OCTOBER 2025: Best and Worst Books of the Month

Hi everyone. Today, I’ll be talking about the best and worst books I read in October. I know this post is a little later than usual, but here are my thoughts on the two books that earned the badge of my best and worst reads of the month:

1. WORST BOOK OF THE MONTH:  You Dreamed of Empires by Álvaro Enrigue

The premise of this book is that the clash between the Mexica and the Spanish conquistadors was more a cultural shock than a military confrontation between them. The Spanish, for their part, were out of their element in a strange land, unable to recognize their role as aggressors and the Mexica were “overburdened by tradition, superstition, and ceremonial inertia that it has become incapable of meaningful action.” The worlds of the Mexica and the Spanish, Enrigue says, were so different from one another that the weight of the misunderstandings between them was unbridgeable. Thus, they eventually led to a military escalation between the two of them.

I wanted to like this book, but I did not like the author’s writing style.  

2. BEST BOOK OF THE MONTH: Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

Daphne du Maurier said that du Maurier said that Rebecca was a “study in jealousy inspired by her own feelings toward her husband’s first fiancée.” The story, she said, was rooted in her experience of living with the influence of a previous wife and that the anonymous narrator’s reserved personality reflected parts of her own nature.

Rebecca is dead, but she is not at rest. This is not a ghost story, but Rebecca’s ghost is everywhere. She is still in Manderley, and the main character (Maxim de Winter’s new wife) is an unreliable narrator that struggles with jealousy as she imagines what Maxim’s life with Rebecca had been before she died.

The ending of this novel, in my opinion, is superb and what elevates the novel to the next level. I also found that it is the perfect ending to the iconic first line of the book: “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again,” and it makes you want to go back to the beginning and start reading the novel again. The difference is that this time you’ll know why the narrator and her husband are drifting from hotel to hotel in exile.

I recommend this book, yes.