So, how did I finish off this absolute circus of a year? I read five books in total, and it's probably the most mixed bag month of them all. I had a poetry collection I've owned since I was in Year 8 and never read; a book all about the global economics; the Communist Manifesto; Jane Austen's first ever novel; and Toni Morrison's Paradise. Let's kick things off with Paradise. I rated it 4 out of 5 stars on goodreads, and were it a little less of a confusing read, I would probably have given it full marks. What's it about? It begins with a terrible crime, the murder of a woman in a convent, and then recounts the lives of the many people involved, until it eventually goes full circle and returns to the scene of the crime. Structurally, this works very well. At first it comes off like every crime fiction novel ever. An unknown woman is murdered. But as the story progresses and we learn more of these characters, it eventually becomes so much more than that. Mostly