November 2025 Wrap-Up & Favorites

Source: personal collection

I almost finish catching up to last year wrap-up post. Please bear with me a little. In November, I finally finished a tome which has been haunting me for months. Aside of its size, the book itself tells a difficult story with hard topic which doesn't make it even easier for me to finish. But I did! Here's all the books I read in November 2025.

 

	They Are Looking at Us - Soshichi Tonari,Junji Ito (★★★)
	Rather than a manga, I prefer to call it an illustrated book. It's a short one, very. The story is not written by Junji Ito, but the creepiness and body horror is there. Junji Ito contributed as the illustrator. It gives out an eerie vibe with how mundane the story is. However, the story is so short that I didn't have time to process all of it and it's already finished. Do I recommend it? not really. If you're an avid fan of horror genre and looking for a quick pick me up, perhaps this book is for you.
	Why I Am so Clever - Friedrich Nietzsche, R.J. Hollingdale (★★★★)
	I want to read Nietzsche's books since forever but always feels intimidated. I know his writings are not easy to read. Meaning, I have to actually dissect his sentences to get what he's talking about and his ideas. That's exactly what I did reading this book. Even though Why I Am so Clever is a short book, consisting of three of his essays, I need to read them carefully and slowly just to understand what he's talking about. Judging by the title itself one would assume that he's such a narcisstic man writing essays about how clever he was or how wise he was, etc. However he brought up several interesting views through these essays while celebrating himself and making fun of himself just a bit. In it, he lists the reasons or ways to maximise someone's potential while reflecting on his situation and experience growing up. He brought up Zarathustra a lot, which has been on my wishlist so reading this book kind of motivates me to pick Zarathustra sooner. We'll see.
	The End of August - Yu Miri (★★★)
	The End of August is a generational story about a family who lived in (now) South Korea during Japan's occupation era. It centers around Lee Woo-cheol, a Korean man with a gift for running.It's a 700-ish pages book with 30 chapters set in different timelines. I had difficulties reading this book because of theme and the writing style. It's about the hardships of Korean people during wartime, poverty, racist, and misogyny that came with it. It's mostly written in stream of consciousness style which makes it exhausting to read. Although this book is not my favorite, but it tells an important part of history. I'm interested in reading Yu Miri's other books.

November Favorites

Series

Romantics Anonymous

The cutest thing I watched in November. It's a Japanese drama actually. The male lead is a Japanese famous actor Shun Oguri while the female lead is a Korean actress. I'm not familiar with Korean dramas so I didn't really know who she is. Apparently she's quite a veteran actress too in the Korean dramas industry. The show only has eight episodes. It follows a young woman named Hana Lee who's a talented chocolatier but has a hard time of looking people in the eye. While. Her life crosses path with a young man, Sosuke Fujiwara, who's the son of an owner of a big chocolate/dessert company. He's tasked to lead a small chocolate shop which happen to be the one where Hana anonymously sell her chocolate creations. It's a drama comedy show so it's light hearted and cute. What I love the most is the visual. Since the show is revolved around the world of chocolate, it could get very specific on that topic. I must say they went all out on the chocolate visual front. I highly recommend this show.

I think the majority of my November spent finishing The End of August and watching some shows on Netflix. I bought several Penguin Archives books in November which I hoped I would read in December. But we know that didn't happen. So, one more wrap-up and we're finally moving on to 2026.