I am starting the month reading Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs, which has been sitting on my shelves for years now. Considering that it has been called "a cry from hell" I thought it would provide the perfect Halloween reading.
To follow Burroughs, I want to stay with the beat generation for a little longer, reading one of its defining works On the Road by Jack Kerouac. The beat generation intrigues me in their experimentation with structure as well as their exploration of psychological and social themes, and I am looking forward to be diving into it this month.
My November reading is going to be dominated by the Booker Prize 2020. Seeing how incredibly diverse this year's shortlist is, I felt like reading them all to make my own ranking. Both The New Wilderness by Diane Cook and Burnt Sugar by Avni Doshi deal with mother-daughter relationships, while Douglas Stuart tells of a difficult mother-son relationship and poverty in Shuggie Bain. Tsitsi Dangarembga's This Mournable Body is a psychological novel which has been called "as natural as the grass grows" by Chinua Achebe, and thus sounds very promising to me. And as I am always excited about a historical novel, especially one focusing on the role of women in situations they have traditionally been erased out of, I have high hopes for The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste. The last Booker finalist this year is Real Life by Brandon Taylor, described as an emotional story about dealing with past trauma.
Finally, to practice my Italian, I am planning to read Accabadora by Michela Murgia about the big and existential questions in life: birth, death, action and fate.