It’s November, which means only one thing is on my mind: spaceships.

More specifically, this spaceship, from the Skyward series:

Now, I’m always thinking at least a little bit about this spaceship. I like this spaceship a lot. I just like spaceships, period. But this habit has grown especially distracting as of late due to the highly-anticipated November release of the final book in the Skyward series, Defiant, by Brandon Sanderson, which is set to wrap up some of the best sci-fi I’ve ever read. I’m not sure if it’s going to top Cytonic, which would be a great feat considering Cytonic featured a mysterious guy with a mustache, but I am EXCITED. 

The series follows the main character, a human girl named Spensa, as she works to save the last of humanity hiding out on the desolate planet of Detritus, and uncover the complex story behind how they got there in the first place. I definitely would recommend reading the Skyward series if you like reading about characters who are women and are full of fury, complex post-apocalyptic societies, spaceships fighting other spaceships, spaceships not fighting other spaceships and instead attempting to explore mycology, or this thing:

Defiant comes out November 21st, so get reading!

While you’re at your local library or bookstore looking for the Skyward books (and you better be at a library or local bookstore (try Kismet Books or A Room Of One’s Own!), because if you order those books from Amazon I WILL find you and make you watch a half-hour long presentation on how Amazon is destroying local commerce and horribly mistreats its employees), there’s another book that was released in a November past that you might want to pick up. It’s been thirteen years since Siddhartha Mukherjee published his first book (he’s written several others now, all of which I heartily recommend!), titled The Emperor of All Maladies, and it’s still worth the read. 

Over the course of the book, Mukherjee interweaves his own experiences as an oncologist with how our understanding and treatments of cancer have changed over the centuries. It also explores how political climates from the public view to behind closed doors have shaped the funding, progress, application, and acceptance of cancer research. It’s a fascinating read and an accessible one at that. While the book is somewhat dense, Mukherjee does an excellent job of explaining the science behind cancer in layman’s terms. I would seriously recommend this book to anyone who wants to know more about cancer, and medical history or is just looking for an interesting read.