app and book "Zombies run!". she lives in London

"The Power" is a novel within a book: a manuscript of a supposed history of the turbulent era during which women worldwide developed and shared the power to cast electricity from their hands. The manuscript is submitted by Neil Adam Armon to another author named Naomi, approximately five thousand years after the power appears and revolution reassembles the world into a matriarchy. This historical fiction chronicles the adventures of Allie, Roxy, Margot, Jocelyn, and Tunde, as they navigate their rapidly transforming world.
 
The story is written in the past tense and third person.

"The Power" envisions a world in which women worldwide suddenly develop the ability to manipulate and send electricity through their hands. While this power is an intrinsically neutral one, women quickly realise what becomes its primary use: to harm others by sending them severe electrical shocks. Alderman examines the ten years between women acquiring this power and an event called "the Cataclysm," focusing on several primary characters.

In a discussion, Alderman stated that in composing "The Power", she wished to examine the belief that women would make better superiors than men. As the proportion of power tips from men to women in her book, Alderman argues that this would not be the case.

"The Power" nourishes a critical gaze at gender dynamics. At the start of the novel, gender relations reflect contemporary society: patriarchy in which men are more generally dominant, which Alderman posits is because men are more able to inflict violence, and therefore more able to gain power. But after women start to gain control, they turn those gender dynamics on their heads.

Sadly I did not enjoy this book as much as I wanted to. The concept was great, and even the writing was quite impeccable, but I cannot put my finger into it. I did not feel connected with the characters at all. It has taken me a long time to finish this book. However, I do highly recommend it for anyone who loves science-fiction.

Mr Jones of Manor Farm is so inactive and intoxicated that he forgets to feed his livestock one day. Under the pigs' leadership, Napoleon and Snowball, the ensuing rebellion manages to the animals taking over the farm. Vowing to defeat the terrible inequities of the farm, the renamed Animal Farm is organised to serve all who walk on four limbs. But as time passes, the goals of the rebellion are damaged, then neglected. And something new and unforeseen arises.

First printed in 1945, "Animal Farm" - the tale of a revolution that went wrong - is George Orwell's excellent satire on the corrupting power of power.

One of the novella's accomplishments is the portrayal of the figures in power and the mistreated people. "Animal Farm" is not told from one particular character's viewpoint, though seldom does it slip into Clover's consciousness. Instead, the story is narrated from the view of the common animals as a whole. 

"Animal Farm" is most popular in the West as a stinging commentary of the history of the Russian Revolution. Retelling the tale of the emergence and spread of Soviet communism in the form of an animal fable, Animal Farm allegorises the rise to leadership of the dictator Joseph Stalin. In the novella, the overthrow of Mr Jones by a democratic alliance of animals quickly consolidates leadership among the pigs. The pigs establish as the ruling class in the new civilisation.
The conflict for preeminence between Leon Trotsky and Stalin begins in the competition between the pigs, Snowball and Napoleon. In the historical and fictional cases, the visionary but politically less influential figure (Trotsky and Snowball) is suspended from the revolutionary state by the malicious and violent usurper of leadership (Stalin and Napoleon). in Animal Farm as the false confessions and killings of animals whom Napoleon suspects following the collapse of the windmill. Stalin's brutal rule and final abandonment of the establishing principles of the Russian Revolution are represented by the pigs' turn to a violent state and the selection of human traits and behaviours, the trappings of their first oppressors.
His novella creates its most potent ironies when Orwell depicts the corruption of Animalist ideals by those in power. For Animal Farm serves not to condemn tyranny or despotism but to indict the horrifying hypocrisy of tyrannies that base themselves on ideologies of liberation and equality and owe their initial power. The gradual integration and perversion of the Seven Commandments illustrate this hypocrisy with striking force, as do Squealer's complex philosophical justifications for the pigs' blatantly unprincipled acts. Thus, the novella critiques the destruction of the Stalinist regime against the human beings it ruled and points to Soviet communism's violence against human logic, language, and ideals.

"Animal Farm" gives commentary on the progress of class tyranny and the human tendency to maintain and reestablish class constructions in societies that allegedly stand for complete equality. The book illustrates how classes initially united in the face of a shared enemy, as the animals are toward the humans, may become mentally divided when that enemy is defeated. The removal of Mr Jones creates a power space, and it is only so long before the next oppressor allows dictatorial control.
The actual division between intellectual and physical work quickly expresses itself as a new set of class divisions. The "brain workers" (as the pigs in this case) use their superior intelligence to manipulate society to their benefit. The novella points to the strength of this tendency toward class in many communities and its threat to democracy and freedom.

 Animal Farm demonstrates how the failure or unwillingness to question authority punishes the working class for suffering the total size of the ruling class's oppression.

One of Orwell's central concerns in "Animal Farm" is how language can be manipulated as an instrument of control. The pigs deliberately twist and distort a rhetoric of socialist revolution to justify their behaviour and keep the others in the dark. The animals completely embrace Major's visionary ideal of socialism, but after Major dies, the pigs gradually change the meaning of his words. Consequently, the other animals seem unable to oppose the pigs without opposing the rebellion's ideals.


"Animal Farm" describes the idea that leadership ever corrupts. The novella's massive use of foreshadowing, especially in the opening chapter, creates the feeling that the story's events are unavoidable. 

"Animal Farm" is deeply sceptical about the use of intellectual activity. The pigs are known as the most intelligent animals, but their intelligence rarely produces anything of value. Instead, the pigs use their knowledge to manipulate and abuse the other animals. 

 As an allegory of the methods humans abuse and wrong one another, "Animal Farm" also makes a more critical argument: humans use and oppress animals. 

"Animal Farm" is packed with songs, poems, and slogans, including Major's stirring "Beasts of England," Minimus's ode to Napoleon, the sheep's songs, and Minimus's updated anthem "Animal Farm, Animal Farm." All of these songs work as propaganda, one of the primary conduits of social control. By making the working-class animals speak the exact words simultaneously, the pigs invoke an air of beauty and dignity associated with the text's subject matter. The songs also consume the animals' sense of identity and keep them centred on the tasks they will achieve freedom.

As "Animal Farm" squads gears from its first revolutionary fervour to a phase of the union of power for a few, national rituals become an ever more regular part of the farm's social life. Military honours, grand parades, and new songs all increase as the state tries to strengthen the loyalty of the animals. The growing frequency of the ceremonies bespeaks how the working class in the book becomes more reliant on the ruling class to determine their group identity and values.

This book was an absolute dream to read, and I would highly recommend it to anyone who wants to learn how fast a great idea can turn into something so horrible it can mess up the whole plan. Furthermore, it is pretty essential, in my opinion, to also read about the historical events that were going on while is the author of the world this book.

Reni Eddo-Lodge is a London based award-winning author and journalist. She has written for the New York Times, the Daily Telegraph Guardian independent, and many more. The book "Why I'm No Longer Talking To White People About Race" was held first published book. It has won many awards like Fayles Non-fiction book the many more.

"Why I'm No Longer Talking To White People About Race" Is a non-fiction book that centres on the history of racism in Britain. This system behind it what the meaning of white privilege is a fear of a Black planet and even feminist questions. Additionally, the author explains how race has something to do with class and many topics more.

Going into this, I did not know what to expect. I actually wanted this book for my birthday since I have had lots of great things about it, and I thought it would be a good idea to try to educate myself a little bit further on the topic of race. I am pretty astonished how Delicate this book is with explaining race, gender and class. The statement is that the author has given rather thought-provoking and eye-opening. At the same time, I always knew that I have privileged to live in a western country and be white; however, I am reading about this system of privilege as Pyramids shifting. Usually, I am a fiction reader, but I do enjoy some non-fiction at a time. I have to say that I would recommend this book to anyone, in particular, any white person living on this earth sends educating yourself as always the best it's trying to reset your old habits. Probably the best thing about this book is that Eddo-Lodge is not trying to make you feel guilty. Instead, she's trying to make you want to change something. This was one of the best parts of this book.

To cut a long story short, I am glad that I have picked this book up and that it has shifted my view a little bit more into becoming a better person if I may say so myself if these words have not convinced you already I am going to tell it again, please pick this book up.

Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter goes between the poverty-stricken neighbourhood where she lives and the rich suburban prep school she visits. The awkward balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal gunfire of her youth best friend Khalil at the hands of a policeman. Khalil was defenceless.
Soon afterwards, his passing is a national title. Some are calling him a criminal,  even a drug dealer and a gangbanger. Protesters are taking to the places in Khalil's name. Some policemen and the local drug lord try to threaten Starr and her family. What everyone wants to know is: what went down that evening? And the only person alive who can explain that is our protagonist. 
But what Starr does—or does not—say could upend her community. It could also endanger her life.

"The Hate U Give" explores the link between race and identity as Starr tries to navigate the primarily black life of Garden Heights and the predominantly white world of Williamson Prep. Starr feels torn between her Garden Heights self and Williamson Prep self, and she switches her speech, mannerisms, and behaviours to fit whichever place she finds herself in. After Khalil's shooting, Starr is hesitant to speak about his death for panic that her white friends, Hailey and Maya, and her white boyfriend, Chris, will not understand everything that happens in her Garden Heights life. Starr feels concurrently "too black" to speak about Khalil's life and death with her fellow students but "too white" at home to stand up for her friend, mainly after Kenya challenges Starr of behaving like a white person who thinks herself better than her neighbours.

Starr's personality conflict is apparent in her father figures, Maverick and Uncle Carlos, who have varied perspectives on authentic blackness. Maverick pulls inspiration from the Black Power Movement and believes in a self-reliant blackness that uses existing constructions within black neighbourhoods to better circumstances. Maverick's philosophy explains why, throughout most of the novel, Maverick refuses to move his family from Garden Heights to a more protected area—he believes they should change their community from the inside. Besides his job as a police officer and house in a gated neighbourhood, Uncle Carlos represents absorption into white culture. Uncle Carlos thinks he can support black communities by using white organisations like the police force to battle gang violence. The endless argument between Maverick and Uncle Carlos highlights how tricky it is for Starr to settle her two worlds and find a way to honour her whole self.

"The Hate U Give" analyses how society uses stereotypes of black people to verify brutality and racism against them. These stereotypes shield white communities, such as the pupils at Starr's school, Williamson Prep, from reflecting upon systemic racism, perpetuating discrimination. We see this bias most clearly in how One-Fifteen justifies his murder of Khalil. The officer has no reason to think Khalil's hairbrush is a gun other than One-Fifteen's presumption that Khalil is a criminal because he is black. However, the broadcast media and many white characters endorse One-Fifteen's version of events because they protect law enforcement from accusations of racism by watching him. Uncle Carlos, Starr's black uncle on her mother's side, is on the same police force as One-Fifteen, also initially defends One-Fifteen's actions before realising he wrongly tried to defend the shooting of Khalil. The media disguises racism in One-Fifteen's efforts by portraying them as logical, and news coverage emphasises Khalil's alleged gang associates, preserving black boys' stereotyped as violent and dangerous. Hailey, Starr's Williamson Prep friend, settles that Khalil was nothing more than a thug upon hearing these rumours. The media circus surrounding Khalil's death shows how white media prioritises protecting law enforcement and perpetuating stereotypes over black lives.

This novel was written in the first person in the present tense. Moreover, it is written like it is happening in this day and age in our natural world.

Holding the traumatic events of "The Hate U Give" is the cyclical reality of racialised poverty, which Maverick describes to Starr during their conversation about Tupac's phrase "Thug Life." According to Tupac, public racism keeps black communities from the possibilities and sources needed for financial success, and poverty feeds on itself, affecting periods of black families. This cycle captures many of "The Hate U Give's" black characters into a situation where they cannot flee poverty without relying on the drug business, which is then used to decrease them as somebody in both life and death. Maverick was born to a drug dealer and joined a gang to create some feeling of protection. Due to the difficulties created by poverty, Khalil marketed drugs to pay off his mother's bill. DeVante explains to Starr—who is initially confused about how Khalil could sell the same "medicines" ruining his mother's life—that Khalil felt compelled to provide for his family and could not find a more suitable alternative. Through Starr's hollowing understanding of racialised poverty, we see how this intergenerational cycle is hard to break because black neighbourhoods, like Garden Heights, do not have adequate access to sources such as education, employment, and protection from police brutality.

Overall I enjoyed this book. I did not think that I would appreciate it as much, but let me tell you, this is everything you need to read about a fiction book that is a place in the real world. I have laughed because of this book, but I also have cried; it is exceptionally well. You feel connected with the characters. For me, a white girl in Germany, I especially adored the insides given to me by seeing the other side and feeling with the black characters.
Moreover, I enjoyed that the book felt realistic. It is so hard to imagine that a teenager dies because of a hairbrush. Although the ending was sad, I thought it was the best ending the book could have since this is a path from reality which is unfortunate that black people die in the white cop stays alive and free.

Trevor Noah's strange path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show began with an illegal act: his birth. Trevor happened to be born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother when such a union was criminal by five years in prison. Living proof of his parents' recklessness, Trevor was kept frequently indoors for the most prime years of his life, obliged by the extreme and often irrational measures his mother took to hide him from a state that could, at any moment, take him away. Eventually liberated by the end of South Africa's tyrannical white rule, Trevor and his mother set forth on a grand adventure, living fully and freely and embracing the chances won by a centuries-long conflict.

"Born a Crime" is the tale of a prankish young boy who grows into a wandering young man as he strives to find himself in a world where he was never supposed to live in. Additionally, it is the story of that young man's connection with his fearless, rebellious, and highly religious mother—his teammate, a woman settled to save her son from the circle of poverty, violence, and abuse that would eventually threaten her own life.

The narrative was written in the first-person point of view by the author himself, and it was said in the past in South Africa.

Moreover, the motives of this book, in particular about racism and how apartheid, one of the worst crimes committed in South Africa, has affected the country and its people, although the system never truly worked at all. By casting black people away from white people and having no room for mixed children, who by law did not exist. I am a massive advocate for constantly educating yourself, especially racism, even more, if you are white. For me, a woman who has never lived outside of Germany and is broad, it is important to recognise my privilege and think about the system my ancestors have created and how I stop thinking that favours the system and even breaking out of it.

Not to forget to mention the love of Noah's mother was impeccable, and although I disagreed with her tough love method, I know it came from the heart, and I know she only wanted to do the best for him, which she enviably did. I loved reading about the relationship between the author and his mother throughout his whole childhood and his early 20s. Although I do not know these people personally, I felt connected with them because of the writing style, which hit me very hard and was witty at the same time.

A friend bought this as a gift for my 19th birthday, and I cannot be happier to read this book finally. I did not imagine it to hit that hard but in the best way possible. I laughed out loud because of it, and I cried at the end of the book. I did not think that autobiographies could make you feel something this deep like this one does. I highly recommend this book to anyone. You're probably going to cry, but you will love this book, and it will give you extreme joy.

Arch Colson Chipp Whitehead is an American author. He is the author of eight novels, including his 1999 debut work, "The Intuitionist", and "The Underground Railroad",  for which he acquired the 2016 National Book Award for Fiction and the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction; he won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction again in 2020 for "The Nickel Boys". He has further published two works of non-fiction. In 2002, he won a MacArthur Genius Grant.

"The Underground Railroad" starts on an evil Georgia plantation, where all anyone wants to do is escape. "Every slave reasons about it, in the morning tide and the afternoon and the nighttime. Dreaming of it. Each dreams a dream of freedom, yet when it didn't look like it." We meet Ajarry, stolen from her West African village and across the ocean on a slave boat. Her daughter, Mabel, flees the plantation and its disgusting owner, Randall, prompting a wild and empty search, and Cora, Mabel's daughter, our protagonist.
Cora and another slave Caesar are led down to a platform where rails extend into darkness and the North.

The novel is written in the third person singular and the past. The story is set during the 19th century.

The central theme of the book is slavery, and it affects people, predominantly black and natives. Although it was fascinating to read about it, it would have been better to read it in the first person since sometimes it felt a bit too objective and even a bit dry to read about the Experience of the people. 

Freedom is another motive of the book. It is explained by which I live version of the railroad; however, since this is the only fantasy element in this book, it was pretty tricky sometimes to grasp everything else could've happened in real life then.

It is hard to rate this book. However, I did not feel connected with the characters at all and even felt like they didn't have any human features of the world as a personality; however, I do have to say that this book is insane research, and I would still recommend reading it just because of that however I do think if you want to learn about American history, it is better to read a novel written by people who have left during bedtime or even hysterical non-fiction books. Overall the story felt a bit lacklustre, And I would have wished to like this book more, but sadly I cannot.

"A Promised Land" is the first volume by former USA president Barack Obama's highly anticipated presidential memoirs. In this volume, he defused in detail his early political rise, 2008 campaign to become the next president and how his administration was and what it has accomplished in the first 2.5 years in office. We follow him along through all the obstacles he had to succeed, like the 2008 financial crisis and the healthcare bill, Deep Horizon and the wars in the Middle East, of course. 

For those interested in listening to the audiobook: It is read by Obama himself, and it en chances his voice by his steady voice. Nonetheless, it is an easily written and compelling account of the rise of Barack Obama, even if you're only reading this book. 

It is mainly focused on Obama coming to terms with his ambitions and potion to make a real impact on the USA and its people. Considering his Prologue, he is still very concerned about racial injustice and social inequality. However, his administration did not focus on that topics immensely.  Sometimes you will get a feeling of him being frustrated, but he does see it with a clear eye that some of his vision is too far in the eyes of the broad American public. It was eye-opting to get more information about how people in America think and view political issues. For Europeans like myself, some things he talked about were not publicly spoken in Europe because some of the mentioned issues only impacted the USA. However, I have to say that I was 6 to 10 years old when his first president all term was, and I was not invested in politics at the time. 

My favourite part of this book was reading and listening to another part of "Becoming" by Michelle Obama. It goes hand in and with it, but it has a theme, mainly the political situations of his early years in the presidency. But I would recommend reading "Becoming" first if you would like to read both memoirs.

I enjoyed reading this 700 pages beast. Still, sometimes I did find it a tiny bit confusing since, in the beginning, Barack Obama sprung through time like to his childhood and then into the 2008 campaign, which was sometimes a lot to handle as a reader getting into this. However, the charm and its wit made that only a tiny flaw.

Rupi Kaur is an Indian-Canadiens bestseller novelist and illustrator best known for her two poetry collections "milk and honey" plus "the sun and her flowers". While Kaur was at the University of Waterloo, she started working on her first poetry collecting. 

This poetry collection is about grief, self-abandonment, honouring one's roots, love and empowering oneself. It is split into five chapters: 

-wilting-

 

It is astonishing that although it is the same motif as in "milk and honey", these poems about grief/loss about a needed relationship are more developed. I immensely enjoyed reading this chapter, and it felt a bit more polished and not as raw, which I like.

-falling-

The theme of this chapter goes darker and darker on every page, although there are a few light poems about self-love. We mostly read about sexual assault as a child and an adult and what consent is, and how to use it.

-rooting-

Like, the title already says it is all about someone's roots and their homeland. It is tough to leave home and start your life in a foreign country, especially when you cannot speak the official language. Furthermore, the poems are also explaining motherhood as something beautiful yet challenging job.

-rising-

This time the chapter is about love, the real kind. The one you want to find and want to hold onto. These poems seem rather lovely compared to her first poetry collection. The author did a fantastic job!

-blooming-

This is the final part of this gathering, and the central theme is uplifting the reader and predominantly female readers. It was a great ending to the collection since it ended on a light note.

Overall, this collection has pleasantly surprised me after reading the first one. "The sun and her flowers" is much more throughout and developed. I would recommend this book, especially for readers at 18 and up, since I think these poems hit deeper if you are not a teenager anymore. Still, I was not too fond of Kaur's use of dots and no other punctuation.