November Wrap Up: Burn Out, Glorious Bookishness & Confusing TV

 Hi, guys! So, November was a pretty awful month and I’m glad to see it go!

Work has been horrendous and we have been scrabbling around, totally behind the game spending most of our time putting out fires. I have been feeling utterly burnt out. BUT WHO WANTS TO TALK ABOUT THAT??? I don’t, I’ve already lived it!

Here are some of the highlights from this month – there are actually more positives than I thought!

• I came across some Beatrix Potter 50p coins after buying some food and had a total nerd out. I love Beatrix Potter and used to read all the books when I was younger, so I was surprised to look down at my change and find both Tom Kitten and Jeremy Fisher staring back at me! They’re now in pride of place on my bookshelf! (You can view the collection here.)
• I went to a new Turkish restaurant which essentially specialises in meat platters. It was fantastic and they had the biggest portions I’ve ever seen!
• I treated myself to a book haul and all the covers are so beautiful I COULD CRY.
• I received my first ever book subscription box from illumicrate. I’ve been so tempted to get one of these for a while, but with most being £30 a pop it’s not exactly an impulse buy. But this month I decided to treat myself, damn it! It was so fun having a mystery box full of goodies to open, and it had a book enclosed that I’ve been desperately coveting for the last couple of months! If you’re interested to see what was in it, you can view my instagram story (it’s on my highlights)!

What were your personal highlights this month?

Total Books Read: 3 | ARCs: 1| Books from a Series: 2

Frostbitten | ★★★★| Comments: I love the Women of the Otherworld series, it rarely lets me down. Frostbitten is book 10 and the werewolf characters are back with a bang! Elena and Clay have grown a lot since we last checked in to them, their relationship has reached new depths and levels of understanding, and they’re now older and trying to adjust to the fact that they’re not quite as spritely as they used to be. Their positions in the pack are also shifting into something new. I loved this!

Shadow of the Fox | ★★★¹⁄2| Comments: This was a really fun, action-packed diverse fantasy novel with a gorgeous Asian setting and cool mythology! It’s definitely one of the most unique books I’ve read this year!

Kingdom of Ash | ★★★★| Comments: This was a very satisfying end to the Throne of Glass series, but it was bittersweet having to say goodbye to all the characters I had grown to love! Now I need to get started on the A Court of Thorns and Roses series. 🙂

What did you read this month?

The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina | ★★★| Comments: This Sabrina reboot confused the heck out of me. The basic premise of the story stayed the same (Sabrina having to choose between the human world and the witch world) but in this version, all witches worship Satan and there are a lot more dark spells and blood going around. On the one hand, I thought the girl who played Sabrina was absolutely brilliant, and her outfits were to die for, but on the other hand, this was just too random for my taste. I kind of got on board by the end? If you’ve seen this, I would love to discuss in the comments!

The Greatest Showman | ★★★| Comments: This was just okay for me. I have a feeling if I had watched this when I was younger I would have been UTTERLY OBSESSED. At 24, it was good but a bit cliche. It held my attention for the first half and then I drifted. The songs A Million Dreams and Rewrite the Stars are new faves though!

Killing Eve | ★★★★★| Comments:  Oh wow, this series BLEW MY MIND. It’s about a psychopathic female assassin and the team trying to capture her. It’s a BBC production and a seriously dark comedy. The acting was phenomenal. If you take one rec from this post, make it this one!!!

Black Panther| ★★| Comments: I didn’t like this at all, which makes me sad. I’ve spoken about my love-hate relationship with Marvel before – a lot of them don’t do much for me, so this is a probably down to me as opposed to the film itself! There just weren’t enough funnies and the character development was thin (which is a regular Marvel complaint I make!)

Wonder | ★★★★★| Comments: Based on the bestselling book of the same name about a boy with a deformed face from birth, this film was utterly feel good, adorable, well acted and made me cheesy grin x 1000! I also liked how it looked at the whole family units different reactions to a difficult situation.

The Crimes of Grindelwald | ★★★|Ufft. How to rate this one? I was not a fan of the first film, and while I enjoyed this one a lot more while I was watching it, it’s hella problematic and the character development was STILL wafer thin, so I have a feeling the rating would drop on a rewatch. This is a wrap-up, so I can’t go into it too much, but the pros were all the HP links such as Nicolas Flamel and getting to go back to Hogwarts (sob) but the cons were badly handled gay Dumbledore, breaking canon and timelines, and Nargini only having like TWO LINES IN THE WHOLE FILM. Check out this blogger and this Mugglenet post for more details and excellent rants!

What did you watch this month?

This month I’m loving my gold metal ampersand from Oliver Bonas. This shop is one I LOVE browsing in but as its a) mostly homeware and I don’t have my own house to fill with its goodies and b) it’s quite expensive, so I never normally buy anything! For about 3 years everytime I went in, I’d stroll over to their pretty golden letters, admire them, and walk back out again thinking they were too pricey, but this time I decided to treat myself! I picked the ampersand because it reminds me a) of reading, and b) that there’s always a ‘next’ – a next good day, a next good book, a next adventure! It also goes perfectly on my bookshelf. 😉

Blogs Posted: 3 | Book Reviews: 2

Most Popular:  Spoiler Free Review of Kingdom of Ash

• Cristina at Girl in the Pages discusses the Sabrina the Teenage Witch reboot – the good, the bad, and the confusing! I related to this so much having also watched the show this month!
• Sonali at A Lazy Writer gives us sage advice with 10 signs it’s time to give up the book you’re reading. This post was SO TRUE (and also has fun gifs). I need to take this advice and stick it up on my wall to remind me life is too short to read naff books!
• Kat at Novel Waffles presents us with the most incredibly impressive and graphically pleasing review of Empress of All Seasons. I’m just in awe of this lady. That is all!
• Aimal at Bookshelves & Paperbacks discusses coming to value hard work in books, aka, do our chosen ones earn their position or have it handed to them? This post brought up so many interesting points that had kind of been in the back of my mind for a while as a regular fantasy reader, but hadn’t yet formed into any kind of cohesive thoughts, so thanks Aimal!

Let’s Chat!
How was the month of November for you? What have you been reading, watching and discovering? Do you have your Christmas decorations out yet? Let me know in the comments!