Hello friends, happy Wednesday! I hope you’re all doing well. Can you believe we’re almost at the end of 2022?! I can’t! But before we wrap that all up, let’s take a look at my pretty good November! 😊

Currently Reading:

Danse Macabre by: Stephen King. I’m getting closer to the end of this, by the end of next month I’ll be finished. I’ve liked how King has talked about different mediums of the horror genre – he’s touched on movies, the radio, TV and now it looks like we’re ending on novels. It’s been a really interesting read so far.

Pride and Prejudice by: Jane Austen. So at the beginning of the month I had this crazy idea to read more classics and so that led me to starting a re-read of this. I’m reading it a chapter a day and I’m so in love with this idea. I’m also really enjoying the story and I’ve been updating my progress every Friday on Instagram.

What I’ve Read:

The Alice Network by: Kate Quinn. This was a good book; I liked how strong these two women characters were and I liked reading about them and this part of the war I didn’t know existed. Most WWI/WWII books don’t wow me and this one was no different; I enjoyed it, but didn’t love it.

When Dimple Met Rishi by: Sandhya Menon. I had such a hard time writing this review because this novel hit me harder than I thought it would. There were parts that I related to in ways I wouldn’t have even a year ago… interesting how books come into our lives when they do. So I liked this, but I didn’t love it.

Solo by: Kwame Alexander & Mary Rand Hess. I really wanted to love this because it was written in verse, but I found the characters were selfish in their motives and they also felt a little cliched.

Bookish and the Beast by: Ashley Poston. This was the third and final novel in the trilogy and eh. First of all I didn’t like who they chose to follow as the main character; we met him in the previous book and I didn’t like him, and this was supposed to be his redemption arc… but no thanks. I also didn’t like that it didn’t really take place at the Con like the previous 2 books.

A Carnival of Snackary: Diaries 2003 – 2020 by: David Sedaris. This is part 2 of author, Sedaris’ diaries. I read the first last month and found the concept of the book interesting; this one was much the same. What I noticed was different was his writing – it was more of a performance.

The Daughter of the Moon Goddess by: Sue Lynn Tan. This book was such an emotional roller coaster! I kept having to stop so I could save quotes from this because the writing was so beautiful! I liked the plot, but the characters and writing is what really made this a 5-star read for me.

Home Fire by: Kamila Shamsie. This was literary fiction, which is a genre I don’t 100% like. This book left things very ambiguous and I hate that. What I did like was the structure in how the characters came into one another’s life and how they all played a role.

The Epic Crush of Genie Lo by: F.C. Yee. I wanted to like this more than I did. The plot felt a little wishy-washy to me and the main characters were supposed to be enemies to friends and I just didn’t feel it worked well here… it was more annoying to read them because the one just hated the other SO much. The fighting demons was cool though.

Love, Creekwood by: Becky Albertalli. It was good to see all the characters one last time in their first year of college. This was told in e-mail format, which was fine but it felt like there were moments and things we missed outside of the emails. I still enjoyed this though.

Misfit in Love by: S.K. Ali. I only just finished this a couple hours ago so I don’t have fully formed thoughts just yet. I really enjoyed everything this novel brought; there were a lot of important messages with dealing with family and different culture, race and anti-Blackness. This was another novel that hit me harder now than it would have, just because of the subject matter, but putting that aside, really good book!

Links to my my blog posts this past month:

Links to posts I enjoyed around the blogosphere:

Briana @Pages Unbound discussed how many parents are dead in the YA books she’s read in 2022

Kate @Your Tita Kate talked about why everyone should read more middle grade books

Marie @Drizzle and Hurricane Books celebrate 8 years of blogging and shared her best book blogging tips

It was my birthday month and so it was a month spent celebrating and getting to see so many people. I thank and treasure everyone in my life!

Highlights of the month:

✨ Went to the movies for the first time since before the pandemic!! I saw Black Panther and it was really good!

✨ Celebrated my birthday by chilling with my family

✨ Went on a bookstore book hop with my friends, visiting 11 bookstores! 📚

✨ Acquired waaaay too many books, but that’s a good problem to have 😄📚

✨ Went to brunch with past (and a current) co-workers to celebrate our November birthdays! 🎉

✨ Got a pay raise (woo!)

✨ Went to the movies, not once, but twice in the span of a week (😱) I saw Black Adam and Knives Out: Glass Onion

✨ Went to dinner with friends for yummy Italian!

What I’ve watched:

Buffy the Vampire Slayer; season 4. This season felt all over the place. I thought last season was crazy, I wasn’t prepared for this one. I like that we are in college, I liked the addition of Riley as a character… but then the whole military plot with trying to get rid of all monsters and doing tests on them, making hybrid monsters was SO out of left field. I never knew what was going to happen; each episode I went in not knowing where anything would go. I was sad about Willow and Oz but I also kinda like gay Willow, I could get on board with that. I’m curious to see where they’ll go with that plot. Will we see Tara in season 5? Last thing I’ll say about this season is the fact that they had crossover episodes with Angel and since I haven’t started watching Angel yet, it was jarring what was going on. At first I was like, wait when did that happen? Then I went ohhh right, on Angel. I do miss him being on the show. OH, last thing truly, I liked that we got to see more of Spike – he’s hilarious!

Star Trek: The Next Generation; season 4. Just when I was asking if the cast was going to stay the same for the entirety of the show, Wesley leaves to go for StarFleet training, so he’s gone and I miss him dearly. I hope he comes back at some point! As for the rest of the season, I enjoyed this, I liked that we got to see more of the different species. So is Worf leaving?! The season ends with him going to join the Klingons. I like that we’re getting to see more of them too, since we haven’t seen much of them in the series yet.

Nailed It!; season 4, 5 & 6. I’m really getting caught up on this show! I’m so happy to be watching this show again because it’s hilarious! Watching people try and bake these intricate cakes is amazing. What they produce never fails me to laugh… sometimes I’m crying I’m laughing so hard, so it’s been great. In the fifth season they decided to make teams. So instead of the usual 3 solo contestants, there are 3 teams of 2, for 6 contestants and that was even better. I really hope they decide to bring that back because not only are they trying to bake something – they have to work together with someone they know but may have never baked together – super funny. You have siblings, best friends, parent and children, there were drag queens one episode and I loved them SO much – I think the best episode so far. I did like that season 6 had a lot of firsts, which made things interesting which is great after so many seasons.

The Crown; season 5. This season was basically all about Diana and I enjoyed it, because I never really knew who she as a person. She died when I was really young so I don’t have any memories of her being alive. I also thought it was interesting to get to see a side of Prince Charles I didn’t know. I just assumed he was stuffy and annoying like the rest of the family, but this showed a more ‘progressive’ side to him. At first I didn’t know how Dominic West was going to play Charles, but he actually did a really good job and I should be less surprised because he’s a very charismatic actor, I mean come on he did it for what 6 seasons on the Affair. All in all, a good season, even if some episodes dragged more than others. I see the build up for what’s to come for the next, and I think, final season.

I watched the movie adaptation of Words on Bathroom Walls I found it interesting what they chose to change from the book, some made total sense because it wouldn’t have worked for film like it did for print, but other things I was like alright, that’s a choice. But as a whole, this was still a good look at schizophrenia and learning to come to terms with it. I have to say the actor who played Adam looked like a young (think Freaky Friday) Chad Michael Murray… I couldn’t un-see it.

I went to the movies for the first time in 3 years!! I saw Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and it was really good. I knew going in it would be sad, the memorial to Chadwick Boseman, was heartbreakingly good, but there was more sadness than I was prepared for. I also thought it was a little on the long side, but it gave the story the time it needed so it didn’t feel rushed.

Then I went to the movies another 2 times… making up for all that lost time! I saw Black Adam which was good, I found it entertaining but it was a little on the long side. I truly don’t think it needed to be 2 hours long because it felt like there were times where they were trying to fill the time and that gets old and boring fast. Then I saw Knives Out: Glass Onion which was hilarious and a fun murder mystery. This wasn’t as good as the first one, it took a long time to set up the true murder mystery, but I saw what they tried to do there. It was also fun to watch it in a theatre with other people!

I, of course before going to see Glass Onion, I had to watch Knives Out. You don’t have to watch this one to watch the second, but it does give you a basis for Blanc and who he is as a mystery solver. This was such a rollercoaster of a watch, I never truly believed who they threw at us was the person who did it, but I also didn’t expect it to be the person it was. A lot of fun!

So I got Disney+ this month and so my brain has gone crazy trying to figure out what to watch. In short, I decided to start watching the Disney movies in order of release date so I’ve seen Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, Pinocchio, Fantasia, The Reluctant Dragon, and Dumbo. I think I might start a blog series about my thoughts on them, so more in the future!

What I’m watching:

The Good Doctor; season 6. There have only been two new episodes this month, but they haven’t been that bad. The story arc forming with a lot of the characters seems to focus around children, whether the characters want them, trying for one, don’t want them; it’s an interesting theme they’re trying to play out. They’ve let the Dr. Murphy and Dr. Lim story arc die out and it looks like Lim is going to live her life in a wheelchair. Murphy isn’t happy about it because he thinks he can fix it, but it’s ultimately up to Lim.

Station 19; season 6. This is done for probably the year, since we got the Fall finale earlier in the month and if I’m being honest, this show has not been keeping my attention. Like, the fact that this ended on Maya passing out… I honestly couldn’t care less about her character because she has become infuriatingly annoying. Everyone wants to help her, but she’s basically telling everyone to f-off. I feel like she’ll get what she deserves, which is sad to say. I will say, I’m curious where they’re going to take Jack’s story… are we actually going to meet his birth family? Will they become a part of his life? And I want to see where they take Montgomery, will he be mayor?

Grey’s Anatomy; season 19. This is also probably done for the year too, since the Fall finale happened in the cross over with Station 19. The interns are ok, I hated the whole Adams/Shepard deal… we could have done without that drama. So Meredith is truly leaving the show… I never thought I’d see the day. So my thing is, will the show just keep going without her? I’m curious about that. It doesn’t bother me since she’s been slipping out of the show for the past couple seasons so her leaving isn’t extremely shocking. I am interested to see where the show will continue to go.

Star Trek: The Next Generation; season 5. Continuing my journey through this and I’ve been enjoying this new season, like past seasons. I was so happy to see Wesley come back for an episode and it truly was his episode because he had to save the day! I like that we’re getting to see more of O’Brian, like we’ve seen him get married and now he has a daughter, I think it’s been sweet. And of course Worf didn’t stay with the Klingons, which I’m glad because I would have missed him too much, and his son has come to love with him on the ship, what a new dynamic for him!

Dead to Me; season 3. The final season is here and I’m slowly making my way through this. I’m sad that we’re at the end, it’s been so much fun watching these two, but of course they can only stretch this out so far. Even this season has felt a little thin, but I’m curious to see how it all ends, will they get away with all their lies?

The Simpsons; season 1. I’m just adding this here because I’ve always wanted to watch the Simpsons from start to finish. Now that I have Disney+ I can and so I’m taking my time with it.

Instagram & YouTube videos from the month:

How was your November? Read, watch, do anything interesting? Let me know!