November 2023 Reading

I promise -- this is the last post where I will put an entire month of reading into one post. At least for this year :) Seriously though, I'm hoping to stay more on top of my book posts in 2024. But for now, here's what I read in November.

Count me among the hordes of people raving about how good this book is! I LOVED it. I loved that it lived up to the hype. I love YA fantasy. I love romance. This book just has it all.

This was my lunchtime reading book for October into November. Sarah (who blogs at Toronto SAM -- find her here) gave me a copy of this when I met her in June 2022. I'm so glad I read it. Parts of it were hard -- I could see kids at our school in this novel -- so it was a tough read. But it was very powerful and very good.

Speaking of books which are very powerful and very good, I started reading this one night when I crawled into bed and didn't put it down until I was done. This book pulls no punches when talking to white women about our inherent racism. I found myself nodding along, getting uncomfortable (and trying to be honest about why I was uncomfortable), and learning a lot. I think everyone should read this book.

This was a book I found through the Decades Reading Challenge, and honestly, I didn't love it. I don't know if it was the writing style, the slowness with which the story moved (at least in my opinion), or the fact that there was a lot about dogs in it, but, unfortunately, I just didn't love this book.

I thought this book was pretty fun. It's a pretty light read but with just enough meat that it wasn't fluff. Hopefully, that makes sense :)

This is the newest In Death book. It was okay. Not one of my favourites, but okay.

I really wanted to love this book, a series of essays about the 90s, and while I learned some things, I found it just a little academic and intense. I wanted something a little less intense and a little more fun, you know?

Something in the other In Death book I read in November, made me want to read this one again. This one is so good. It's one of the better ones in the series, in my opinion.

I don't know why I hadn't read this book yet but it was so good. I loved the reality of how social media, and fan fiction/games/etc plays into shows and other entertainment right now. I just really enjoy these books.

This was a Decades Reading Challenge book and, while the premise was really intriguing, the book left me feeling a little "blah." I don't know if it was the fact that the author wandered a little, if the case she was writing about was too big to properly explain in a book (it was), or what, but I just felt like I didn't quite get the full story and felt mostly confused by the end of this book.

I LOVED this book! If I picked my favourite books of the year (I don't), this would be near the top of the list. This book was everything I love in a novel -- a slightly grumpy character, a focus on books, disparate people building a community -- I just loved it all!

This was our Blog Friends Book Club book this month. Years ago I read Bel Canto by Patchett and loved it. I've been looking for her to repeat the magic I felt in Bel Canto and I feel like, with this book, she did it. Other novels I've read of hers have left me feeling disappointed, but I loved this book.

So that's what I read in November. I read a few longer books (Fourth Wing, The Nineties, The Ink Black Heart), and that meant I spent a bit of time with just a few books. I don't regularly spend more than two to three days reading one book and in November, I did just that. I realize that's not unusual (to spend more time reading a book) but for me it is. <-- more blathering about my reading than you ever needed to know :)

Come back next Friday when I round up the first half of my December reading! Yes, that means I've finally caught up on my reading posts. Yay! Thanks for bearing with me through some of these longer posts.

Total books read in November:12

Total books read in 2023: 169