Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin

BATB score: 7/10 🧐

Best as: 100 most influential novel by BBC News 2019 - might as well ✅

Best to: a novel about bisexuality and internalized homophobia, sensitive masculinity and social alienation back in 1956 where everything is controversial 🧐 wowza

Best for: literature as an art form ; art appreciation

Best quotes: “People can't, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, anymore than they can invent their parents. Life gives these and also takes them away and the great difficulty is to say Yes to life.”

“Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.”

“I am the man, I suffered, I was there.”