Best of the Bunch (October 2021)

Today I'm sharing the best book I read in October.

Of the 8 books I read this month, I had two 5-star reads:

Girl Sex 101 by Allison Moon

Know My Name by Chanel Miller

Now that I see these side by side, they seem to be strangely related — the first one an inclusive guide to consensual, pleasurable sex that respects yourself and your partner, and the second one the aftermath of sex being weaponized. Both are important to understand. For my Best of the Bunch, I'm going to go with the one that has an astounding 4.71 rating on Goodreads.

Miller is an incredibly talented writer, and she did an admirable job narrating the audiobook of Know My Name. Through a minutely detailed account of the aftermath of her assault by Brock Turner in 2015 — all the way through the recall vote for the judge who gave Turner only six months in jail — she gives the reader a visceral sense of what it's like not just being a survivor of assault but surviving the court process that is involved in trying to get justice. She points out with stunning clarity the problems with both the structural and the cultural responses to sexual assault and why victims so rarely report or report years after the fact. Her story is important as both an indictment of the way sexual assault survivors are treated and as an empathetic mirror for those who have experienced assault themselves. Really powerful and definitely recommended.

What is the best book you read this month? Let me know in comments, or write your own post and link up below!

Looking back:
One year ago I was reading: Amazing Grace and To Kill a Mockingbird
Five years ago I was reading: Brideshead Revisited, Adoption Parenting, and Writing My Wrongs
Ten years ago I was reading: The Great Gatsby

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