October was not a good month, in terms of real life things and reading. November was much better (even with the dismal political news near the start) as in I got to a lot of books that I’ve been meaning to read for a while, but there was a lot of reading challenges going on and it felt like I was barely keeping up!
Books I Read
- The Warden (Chronicles of Barsetshire #1)
- Fire Dance
- Mind Games
- The Galaxy Game (Cygnus Beta #2)
- Drop Dead Sisters
- Ghost College (The Ghost Files #1)
- The Anonymous Hookup (The Hookup Duology #1)
- The Unsinkable Penelope Carnegie (The Robber Baron Brides #1)
- Ceremony in Death (In Death #5)
- 10% Human: How Your Body’s Microbes Hold the Key to Health and Happiness
- All Boys Aren’t Blue
- The Impatient
- Of Curses and Kisses (St. Rosetta’s Academy #1)
- 8 Lives of a Century-Old Trickster
- More Days at the Morisaki Bookshop (森崎書店の日々(Days at the Morisaki Bookshop) #2)
- Things Fall Apart (The African Trilogy #1)
- The Tosa Diary
- African and Caribbean People in Britain: A History
- Lost Hills (Eve Ronin #1)
- Horribly Haunted in Hillbilly Hollow (Ozark Ghost Hunter #1)
- The Time Machine
- Valor on the Move (Valor #1)
- Test of Valor (Valor #2)
- Beyond the Sea
- More Me Than You
- Arlington Park
- Part of Your World (Part of Your World #1)
Favourite Book of the Month
It was very hard to choose the book for the category this month! There were so many that I really enjoyed and a couple I would reread but I believe there is one which really delighted me with how much I enjoyed it. I was pleasantly surprised by The Impatient which I read in one sitting but it was the book I picked up because it was on the Women’s Prize for Fiction longlist that delighted me.
Least Favourite Book of the Month
This was, on the other hand, very easy to pick. There was one book which I only finished because it was very good for the reading challenge. It’s a literary fiction book but unlike most literary books where the writing is the main point of the book, in this book it was the only point of the book. The characters blurred into one, there was no plot, and even the writing style started to grate by the end.
Reading Updates
My 2024 reading goals have fallen to the wayside in the last few months. There are no books from my 2024 TBR on the above list, no ARCs, no monthly themed books (I did finish 10% Human but that wasn’t for Non-Fiction November), and only 30% of books were by authors of colour (as far as I know). I’m on 71% of the Pop Sugar challenge (31 prompts out of 45 filled), 100% on the Reading Harder challenge and then not so great on all the other challenges I signed up for with Storygraph.
As for the Seasonal Reading Challenge, I did not manage to complete it! I had a great time choosing books to fill in each challenge and I got to several books I’ve been meaning to get to for a while (as in I bought them in 2011 and not read them until now, like Fire Dance). That said, me doing the SRC and a group competitive challenge and being more of a mood reader than anything else, as well as work and medical stuff kicking off, I felt like I barely had time to do anything (yes I know I read a lot but half of these are books that are very short (under 250 pages). So I shall not be doing that in the future! That said, I read 49 out of 83 books for prompts so I regard that as more than a success than a fail.
I hope to reset and relax in December as I settle into Christmas books and rereads of some of my favourites. How did your November go?
