I had a REALLY rough start to the month. I was just busy with a lot of stuff going on (the end of my renovation, ending my old job of 5 years and starting a new one, everything in the world, etc) and it was hard for me to keep up with my reading and blogging. It took a little while for me to get back into the swing of things but I think I’m finally starting to catch up and get a new routine down now that the dust has settled (in this case literally–I still have a lot of cleaning to do!) So towards the end of the month my reading picked up A LOT. I ended with a pretty darn good month in books!
November wound up being a really heavy Romance month for me. Part of my effort to avoid slump town was to just read a different genre and I guess it took a little longer than normal to get out of the trenches. Nothing really wrong with that, just means I read a higher percentage of Romance than normal. It happens!
For November I also participated in SciFiMonth for the first time ever! I had hoped to get more SciFi themed posts going but that didn’t work out, still I had 5 reviews of SciFi books plus I read a few SciFi books as well–way more than normal (in spec fic I definitely lean more into the Fantasy side of things haha). Still, I had a good time and thanks so much to the organizers for putting this together again! Hopefully next year I’ll have my stuff together a little more for these events. 🙂
The breakdown:
- 16 novels, 4 manga volumes (although I’m hoping to finish off another novel today so maybe 17 total…we’ll see)
- 8 Speculative Fiction novels–3 Scifi, 5 Fantasy (and all but 2 were romance heavy–as is my mood!)
- 7 Romance novels–6 contemporary, 1 historical
- 1 General Fiction novel
Favorite Reads of the Month:
I guess because I was mood reading the 2nd half of the month, I wound up reading a lot of things I loved! How about that? 😉
- Dreams from the Grave by J. Kathleen Cheney. I don’t know why I waited months after it was released to read this book when it’s one of my favorite series but moods are strange things! I continue to love this. The mysteries are intriguing, the world building is fascinating and layered and the characters are great. Also the romance. Swoooooon.
- Etched in Bone by Anne Bishop. The final book in The Others series and I’m so sad it’s over! I really want more of these characters, they’re all so fabulous. I’ve enjoyed every minute of time spent with them.
- Wintersong by S. Jae-Jones. This book was unexpected and totally a mood read. I’m so glad that I decided to check it out though because it was exactly the dark and romantic fairy tale that I didn’t know I was craving.
- The Prince of Secrets by A.J. Lancaster. This is the 2nd book in the Stariel Quartet and I’m LOVING this series. Love books involving the fae, and this one has a bit of society and mystery and romance and really fun characters. Really all of the things I love and they’re written so well.
November’s Book Reviews:
Managed to get out 8 reviews in November so holding to my average really well and I feel good about that. I did get a little behind in writing reviews for a few minutes but I’m pretty much all caught up again so yay!
- The Shores of Spain by J. Kathleen Cheney – 4/5 stars
- The Better Part of Valor by Tanya Huff – 4/5 stars
- Peace Talks by Jim Butcher – 3.5/5 stars
- The Many-Colored Land by Julien May – No Rating – DNF
- Spellbreaker by Charlie N. Holmberg – 4/5 stars
- Redshirts by John Scalzi – 4/5 stars
- Rebel by Krista D. Ball – 4/5 stars
- Aurora Blazing by Jessie Mihalik – 4/5 stars
Other Posts:
I had a few book tags and then a list post and a discussion post! Almost finished the year and so far have kept up with my one per month discussion post!
- Book Buying Habits Tag
- Physical Books or Ebooks? Which is Better?
- Books to Read Before The End of The Year
- Medieval Queens Book Tag
- End of Year Book Tag
Plans for December:
First let’s take a step back and see how I did with November’s plans. For November I wanted to MOOD READ. I think I did pretty good with that? I wound up once again reading a good amount of romance so….yeah. I also had a couple of books on the TBR planned for Scifi Month and I only got to one of them but I’ll take it as a win haha. Bingo was something I thought about in the background only and I did manage to read at least one more book for that. It helped that it was the same book on my TBR. 🙂
For December I plan to mood read all the way. There are a few books I’d LOVE to get to before 2021 but if I don’t, oh well. They’ll be there for me whenever. So that’s about it! Other than that I do have a lot of blog things I need to catch up on so hopefully I can find the time for that–I’ve been trying but when you dig a big hole for yourself it takes a lot of work to get out of it haha. I have A LOT of spreadsheet maintenance to catch up on so I can get my end of year stats together, just to name one major thing I need to do. I also need to finish giving my house a thorough cleaning (this is taking forever! Damn this renovation dust!) because we decided to have my parents and brother over for Christmas dinner since we won’t be doing a big family gathering this year due to the pandemic. I’ll be very busy but hopefully I’ll also find some reading time!
And, that about sums things up. How was your month? Leave a note in the comments, I’d love to chat!
Way Too Fantasy 
What a wrap up! Wintersong is indeed a unique romance book!
Thanks! I really loved that one it was kind of different. 🙂
I imagine you’re exhausted tbh. All your home renovations and starting a new job. Both things that you’re probably enjoying in many ways but even so are both stressful. And all the dust – don’t even get me started. It sounds like you’re enjoying your new job though which is great?
My reading has been shocking this year – I had about 5 or 6 months where my concentration was shocking and my blogging was equally bad. Hopefully we can start 2021 with more enthusiasm.
Lynn 😀
Yes, exhausted! Although with all the time I’m saving on having a much shorter commute I’ve found some extra energy as well. The new job is working out really well! I like the work, it’s interesting and I’m learning lots of new things and when the guys are out (which is somewhat often) I have the office to myself.
This year has been crazy so it’s totally understandable that your reading has been off. I’m hoping for a fresh start with the new year! Don’t let us down, 2021!
So happy that your new job is working out well already. It’s a stressful time but it’s also so good to learn new things and all the extra experience that comes with it. I changed jobs after quite a few years at the same place. I think the biggest thing was learning who everyone was and their names because it was an open plan office with about 50 people so they had one new name whilst I had 49! Eventually. I drew up myself a secret desk plan and when I saw someone approaching f I just had a sneaky look. Worked a charm. Lol. That aside. I loved that job and the shorter travel to and from work made an incredible difference to my home life balance. So,hope the same goes for you 😁
Oh wow! That sounds like a good way to approach it haha. Thanks, Lynn! I feel like in the short time I’ve been there it’s already making a big difference so I’m really happy about that. Luckily my office is super small–just the two owners, me, and one other guy who will be retiring soon. It’s a lot to learn but they say I’m picking things up quickly so I’m happy about that. It also feels really great to be valued again in a job–I didn’t realize how much I missed that. 🙂
Sounds absolutely perfect. 😁
Wow, looks like you wrapped up the month really nicely! Even though you were mostly mood reading (which, honestly, is a total mood right now lol) at least you read something instead of falling into slump town, and with lots of four stars as well! I totally get what you mean by it taking longer than expected to catch up with the blog stuff. I never caught up in the end so I’m just moving forward and working on getting better in the future 🤣 Hope December is a better month overall!
Thanks, it ended up being a really great month if only because I was able to get it together the last couple of weeks.
Moving forward is a totally valid thing! I’ve done that before when I got super behind in blog hopping. It happens. 🙂
Thanks, Dini! I hope your December is excellent.
I am planning on mood reading all of December too. After two months of themes, my brain doesn’t want any more rules. 😛
Yes! I feel that. I almost always end up mood reading in December, but I started a bit early this year. Mood reading is awesome.
Except when you can’t decide WHAT you’re in the mood for, which is my current situation lol.
That happened to me briefly on Sunday, thank goodness it didn’t last long lol.
Looks like you had a pretty good month, even though the beginning was rocky. I’m planning on doing some mood reading too next month, and it will be fun to put my “best of the year” list together too😁
Thanks, it turned out rather well in the end. 🙂
Hope you enjoy your reading next month!
Looks like you had a good reading month! I hope you enjoy your mood reading in December!
(www.evelynreads.com)
Thanks, Evelyn! I hope you have a great December!
I didn’t get any Sci-fi posts up this month, but I did read some sci-fi from my backlist, so still a victory! I’m hoping to get some mood reads in December, but man my ARC pile will. not. quit.
I’d definitely consider that a victory! Good luck with your ARC pile. I’ve been very good about not requesting so I’m down to zero and have one single review request (although I did request a book on netgalley over the weekend so we’ll see how that goes).
I’ve been incredibly strict (for me) on my requests, so it could have been a lot worse! At the moment it’s a lot of catch-up, I think I’m behind by like four. Hopefully by end of January things are looking better!
Oh, behind by four isn’t bad at all! Good luck!
I had a similar month, slow and frustrating in the beginning, and then bam, lots of reading at the end! I’ve taken a break from writing, though, and I’ve been doing a lot of reading in the past few days, which has just been so nice. NaNoWriMo was fun, but oi, it was a lot this year. I’ll be glad to finish this book and just read for most of December, let myself relax as much as I want to. And why not? We deserve some chill time at the end of this hell year!
I don’t know how you were writing in NaNo, blogging and reading all at once! Ever since I started blogging I just can’t manage all three at once–you’re a rockstar!
December should be a chill month, hopefully. Let’s hope so anyway!
That’s a good bit of reading you got done.
I read Wintersong a while back but didn’t like it as much, unfortunately. I read it because it’s inspired by Rossetti’s Goblin Market poem, which I love, but it was around that time that I was getting turned off YA fantasy so I think that’s why I didn’t like it. I did like the descriptive writing though.
Yeah, I can see that. Despite the lovely prose it’s still very much got a YA feel to it with the romance but I really loved it haha. Maybe one day I’ll get totally sick of YA but for now…. 🙂