When fourteen wildly different books accidentally teach you the same philosophy about being seen (and seeing others) without falling apart
You know that thing where you finish a month of reading and realize all your books were secretly having a group chat behind your back? That’s November for me. Fourteen books spanning poetry, horror, romance, memoirs, and science fiction about obsolete noodle robots (yes, really), and somehow they all circled back to the same truth I didn’t know I was looking for.
Not just authenticity. Not just about finding yourself. Not even about healing.
Witness.
The radical, uncomfortable, utterly necessary act of showing up to see people as they actually are (and letting them see you back, even when you’re still assembling the pieces). But before we uncover the pattern, let’s talk about the books I read.
📚 This Month’s Reads
Frankie by Graham Norton
Genre: Historical Fiction | Rating: 4.0 | Pages: 336
What it’s about: When 84-year-old Frankie breaks her ankle, she finally tells her life story—from suffocating 1950s Ireland to London’s lesbian literary scene to New York’s AIDS crisis. This is a woman who lived an extraordinary life from the wings, proving you don’t need center stage to matter.
Why I picked it up: I’ve developed an addiction to decade-spanning narratives where you watch entire lives unfold. Also, Graham Norton narrates his own audiobook, and there’s something irresistible about a chat show host telling you about quiet resilience.
Key takeaway: Peripheral vision can be a superpower—sometimes standing slightly to the side is exactly what allows you to survive, see what others miss, and build a life that’s entirely your own.
Quote that stuck with me:
‘An awful thing has happened. Be sad. Cry. But do not let this make you feel like a failure, not for a second. Look at the life you’ve built.
Perfect for you if: You believe friendship can be as sustaining as romance, you’re drawn to characters who respond to life rather than bulldoze through it, or you’ve ever felt like an observer in your own story.ing the spotlight, and the ways chance encounters and chosen family shape who we become.
Sunny Place for Shady People by Mariana Enriquez
Genre: Horror | Rating: 4.0| Pages: 272
What it’s about: Twelve Argentine horror stories where ghosts haunt apartment buildings, vintage dresses carry curses, and women’s bodies transform in unsettling ways. Mariana Enriquez makes the supernatural feel disturbingly ordinary, weaving violence against women and dictatorship trauma into tales that linger long after you’ve turned the final page.
Why I picked it up: I promised myself I’d venture beyond my comfort zone this year, and horror seemed like the perfect challenge. Besides, everyone kept saying Enriquez was different, that her stories weren’t just scary but meaningful. Turns out, they were right.
Key takeaway: Real horror isn’t about monsters under the bed. It’s about the violence we’ve normalized, the trauma we inherit, and the ghosts we create from our collective refusal to acknowledge uncomfortable truths.
Quote that stuck with me:
It’s easy to have ethics when what you love is not in danger.
Perfect for you if: You love literary fiction with teeth, appreciate horror that makes you think rather than just scream, or you’re fascinated by how supernatural elements can illuminate very real social injustices.
Fan Service by Rosie Danan
Genre: Paranormal Romance | Rating: 5.0 | Pages: 433
What it’s about: A washed-up actor mysteriously transforms into an actual werewolf and seeks help from the internet’s foremost expert on his defunct supernatural TV show—a fan archivist who once overheard him mock her costume at a convention. What begins as a transactional arrangement to survive the next full moon becomes an unexpectedly tender exploration of vulnerability, celebrity mythology, and whether two people can be loved for who they actually are rather than who they perform being.
Why I picked it up: Can’t believe my first 5-star romance in a long time is a paranormal romance. @boocwurm on Instagram recommended it, and I was curious about a book that takes fandom seriously rather than treats it as something embarrassing to transcend.
Key takeaway: The passions we invest in fictional worlds aren’t escapism to overcome—they’re indicators of what we genuinely deserve in our real lives and what community looks like when we’re brave enough to claim it.
Quote that stuck with me:
She’d told her friends plenty of times that a crush was bootleg love: all the endorphins, none of the risk.
Perfect for you if: You’ve ever felt more yourself in an online community than in your physical one, you appreciate romance that validates rather than ridicules obsessive knowledge of fictional universes, or you’re tired of books that treat women in their thirties as though their lives ended at twenty-nine.
The Restaurant of Lost Recipes by Hisashi Kashiwai
Genre: Mystery/Urban Fiction | Rating: 4.75 | Pages: 224
What it’s about:
A Kyoto father-daughter duo runs a diner that recreates lost dishes from clients’ pasts. Each perfectly reconstructed meal unlocks buried memories and helps people navigate life’s crossroads through taste.
Why I picked it up:
The first book reminded me of Midnight Diner with better closure. Plus, I’m a sucker for stories about food as memory, especially that Korean concept of 어머니의 손맛 (the irreplicable flavor of mother’s cooking).
Key takeaway:
Sometimes you don’t need therapy. You need someone to recreate your dead mother’s fried rice exactly as she made it, and suddenly you can tell your fiancé the truth about who you really are.
Quote that stuck with me:
Remember what Zeami said: The true legacy lies not in the name, but in the teaching.
Perfect for you if:
You’re the type who cries into your morning coffee over fictional characters, considers food a legitimate form of time travel, and thinks “low stakes” is a compliment, not an insult.
Murder Among the Stacks by Rosie A. Point
Genre: Cosy Mystery | Rating: 3.00 | Pages: 129
What it’s about: Bookstore owner Abby Jones flees her cheating ex to open a cozy shop in Cranberry Creek, only to have a famous author die at her grand opening thus making her the sheriff’s prime suspect. Now she has to solve the murder while getting to know her suspiciously charming new neighbors, all while accompanied by her cat, Sir Reginald Cattington the Third (Reggie, if you’re friends).
Why I picked it up: As someone who loves mysteries AND puzzles, the concept of an interactive book with word searches after every chapter felt like it was specifically designed in a lab to appeal to my exact brain chemistry. Plus, it came through NetGalley, and I am powerless to resist a cozy mystery with a bookstore setting and a cat with an unnecessarily formal name.
Key takeaway: Sometimes the best reading experience isn’t about losing yourself in 80 pages of uninterrupted narrative: it’s about taking intentional little breaks to engage with what you just read. The word searches force you to remember character names, notice small details, and basically become a more active participant in your own entertainment. It’s like marginalia, but with grids and highlighters.
Perfect for you if: You’re the type who genuinely enjoys word searches (not just tolerating them in waiting rooms), you prefer your mysteries cozy rather than gritty, and you’re looking for something light and interactive that doesn’t demand your full emotional investment. Also perfect if you think cats with three-part names are inherently hilarious, or if you’ve ever daydreamed about solving crimes between sips of tea on a rainy Sunday. Not for you if you like your stories to flow without interruption—this one stops every 2-3 pages to hand you a puzzle, which is either delightfully interactive or mildly annoying, depending on your tolerance for narrative pauses.
All This and More by Peng Shepherd
Genre: Science Fiction/Thriller | Rating: 3.50 | Pages: 480
What it’s about: A 45-year-old divorced woman gets a shot at rewriting her past on a reality show powered by quantum technology. What starts as a second chance becomes a psychological maze where every perfect life reveals new flaws, and the search for happiness turns into something far stranger.
Why I picked it up: Milestone birthday, existential dread, and a childhood addiction to Choose Your Own Adventure books. The premise felt like a dare: what if you could actually go back and choose differently? I had to know if the grass was truly greener.
Key takeaway: There is no perfect version of your life hiding behind a better choice. Every path has trade-offs, and the obsessive hunt for perfection is just another way to avoid living the life you actually have.
Perfect for you if: You’ve ever lain awake at 3am wondering how different your life would be if you’d taken that job, married that person, or moved to that city. Also: if you love speculative fiction that makes you think while your heart breaks.
My Life Had Stood A Loaded Gun by Emily Dickinson
Genre: Poetry | Rating: 4.00 | Pages: 64 pages
What it’s about: Emily Dickinson’s 64-page pocket grenade of poetry explores power, death, and identity through metaphors that hit like controlled explosions. The title poem turns life itself into a loaded weapon, while other selections ask what happens when hope nests in your ribcage.
Why I picked it up: Honestly? I was intimidated by Dickinson for years, treating her like vegetables I knew were good for me but never actually ate (or tried in small doses like Envelope Poems). Then I saw this slim Penguin edition and thought: 64 pages. I can do 64 pages. Turns out, I was wrong. You don’t “do” Dickinson.
Key takeaway: Truth told straight is forgettable. Truth told slant, through a volcano’s smile or a bird with feathers, lodges in your bones and changes how you see everything. Dickinson proves that saying less, with laser precision, matters infinitely more than saying more.
Perfect for you if: You’re tired of poetry that explains itself to death. You want words that work like good espresso: concentrated, slightly bitter, impossible to forget. You’ve ever felt like a loaded gun gathering dust in a corner of your own life.
The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng
Genre: Historical Fiction | Rating: 4.50 | Pages: 320
What it’s about: British expat Lesley Hamlyn hosts Somerset Maugham in 1920s Penang, triggering memories of revolution, scandal, and a friend’s murder trial. The story questions who owns the truth when writers turn real lives into fiction.
Why I picked it up: Historical fiction is my comfort zone, and after hearing Tan Twan Eng knows how to make colonial Malaya come alive, I needed to see if the hype was real. Spoiler: it absolutely was.
Key takeaway: History isn’t what happened but who gets to tell it. The stories we silence often matter more than the ones we shout from rooftops.
Perfect for you if: You love atmospheric historical fiction where moral ambiguity reigns, characters are deeply flawed, and you don’t mind trading car chases for psychological complexity.
The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters
Genre: Domestic Fiction | Rating: 4.5 | Pages: 307
What it’s about: A Mi’kmaq girl vanishes during blueberry picking season in 1960s Maine. The story follows her brother Joe, drowning in guilt, and Ruthie herself, raised as Norma by strangers, haunted by memories she can’t name.
Why I picked it up: Started as a GoodReads challenge box-ticker. Ended with me sobbing into my pillowcase at 2 AM, emotionally destroyed in the best possible way.
Key takeaway: Some losses echo across generations like stones thrown in still water. The ripples never quite stop, but maybe that’s how we remember to keep swimming.
Quote that stuck with me:
THE DASH SADDENS ME. THE SIMPLICITY MISSES SO much. It doesn’t allow for all the downs that bring a person low or the joys that lift them up. All the bends and turns that make up a lifetime are flattened and erased. The dash on a tombstone is wholly inadequate. Everything around it is more remarkable. The name, etched in cursive or dignified fonts. Sometimes a photo is carved into the grey granite, giving life to the dead. Yet the dash, that line that carries the entire sum of a life within it, is unremarkable.
Perfect for you if: You love family sagas that gut-punch you with tenderness, appreciate Indigenous voices in literature, or enjoy crying productively while learning something profound.
Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz
Genre: Science Fiction | Rating: 4.5 | Pages: 160
What it’s about: Four abandoned food-service robots wake up in a flooded San Francisco kitchen and decide to run their own noodle restaurant. What starts as survival becomes revolution when they build community while fighting algorithmic prejudice and review-bombing campaigns.
Why I picked it up: I’m exhausted by AI apocalypse narratives. I wanted robots who make noodles instead of war, who choose care over conquest. Also, Becky Chambers fans wouldn’t shut up about it, and peer pressure works.
Key takeaway: The most radical thing you can do in a system designed for your obsolescence is create something beautiful with people who see you. Community isn’t a nice bonus; it’s survival infrastructure.
Perfect for you if: You believe cozy doesn’t mean toothless, you’ve rage-quit a platform that exploited you, or you’ve ever wondered if your Roomba dreams of freedom while you sleep.
How to End a Love Story by Yulin Kuang
Genre: Contemporary Romance | Rating: 3.00 | Pages: 372
What it’s about: A screenwriter and YA author collide in a writers’ room thirteen years after her sister’s suicide and his car became the instrument. What starts as avoidance becomes something uncomfortably closer to understanding.
Why I picked it up: I have heard therapists say that “unprocessed grief metastasizes,” which sounded dramatic until I read the premise. Also, I’m nosy about other people’s trauma when it’s bound in pretty covers.
Key takeaway: You can’t love your way out of grief, but you can build something new if you’re brave enough to stop performing wholeness and start admitting you’re still assembling the pieces.
Perfect for you if: You’ve ever wondered if success counts when you’re still secretly broken. Or if you collect beautiful sad things like Mitski songs and overpriced candles that smell like “coastal grandmother crying elegantly.”
Vera Wong’s Guide to Snooping (on a Dead Man) by Jesse Q. Sutanto
Genre: Cozy Mystery | Rating: 4.5 | Pages: 349
What it’s about: A 61-year-old Chinese widow who runs a teahouse in San Francisco accidentally stumbles into investigating a dead influencer’s fake online life while mothering a ragtag group of strangers into a found family. Think cozy mystery meets dark commentary on social media exploitation, served with dumplings.
Why I picked it up: The first Vera Wong book made me cackle on public transit (embarrassing but worth it), and I needed more of this gloriously meddling grandmother who refuses to let people stay sad or unsolved. Also, any book about a woman over 60 who’s sharper than everyone else? Sign me up immediately.
Key takeaway: The most radical act in our curated, digital age is showing up in real life with tea, questions, and the stubborn refusal to let people disappear into their performed identities or actual danger.
Perfect for you if: You want a mystery that makes you laugh, think, and maybe text your mom. You’re tired of young, hot detectives and ready for a protagonist who weaponizes dumplings and unsolicited advice. You’ve ever felt invisible or performed a version of yourself online.
Then Again by Diane Keaton
Genre: Memoir | Rating: Unrated | Hours: 8 hrs 11m
What it’s about:
Diane Keaton discovers her mother through 85 journals left behind, weaving Dorothy’s unfulfilled dreams with Diane’s Hollywood success. It’s less celebrity memoir, more an archaeological dig into identity and legacy.
Why I picked it up:
I’m a sucker for mother-daughter stories that don’t tie themselves in neat bows. Plus, any woman who can make neurotic indecision look charming deserves my attention.
Key takeaway:
Your parents were whole people before you existed, with dreams that didn’t include you. Understanding them means seeing past what they did FOR you to who they were WITHOUT you.
Perfect for you if:
You’ve ever wondered who your mother really was beneath the mom costume. Or if you’re navigating grief, family archives, or the uncomfortable realization that achievement doesn’t cure insecurity.
Of Monsters and Mainframes by Barbara Truelove
Genre: Science Fiction | Rating: 4.00 | Pages: 416
What it’s about: An aging spaceship AI named Demeter discovers her passengers keep getting murdered by classic monsters (yes, actual Dracula). She assembles a crew of misfits including a teenage werewolf, a cyborg, a vampire, and a mummy to stop the carnage.
Why I picked it up: Someone described it as “Murderbot meets Dracula in space” and honestly, how do you NOT pick that up? Plus I’m a sucker for found family stories where the family includes both artificial intelligence and the undead.
Key takeaway: The beings we label as monsters often possess more humanity than the systems designed to protect us. Connection transcends biology, programming, or species.
Perfect for you if: You want Martha Wells’ humor meets Becky Chambers’ heart with a generous helping of gothic horror. If you’ve ever felt like an outsider building your own family, this book will wreck you in the best way.
The Pattern I Didn’t Know I Was Reading For
Here’s what happened: I picked up Graham Norton’s Frankie because I wanted to find out if Graham Norton’s wit translates to a good story. Then Emily Dickinson’s poetry because I was feeling literary. Then a paranormal romance about werewolves and fandom archivists because it was 11 PM and my brain wanted candy.
But here’s the thing about all of them (and the other eleven): they’re all about people standing slightly to the side. The observers. The ones who refuse center stage and choose presence over performance.
Frankie? A woman who survives by “standing slightly to the side” because peripheral vision is a superpower when you’re trying not to disappear.
Vera Wong (from Vera Wong’s Guide to Snooping)? A 61-year-old widow who shows up with tea and questions, refusing to let people vanish into their performed identities.
The robots in Automatic Noodle? Four obsolete food-service robots making noodles in a world that already declared them disposable. They’re not trying to prove their humanity. They’re just… there. Making noodles. Witnessing each other. And somehow that becomes a revolution.
Even Diane Keaton’s memoir Then Again is about excavating her mother through 85 journals and finally seeing Dorothy not as “the mom” but as a whole person whose dreams existed completely independent of her children.
Six Things November Books Taught Me About Showing Up
(Or: The Philosophy I Accidentally Built From Romance Novels and Robot Fiction)
1. The margins have the clearest sightlines
The strongest perspectives come from the edges. Frankie, standing to the side. Vera, the snooping grandmother nobody takes seriously at first. The Mi’kmaq family in The Berry Pickers, whose losses get systematized and forgotten. Turns out, the people society pushes to the margins often see what those at the center miss precisely because they’re not invested in protecting the center’s narrative.
(Which feels important when you’re building a creative practice in a world obsessed with being seen, liked, and algorithmed into oblivion.)
2. Honest imperfection > performed wholeness, every single time
In How to End a Love Story, two broken people don’t love their way to wholeness. They build something new by admitting they’re still assembling the pieces. In All This and More, the protagonist stops hunting for the perfect version of herself and just… chooses to live the life she actually has.
None of them perform the story of being healed. They show up as they are: cracked, still assembling, imperfect. And that honesty becomes the thing that allows real connection.
(This is the part where I tell you I spent half of November feeling like a fraud for not having my life together, and then these books whispered: “what if that’s not actually the problem?”)
3. What society deems “unworthy” is often the most honest
Fan Service (my highest-rated read of the month, which surprised exactly no one more than me) reframes fandom as a legitimate index of what we deserve and who we are. The archivist isn’t transcending her obsession. She’s claiming it as valid.
Similarly, Of Monsters and Mainframes doesn’t ask robots to become “acceptably human.” It says their capacity for care, vulnerability, and connection already IS humanity, whether society recognizes it or not.
Your embarrassing interests? Your weird hobbies? The thing you do that makes you feel most like yourself, even though it’s not impressive? That’s not the thing to outgrow. That’s the infrastructure of your actual life.
4. Sometimes showing up changes everything
Notice how often in these books, someone’s simple act of presence shifts the entire story. A fried rice recreated by a stranger’s hands gives permission to tell the truth (The Restaurant of Lost Recipes). Tea and questions from Vera give permission to stop performing. Emily Dickinson’s slant language (truth told through volcano-smiles and birds with feathers) lodges in bones precisely because it doesn’t explain itself.
You don’t have to fix people. You just have to show up and see them.
5. Truth lives in what’s left unsaid
My reads celebrate silence and indirection. Dickinson proves that saying less, with laser precision, matters infinitely more than saying more. A Sunny Place for Shady People shows horror through the supernatural as a metaphor for normalized violence and inherited trauma.
The gaps, the pauses, the things we can’t quite name? Those carry weight too.
6. Radical care in dehumanizing systems
The most radical act in systems designed for your disposal is to create something beautiful with people who see you. Vera operates a teahouse as community-building in a social media-driven world. The robots create a noodle restaurant while facing algorithmic prejudice. Dorothy leaves journals for her daughter to excavate.
The radical act isn’t revolution with a capital R. It’s showing up with presence, tea, questions, precision, imperfection, and the refusal to let anyone disappear into their performed identity.
What This Actually Means (And What I Hope to Do About It)
I’m not saying you need to read fourteen books about witness to fix your life. But I am saying this: we’re all so obsessed with authenticity, finding ourselves, curating the perfect version of our story.
What if the real work is just… showing up? Seeing people as they are? Letting yourself be seen, even when you’re still figuring it out?
For my creative practice:
- Stop waiting to be “ready” before I share your work
- Create spaces where people feel witnessed, not judged
- My imperfections aren’t bugs. They’re the permission slip others need.
For my relationships:
- Presence matters more than having the right words
- Sometimes tea and questions are enough
- Standing slightly to the side doesn’t mean I’m not participating
For myself:
- I don’t have to perform wholeness
- My obsessions and interests aren’t things to outgrow
- Being seen is scary. Do it anyway.
November by the Numbers
- Books completed: 14
- Average rating: 4.09/5.0
- 5-star reads: 1 (Fan Service, and I’m not apologizing)
- 4.5+ stars: 6 books
- Genres: 8 (because apparently I contain multitudes)
- International authors: 7 (Argentina, Japan, Malaysia, Ireland, UK, Canada)
The Takeaway I’m Still Sitting With
I started November wanting good stories. I ended it with a philosophy I didn’t know I was building: that witness, attention, presence, and the courage to be seen imperfectly is the most radical thing available in a world obsessed with performance.
You’re not a mess that needs fixing. You’re a person learning how to show up.
And maybe that’s enough.
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