I ask myself this every year (and like, probably every month for the past few months, lol, but) where did October go? The end-of-year months always pass in a blink and this past month was no different—I legit can’t believe we’re in the second to last month of the year now! Here are some highlights from this month:
My cousin had her wedding reception (and final wedding event) at this gorgeous cliffside location in Uluwatu, Bali.
I won a Twitter Giveaway (the second time I’ve ever won anything on socials!) and received my copy of The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy! 😍
My new job has been tiring but it has also been invigorating to be surrounded by ambitious creative people.
Midnights (3am) by Taylor Swift — I’m still religiously listening to this album and love it more and more each day.
Wow, why does it feel like I just wrote my September wrap up… Yesterday? Anyone else or is it just me? 😂
This month has passed by so quickly that I’m not even sure what happened this month! Here are some highlights (hopefully I’m not thinking of a different month though lol):
I’ve been playing some great games on Switch and PS4: Unravel 2, Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and Detroit.
I got exciting book mail: Leslie’s bday books from May (lol) finally delivered, the final two books of the ADSOM Illumicrate SE!
I got a lovely new bed that feels like I’m sinking into a cloud whenever I lie down!
I reorganised my bookshelf and it looks *SPECTACULAR!* I even managed to unhaul some books that I no longer want to read or no longer want to keep, and have made space for more books (duh)!
I decided to make the move to a Digital Passion Planner and I’m obsessed. I still enjoy writing things down physically but it’s so convenient
Pretty chuffed about completing the challenge considering I was pretty behind not two months ago! 🙈 I’ve been reading my share of novellas and plenty of romances though and I always have fun bingeing those quickly. I actually had no idea how many books I’d read in October until I counted just now and I surprised myself by reading 21 books! I guess October didn’t start out too badly but then I really slowed down in the latter half of the month because I was feeling a bit slump-ish. Hopefully, it’s an October thing and I’ll get back to reading regularly in November.
The majority of my reads (as you’ll see below) were around the 3½ to 4-star range. I’ve enjoyed most of them but I thought only a few were memorable or stood out to me in any way. My favourite book was The Goddess of Nothing at All by Cat Rector. It’s also one of my favourite 2021 reads and I can’t recommend it enough if you love: Norse mythology told from a new perspective and unapologetically queer characters that will have you wailing in your emotions because this story will pummel them hard—y’know, only the good stuff! 😅
Perhaps you know the myths. Furious, benevolent Gods. A tree that binds nine realms. A hammer stronger than any weapon. And someday, the end of everything. But few have heard of me.
Looking back, it’s easy to know what choices I might have made differently. At least it feels that way. I might have given up on my title. Told my father he was useless, king of Gods or no, and left Asgard. Made a life somewhere else.
Maybe I would never have let Loki cross my path. Never have fallen in love. But there’s no going back. We were happy once. And the price for that happiness was the end of everything.
Wowow, it’s a question I’ve been asking myself repeatedly but seriously, where did November go?! Pretty sure that I blinked twice and the month was already over. Actually, these last few months have all been speeding by and I can’t believe that we’re now almost done with the teens of the 2000s and moving into our 20s! Insanity. So it’s time for another monthly wrap up and I gotta say, November was a weird month. I don’t know if it’s because the days passed so quickly but despite (what felt like) having a book in hand 98% of the time, this was the month that I also read the least. It might also have to do with the fact that my mood for romance has all but disappeared and I used to binge romance the most! I managed to read 12 books in November and for the most part, many of them were just okay…
I participated in #NonfictionNovember this month and as you can see from my read list, I didn’t do a very good job of it! I only managed to read two NF books, although I enjoyed both very much and one of them was my favorite read this month (Stranger Beside Me). I have a lot more NF on my list that I’d obviously like to get to and I’m hoping to read at least one or two more before the year ends. That said, I’m quite pleased that I even managed to read two because NF always takes me longer to get through… Also, two is more NF than I usually read in a year so… Yay? 🤷🏻♀️
I’m also quite chuffed that I managed to read two more of my eARCs this month and I’m slowly creeping closer to my 100% goal (and when I say slowly I really do mean… s-l-o-w-l-y! But slow progress is better than no progress, amirite?! 😂)! I wrote more reviews for my reads this month than before, but I still have tons to catch up on and I also didn’t end up posting any reviews from previous months either. Oops! Oh well, there’s always time to catch up… 😬
This month I also randomly decided to join in on the #Triwizardathon and it has been lots of fun! I’m on Team Durmstrang and at the start of Task 2, Durmstrang was in the lead! There’s one last task this December, starting next week, so I should probably start thinking about what to read but I’m pretty excited for the final! I think half of the books I’ve read this month were because of my participation in this readathon. I’m usually pretty bad at sticking to set TBRs and yes, I have replaced one or two books that I set out to read with something else, but for the most part I’m quite proud that I’ve managed to stick to the others. Go me!
I mentioned it briefly at the end of last month’s wrap up that I was thinking of doing a revamp on my blog look and I’ve finally done it. I changed my theme and made some new graphics, which are amateurish but I think overall, I’m quite pleased with how my blog looks. I don’t know if I’m enjoying this theme 100% yet, but I do like the new graphics that I made–especially the new blog headers! I think I’ve definitely brought more colour to my blog now! What do you all think of it? Or maybe you didn’t even notice or don’t care? (That’s totally fine too! Lol)
I hope you all had a great November! I’m sure that most of us have tons of books that we’d like to read before the year is out, so HAPPY DECEMBER READING, friends!
Friends! Can you believe? Two months until 2019 is over and I honestly still can’t believe it. I have no idea where this year has gone but it’s definitely gone in a blink! October was such a hectic month that I don’t even know where the days went because time moved so quickly. That said, I’m surprised that I managed to read 19 books this month, which brings my Goodreads reading challenge up to 175/90.
Thinking about it again, I’m not surprised I read 19 books this month because I read a ton of romances which I always speed through (at most it takes me 2 days to read one). While I took a little step outside of my comfort zone this month with Rules for Vanishing, I’m a little disappointed that I didn’t read any other spooky read, although being a mood reader I know that forcing myself to read something I’m not feeling just wouldn’t work.
I’m clearly still very much on that romance vibe, although I can also start to feel myself becoming a little jaded with some of these romances (maybe as evidenced by the lower ratings because I just wanted to roll-my-eyes-so-hard). But I think I’ve been hitting the romance so hard because my brain is just… TIRED? Like… I have no mental energy left on most days and that means I love reading romances that not only give me swoony feelings but I also don’t have to think very hard about. Let’s see if the romancing mood will continue in November!
Just like last time, you can find all my weekly memes in my menu bar since I’ve organized that a bit more. You can find the rest of the posts that I’ve made this month below. I actually didn’t write a whole lot of reviews this month, I’ve just been ‘too busy reading’ and that’s okay because I know I’m not obligated to write a review for every book I read (unless it’s an eARC) but I’ve come to realize just how much writing reviews really helps my memory! So… I’m on a mission (maybe tomorrow) to sit down and write some reviews before I forget even more than I already have!
ALSO I’ve been toying with the idea of giving my blog a bit of revamped look but I don’t know if I should do it right now (it’s not even been a year but playing with blog layouts has always been a fun time for me! LOL 😅). Might give it a go this weekend but will play it by ear! What do you think?Do you like changing up your (blog) look or is that just confusing?
I hope you all had a great reading month in October and I hope that November continues to be awesome! What was your favorite read this month? Come let me know in the comments & let’s chat!
dinipandareads 