November 2023 Reading Wrap Up
Somehow it’s December already and I’m excited to start planning my reading for 2024. Until then, here’s everything I read in November which includes an unprecedented streak of three five-star books in a row!
November Stats:
Total Books Finished: 11
Total Pages Read: 2336
Total Minutes of Audiobooks Listened To: 402 (6hr 42m)
Formats:
E-Books: 6
Paperbacks: 3
Hardbacks: 0
Audiobooks: 2
Ratings:
5 Star: 4
4 Star: 3
3 Star: 3
2 Star: 1
1 Star: 0
DNF: 0
And now onto the reviews. If you’re interested in buying any of these, please consider doing so using my affiliate’s links below, every purchase helps to support me.
The Night Wanderer by Drew Hayden Taylor
YA Horror / 4 Stars / Audiobook from Libro.fm
Trigger Warnings: Suicide
I listened to this First Nation gothic story as an audiobook courtesy of Libro.fm and I’ll admit that I was going to rate it quite low, right until the end. The book is told from two POVs. First is 16-year-old Tiffany, an Indigenous girl living on the Otter Lake reservation who is struggling with typical teenage issues including poor grades, falling out with her dad, and problems with friends and boys. The second POV is Pierre, a centuries-old vampire who also originally came from Otter Lake and who is now returning home with a mission after countless years away. Pierre ends up renting the spare room in Tiffany’s house which leads to them meeting and finding out they have something surprising in common. It’s the final conversation between the two that really made me appreciate this book and rate it four stars, and especially given its short length, it’s one I’d recommend that you try out.
Hallowe’en Party by Agatha Christie
Classic Adult Mystery / 2 Stars / Bought in 2023
I picked up Hallowe’en Party after spotting a shiny, foiled edition in Foyles on a day trip to London but sadly, I was less than impressed by my second foray into Agatha Christie’s work. Hallowe’en Party comes across as rather boring and monotonous, with characters endlessly complaining about so-called “mental defectives” who should be locked away in asylums but instead, apparently roam the streets committing endless crimes due to lack of space in the appropriate institutions. Add this to several concerning statements about the women and girls in the story, plus a dull and predictable mystery, and this isn’t a Christie mystery I’d be recommending anytime soon.
An Elderly Lady Is Up To No Good by Helene Tursten
Adult Contemporary Mystery / 4 Stars / Borrowed from My Library
Well, I certainly wasn’t expecting that! I read An Elderly Lady Is Up To No Good expecting an amusing story about an elderly lady getting up to shenanigans. Instead, I found a collection of related short stories about an elderly lady who can best be described as a serial killer! Maud is certainly up to no good as the title suggests as she goes about killing off neighbours, would-be thieves, and others. Arguably, some get their deserved comeuppance at her hands, but overall this was far darker and more vicious than I had anticipated but that didn’t stop me from thoroughly enjoying it!
Jews Don’t Count by David Baddiel
Adult Non-Fiction / 3 Stars / Borrowed from My Library
It’s arguably a difficult time to be reading a book about Jews, but Jews Don’t Count has been on my radar for several years now and I finally got around to it. While Jews Don’t Count is filled with a lot of eye-opening and insightful commentary on modern Judaism and its place in discussions about racial and other hate speech, its overall style lets it down. The whole book reads like a train of thought cobbled together in a voice note. There are no chapters or anything to make the experience more readable or easy to refer back to. Instead, it meanders vaguely from topic to topic making the whole thing difficult to read. While I did take plenty away from this, I can only wonder how much more I could have learned had it been better organised.
Amazon (free on Kindle with Prime) / Bookshop
Severance by Ling Ma
Adult Sc-fi Dystopia / 3 Stars / Borrowed from My Library
Severance ended up being something of a surprise to me. I’d gone into it expecting it to be a humorous, satirical take on modern society seen through the eyes of a millennial immigrant living through a sort of not-quite-zombie apocalypse. In short, I’d expected to laugh. Instead, this is a more straight-up pandemic story with a very dark underbelly I wasn’t anticipating. Because it was so very different from what I’d been led to believe, I struggled to engage with it as much as I’d hoped. Don’t get me wrong, this is still a good book, however, it also fell rather flat for me and I disliked the ending enough that it left me feeling woefully unsatisfied by the whole thing.
The Handmaid’s Tale by
Adult Classic Dystopia / 5 Stars / Bought Second Hand in 2023
Continuing in the dystopian vein, I picked up The Handmaid’s Tale as part of my goal to read more classics in 2023. This was an incredible book, I even rated it five stars, however, it was also incredibly difficult - emotionally speaking - to read. I found myself actually growing depressed as I read it because the situations in the book dug so deeply under my skin and I had to intentionally pick a lighthearted book immediately after finishing it. It’s a deeply powerful story, but definitely not for everyone and I’d advise being aware of your mental health situation before attempting it for the first time.
Read Between the Lines by Rachel Lacey
Adult Sapphic Romance / 4 Stars / Amazon First Reads
Read Between the Lines is a sapphic romance I picked up through Amazon’s free First Reads program. It’s a fairly typical enemies-to-lovers story about a young bookstore owner in NYC who has a crush on a reclusive author with whom she chats online. Meanwhile, she has just been given an eviction notice from the company that owns her store’s building as they want to convert it into luxury apartments. Of course, the reclusive writer ends up being the employee who sent the eviction notice and is also the daughter of the CEO. You can probably guess most of the plot without my needing to say more but this was still a great little romance with some festive elements and a fun break from the heavier subjects I’d been reading about.
Amazon (included with KU) / Bookshop
My Two Elaines by Martin J. Schreiber
Adult Non-Fiction / 5 Stars / Audiobook from Libro.fm
Dementia and Alzheimer’s are conditions I’ve so far only ever had peripheral connections to, but as that is likely to change in the future, I wanted to give this a listen. My Two Elaines is a powerful and beautifully told book by Marty Schriber - the former governor of Wisconsin - about his experience of becoming a caregiver to his wife Elaine after she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. His story will resonate with anyone who has ever cared for a loved one and the inclusion of excerpts from Elaine’s diary and Marty’s “what I wish I’d known” sections make it hugely beneficial to anyone facing the prospect of walking that same road one day.
The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien
Adult Classic Fantasy / 5 Stars / Owned Before 2023
Continuing with my Lord of the Rings read-along, I finally made it through the second volume, The Two Towers. While I loved the first half of this book which followed Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, and later Merry and Pippin, I was less enthused by the second half where we followed Frodo and Sam. I rather wish the two stories had been blended together more as they are in the film adaptation instead of focusing on one and then the other. I did love the character development of Sam and the descriptions of Shelob were enough to put me off my dinner, but I found myself far more taken with the great battle of Helm’s Deep and the wider story told in the first half.
With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo
YA Contemporary / 5 Stars / Borrowed from My Library
The third book in a great run of three five-star books in a row was one I would never have picked up were it not for a prompt to read a book by a Caribbean author. With the Fire on High follows Emoni, a high school senior trying to juggle the usual high school stresses of college applications, boys, and finals with her personal responsibilities, the biggest of which is that she is also a mom to a toddler. Emoni has an almost supernatural skill in the kitchen and desperately wants to take on a culinary arts class with the hope of going to culinary school, but worries about having the time and money to do it. This was an incredibly engaging story filled with characters I deeply connected to and wanted to support and now I plan to pick up more from this author.
Cosmic Companion by The Pulp Girls
YA Non-Fiction / 3 Stars / Review Copy from NetGalley
Finally, I spent an evening with Cosmic Companion, a guide to understanding more about your star signs. The book is filled with worksheets designed to help you dig into more than just your basic sun sign but I found that I wanted more from it and didn’t come away with as much understanding as I’d hoped. Perhaps using it in conjunction with more detailed books would be beneficial, but on its own, it was very surface-level. That being said, this would still be a great gift for anyone interested in astrology this holiday season.