Before this semester began, one of my friends from home and I decided to start a sort of book club during the semester. We both like to read for fun, but often forget to when school starts up and we’re swamped with readings for class. This semester, we made a pact to pick a few books to read together, so we would be more motivated to actually take a break and read for fun once in a while.
Our first book was Rupi Kaur’s Milk and Honey. I decided we should read this book for three reasons:
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It’s all over Instagram
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It’s relatively short
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I enjoy poetry, and this is a book of poems
I know poetry can seem daunting, but this book is worth your time: I managed to finish it in less than a week and couldn’t put it down. The book, divided into four sections, is a collection of free-verse poems tracing the life of a woman through times of abuse, loss, loneliness, and love. It is absolutely captivating, and so many poems in the book resonated with me on a personal level. Kaur is only 23 years old, and the fact that such a powerful collection of poetry was written by a young woman so like ourselves makes the work even more impressive.
This book is more than Instagram fodder, despite having many of its poems and pages shared on the social network (I’m guilty of it myself). It’s an emotional experience and a complete journey in a relatively few amount of pages, and because of its format, it is fairly easy to put down and pick back up again whenever – although I can almost guarantee you won’t be putting it down any time soon after you start reading it.