My Bookish Month of November 2019

Hi and welcome to another monthly overview!

Not a bad month, not a bad month at all! It looks as though the stars aligned to give me quite a lot of reading time: November brought two bank holidays, few social obligations and rather poor health (yes the latter totally sucks but at least my brain still worked so I could still read, sometimes you have to cling to that silver lining and ignore the cloud as best you can).

After the #Orentober madness it was fun to spend a little less time glued to my laptop, and I really enjoyed my reading. I also managed to read a few books that had been on my TBR for months: a few FairyLoot books, Blood Orange by Harriet Tyce and The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides. In this year’s tradition of disagreeing with the general opinion on hyped books, guess what I thought of those two…

November was also the month in which I obtained my 50 reviews badge from NetGalley, yay! I went a little nuts with requesting books on NetGalley too, but luckily I managed to keep up with reading them, so I still have my 80% badge (I worked hard to get that little bugger, don’t want to lose it now ?)

I also broke last year’s reading record of 244 books – gasp! And to think that I set my Goodreads challenge at 175 because I was sure I wouldn’t be able to repeat last year’s success! Part of that high number is the fact that I discovered novellas and short stories this year, and I also rediscovered graphic novels, so the total number of pages I’ve read so far this year may very well be the same, or lower, than last year’s. However, I have been increasing my audiobook listening time in the last few months and I was able to take quite a few books off Mount TBR that way. In the end, the numbers don’t really matter much to me so long as I get to read and I enjoy what I’m doing. Still, I’m really pleased to have read so much already ?

Anyhoo, here’s what I did last month, and some of what I’ll be posting this month:

What I read (full novels):

Those People, Louise Candlish
All the Wrong Places, Joy Fielding (review to follow on the tour)
Blood Orange, Harriet Tyce
Sorcery of Thorns, Margaret Rogerson (review to follow)
Dreamland, Nancy Bilyeau (review to follow on the tour)
The Dark Game, Jonathan Janz (review to follow)
The Mothers, Sarah J. Naughton (review to follow on the tour)
The Merciful Crow (The Merciful Crow 1), Margaret Owen (review to follow)
Snakes and Ladders (Ziba MacKenzie Book 3), Victoria Selman (review to follow)
Truth or Die (D.S. Imogen Grey 5), Katerina Diamond
A Curse So Dark and Lonely, Brigid Kemmerer (review to follow)
Behind Blue Eyes (Stockholm Murders 1), C.S. Duffy
The Six, Luca Veste
Under the Guise Death, Vivian Conroy
A Shot in the Dark, Neil Richards & Matthew Costello
Stay Mad, Sweetheart, Heleen Kist
The Neighbour, Fiona Cummins

What I read (novellas / short stories):

Killer Queen (Soho Noir 5), T.S. Hunter

What I read (graphic novels):

The Walking Dead – Compendium 2 Chapter 15-16, Robert Kirkman

What I listened to:

The Silent Patient, Alex Michaelides
Dear Wife, Kimberly Belle
Proximity (iMe 1), Jem Tugwell (review to follow)
Daisy Jones & The Six, Taylor Jenkins Reid (review to follow)
The Sixth Wicked Child (4MK 3), J.D. Barker
Safe House, Jo Jakeman
The Fifth to Die (MK4 2), J.D. Barker
Six Stories (Six Stories 1), Matt Wesolowski

What I read earlier but reviewed in November:

The Home by Sarah Stovell
The Unadjusteds by Marisa Noelle
Slash by Hunter Shea
Lock Me In by Kate Simants
Devil’s Deal (Infernal Contracts 1) by Tessa Hastjarjanto

Last month I also put the spotlight on Silent Heroes by Patricia Furstenberg and I talked about audiobooks and why they make me a better person.

That leaves my book of the month… I read so many good ones in a variety of genres, so it’s hard to weigh them against one another and narrow it down to one… So I’m not going to, ha!

Thanks for joining me today, happy reading xxx