1/12  Things Fall Apart may seem like an odd choice for an Aries but you’ll find bits and pieces of your personality in the protagonist — the brave, passionate and determined clan leader Okonkwo.
Warrior Okonkwo is a man of action, leading the thriving Umuofia tribe. He’s worked hard to shed the baggage of his do-nothing father and sees glimpses of him in his son, Nwoye.
Things Fall Apart is a portrait of Africa at the onset of colonisation. Exiled from the village for seven years after losing his temper and beating one of his wives, Okonkwo returns to his home that’s now also home to Christain missionaries.
How does this once-proud leader reconcile his history and tradition with the now changing tribe? Will his peers stand up with him and fight this new enemy or will they succumb?
2/12  Seth Grahame-Smith takes a classic and sets it against the backdrop of a zombie apocalypse. A strange plague takes over, turning a once quiet English village into full-fledged zombie land.
It’s Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, with the quintessential British aristocratic luxuries and stubbornness of Elizabeth Bennet to tickle the fancy of a Taurus. Plus, zombies.
There are wars of words between our main lady and the dark Darcy as well as a real battle against the living dead.
For the Taurus that loves working with their hands, imagining swiping daggers and blazing guns to take out zombies will be a new kind of thrill.
3/12  Gemini: The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
Gemini’s may be known as the social butterflies of the zodiac but they’re also incredibly intelligent and voracious readers. Recognising these two seemingly opposite sides of their personality will make The God of Small Things a great read.
You’ll see multiple dualities in this book about politics, sexism, love and betrayal, life and death — starting with two timelines. The book tells the tale of fraternal twins Rahel and Estha’s childhood, and delves into their personalities, the backgrounds of their mother and Velutha, her lower-caste lover and more.
The book is rife with allusions, metaphors and vivid imagery and there’s playfulness and wit in Roy’s writing that Geminis will love.
4/12  Dear Sugar was an insightful, and funny online advice column at The Rumpus answering people’s problems on life and love. It was revealed much later that the anonymous Sugar was none other than Cheryl Strayed, author of bestselling memoir Wild.
The best of the column was compiled and turned into Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar. For Cancerians who wear their hearts on their sleeve, care about others sometimes more than themselves and can get a bit carried away with the emotions, this book will be the soothing salve of your day.
Cancers love poking their nose in other people’s business (come on, you know it’s true). What better than a peek at other people’s personal experiences through this book that also comprises of previously unpublished letters and columns?
Strayed doesn’t hold back in her advice. As Steve Almond writes in the introduction, people came to Sugar in real pain and she answers them with “radical empathy”.
From a woman coming to terms with a miscarriage to questions about the meaning of love and life from a twice-divorced man searching for meaning – Strayed opens up to them all and the responses are beautiful.
5/12  Jane Charlotte is an independent, enterprising and borderline arrogant young woman who after years of waiting finally gets recruited by a secret organisation of assassins that fights evil. She works at the Department for the Final Disposition of Irredeemable Persons, also known as Bad Monkeys for short.
She’s passionate about what she does and dives headfirst into making a name for herself. But she’s arrested for murder, ending up in a psychiatric ward. Bad Monkeys is Charlotte telling her story to the doctors.
You don’t know what to believe as Charlotte recalls childhood experiences, her recruitment and experience working for the organisation. There are sci-fi guns, clowns that kill and odd timelines, many of which are called out and fact-checked by the doctor interviewing her. It leaves you wondering what’s real and what’s not. Is Charlotte telling the truth or does she really belong in the psychiatric wing?
With multiple twists and turns and a kooky unreliable narrator, this book is a mix of a lot of things, all of which will pique the interest of a Leo. Won’t be surprised if Charlotte is one too.
6/12  Highly observant Virgos who pay meticulous attention to detail will thoroughly enjoy the depths to which Gerald Durrell goes to in My Family and Other Animals.
In this autobiographical book, naturalist Durrell shares amusing tales and antics from his childhood about his family, comprising of his widowed mother and siblings growing up on the Greek island of Corfu.
While the book was intended to be a description of the natural beauty of Corfu, and boy, does he relish in the fauna and flora, his family’s wildly entertaining antics end up taking the spotlight.
7/12  It’s a tale of two opposites, so to speak, an angel and a demon who end up keeping the peace and balancing each other out, metaphysically speaking. And what Libran doesn’t love a period of peaceful equilibrium?
These two have been living among the mortals since the human race began and grew pretty fond of it. Type A angel Eziraphale has his bookstore and Crowley the demon is busy living fast and loose. Their agreement to keep things slow and easy with each other and their ‘task’ worked great for years until things starting going a little awry.
A date was set for Doomsday. Their secret agreement comes to be questioned and they realise that the antichrist, whom they were tasked to watch over is not the real antichrist after all.
The book is a madcap joyride full of philosophical questioning of good and evil, supernatural shenanigans, prophecies, fish raining from the sky, baby swapping and more.
8/12  Scorpio: The Alienist by Caleb Carr
The Alienist has all the makings of a Scorpio binge-read. The story is told from the perspective of John Moore, a crime reporter who along alienist Laszlo Kreizler solve the case of a series of brutal killings.
Taking place in New York City in 1896, the HH Holmes era, there are several historical figures that pass through this book. Most prominently Theodore Roosevelt, here a police commissioner.
Part history and part murder-mystery, this book will have you putting on your detective monocle. The Scorpio intuition, resourcefulness and power of deduction make them great gumshoes in their own mind, let’s see that in practice now.
You may still be wondering, how is a book named The Alienist not about UFOs? At the time, psychologists and psychiatrists were known as alienists, noting that people who live with mental illnesses as being ‘alienated’ from their real selves.
9/12  Sagittarius: Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer
The adventurous Sagittarius will find respite from being trapped at home during the lockdown in Jon Krakauer’s non-fiction book Into the Wild (turned into a movie by Sean Penn). Their personalities are all about independence and going off the beaten path, quite like Chris McCandless himself.
McCandless’ story was told by Krakauer in an essay which he expanded on and turned into a book. McCandless lived a nomadic life with little possessions, ending up in the wilds of Alaska, living in an old bus and committing a grave error that led to his untimely death.
His story has turned him into a modern-day hero, with thousands still flocking to that bus every year to pay homage to McCandless.
10/12  Capricorn: Becoming by Michelle Obama
There’s a lot we can learn from Former First Lady of the US and Capricorn Michelle Obama’s memoir.
She opens up about her childhood, her multiple accomplishments, the constant questioning as being a woman of colour despite her degrees. You get to see how this young woman, growing up in a small apartment worked her way up to Princeton, Harvard and to the White House.
There are lessons to learn about love as she talks about how she met a young President Obama in her office and become his mentor. Their friendship grew into a love and relationship admired the world over.
We also get lessons in resilience from First Lady Obama who grew a thick skin after stepping into the global limelight when her husband won the election. Remember those comments made about how she looked like an ape in heels? She does too, and it stung.
Read about her life in politics, growing up with racism, sexism and having to find a balance between being a working mother and bringing up two daughters with a partner who was hardly ever around.
11/12  Aquarius: The Palace of Illusions by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
What’s more rebellious to draw in an Aquarius than the retelling of a largely male-dominated mythological epic from a feminist perspective? That’s what Chitra Bannerjee Divakaruni does with the Mahabharata in this book.
The tale is narrated by Panchali, the wife of the five mighty Pandavas who finally gets her own voice.
There are several retellings of the epic but what we got from The Palace of Illusions was a much-needed female perspective.
Panchali was presented to us as the tragic heroine upon whom evil was committed, but we get a backstory to the woman who was betrayed by those closest to her and stripped of her dignity in a court full of people.
Her genuine affection for her husbands and sons, her adaptability and resilience in exile, inner turmoil at Karna’s death and questioning of Krishna – it’s a refreshing, lyrical read, albeit with some loopholes and leaps.
12/12  Pisces are known for being incredibly empathetic and kind. In a world like ours, this kindness and empathy often get taken for a ride, leaving them with emotional scars for being too compassionate.
It’s no wonder then that they crave an escape from reality in fantasy worlds. But I say, dear Pisces, don’t run away anymore.
After constantly being taken advantage of, Pisces need to learn to love themselves and put themselves first. Tara Schuster’s story will be an inspiring read for the same.
By the time she was in her late 20s, Schuster was a highly sought-after TV executive and big shot at Comedy Central. She gave the world award-winning shows like Key & Peele and @midnight. But what no one saw behind the facade was her struggling with severe anxiety and self-medicating.
This collection of essays are personal retellings of her childhood, struggle with mental health and how she came to love herself a little bit at a time – and more importantly, how she got herself through it.
Even if you’re not the self-help book type of person, you would have come away learning something new about yourself or at least finding heartwarming reliability to a woman sitting thousands of kilometres away after reading this book. And she’ll have you laughing through it.
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