November Wrap-Up
Hello friends! I said I was back to blogging and then didn’t post for weeks – classic. Haha well you know, life just gets busy sometimes! But since it is now December – dang!! – I thought I’d get back to it and share a wrap-up of my reads and etc from the past month.
Do you ever set monthly TBRs? I used to, but I kinda feel like that puts too much pressure on me to read certain things, so I don’t do it anymore. I’ve been working on reading all of my owned books, so really what I’ve been doing is trying to read books I have and not buy too many new ones. This proves difficult since I’m fortunate enough to have easy library access 😂so I cheat on my “owned books” goal with library books.
This month, I read 4 books that I owned and 3 books from the library! Over all of those, I read 2986 pages, and had an average rating of 4.1. I also have now read 101 books this year! I wasn’t expecting to hit that so early, since the past few years I’ve reached around 100ish right at the end of the year. So let’s get to the good stuff – the books themselves!
- Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo || 5/5 ✨s || (review here)
- Angel Mage by Garth Nix || 3.5/5 ✨s || (review here)
- An Alchemy of Masques and Mirrors by Curtis Craddock || 5/5 ✨s || (review here)
- The Midnight Lie by Marie Rutkoski || 4/5 ✨s || (ARC; release date 3/2020)
- Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert || 3.5/5 ✨s
- Top Ten by Katie Cotugno || 3/5 ✨s
- Tunnel of Bones by Victoria Schwab || 4/5 ✨s
The first 4 were the physical books and the last 3 were the library books! I found two new favorites this month – Ninth House and An Alchemy of Masques and Mirrors. I really can’t recommend the second enough (I won’t bore you with more hype about Ninth House because daaang there has been so much). It’s such an amazing blend of fantasy and steampunk and action/adventure and politics and just!!!!! IT’S SO GOOD. I need the next book to be in my hands like, yesterday.
I was lucky enough to get an ARC of The Midnight Lie at New York Comic Con, and wow what a story! Rutkoski’s writing has really leveled up in my opinion. I won’t say too much since I don’t want to give anything away, but I think a lot of people will love this one! Also – f/f romance!!!!
Tunnel of Bones – can’t go wrong with Schwab tbh. I have loved every single one of her books that I’ve read! And I’ve read…most of them haha. This is a wonderful middle grade series that is just the right level spooky for me since I’m a baby 😂. And Cassidy and Jacob have a great friendship and I love them. And I also love that her parents are a big part of the story too! That is unusual in MG/YA fantasy I feel like.
Right now, I’m about 2/3 of the way through Gideon the Ninth and loving it! Here’s a quote from it that I thought was really funny:
“The arms kind of looked like swords. I want to fight it.”
“You want to fight it.”
“Yep.”
“Because it looked…a little like swords.”
“Yop.”
I’m also hoping to read The Starless Sea in the next week and a half since my friend and I are going to meet the author at her NYC tour stop!!
In addition to reading, I got the new Pokémon game for the Switch this month and have been OBSESSED. I didn’t game as a kid, so this is literally my first time playing a Pokémon game ever! It’s so much fun, and I love seeing all the cute Pokémon! It definitely cut into my reading time haha but now I’ve finished the main story and am just catching the rest of the Pokémon so I’m back to reading again.
I also have been listening to a couple podcasts. I listened to all of Girl in Space, which is an AMAZING fictional (science fiction) podcast that I highly recommend. The episodes are about 30 mins each, which I found to be a really good length. My boyfriend and I also listen to The Adventure Zone together, which is a Dungeons & Dragons podcast done by three brothers and their dad. I’ve mentioned it before, but I just wanna mention it again because I think fantasy fans would really love it!
So that was basically my November! What have you been reading? Anything that you’d suggest for me? And definitely let me know if you have any good podcast recommendations too 🙂
Oh, you listened to Girl in Space!! It was my first obsession this year, haha. So glad you loved it too! Gaming sounds fun but I’ve never really been a gamer. I used to enjoy Sims a lot, but I liked the building of houses more than actually playing, haha (and I always cheated and got extra money and didn’t save a game if my character died 😂). I did play Pokemon on Gameboy when I was younger, but I was never very good and again I used cheat codes. 😂
I do feel like parents are often out of the way in YA and MG, haha. So it’s cool whenever they do feature a lot!
Hahaha yeah I really only like games that don’t require a lot of skill lol.
I guess it’s the way that they can focus on the main characters, but I think there are ways to do that with still including the parents!