 Welcome back to my channel, I'm so happy to see you. Today we're gonna be chatting about my November wrap up. I had like an okay reading month in November, but it wasn't my best. So we're gonna get into it and all the books I read and all of my reading statistics, which is so exciting. But before we get into it, I actually want to quickly thank the sponsor of today's video, which is Summary. So Summary is this super cool app. It is an app where you can read and listen to summaries of books for more than 20 categories. There's memoirs, historical books, sciencey books, personal development, self-improvement, all of that kind of stuff. I used to love reading non-fiction. I used to literally read half on fiction before I started my Booktube channel. But when I started it, like, that went out the window and I stopped reading non-fiction and I have not read a lot this year and that makes me really, really sad because I love reading non-fiction. So I'm gonna use this app to still consume those ideas but in more bite-sized, digestible chunks. So for example, they have Sapiens on there by Yuval Noah Harari and I've always wanted to read it. You know, if you're in the UK and you've ever been on the London Underground, you've sat next to someone reading this book. Like, I've always wanted to read it but I have been scared off by its size and like, I've just been intimidated by it. But they have that on there and it's distilled it down to 13 key ideas so you can learn lessons of the book in a fraction of the time. You can access up to 100 book summaries monthly and listen to one free summary per day which is so cool because I think they're often around like 15 minutes long these book summaries and so you can really like learn something new in a little fragment of your time in the day maybe while you're cooking or doing laundry, stuff like that. You can just use that time using this app to learn a little bit of something new. There's also quizzes after some of the books which is super cool so you can kind of reflect on what you've learned. You can set daily and yearly reading goals, daily for how much time you wanna spend reading, yearly for how many books you wanna read. So I will leave a link down below for you to check out a summary. It's a super cool app. I recommend giving it a go, having a look, seeing if it's something for you and yeah, I would really recommend it. Okay, everyone. Let's get into my reading statistics for November. Are we ready? I do not think so. So excited. So I read, oh, this chair is creaky by the way. Okay, listen, it's gonna be noisy. We just gotta accept it. So in November, I read a total of nine books which isn't like, listen, that's all terrible. There's not something to be sniffed at. There's still a book every... Oh, fuck, I can't do that. Three to four days. Maths. That's a little bit lower than what I've been averaging. I would say I've been averaging like 11 to 12 books a month. In December, I need to read 15, so pray for me. I don't know how it's gonna happen. In December, I need to just not be a human. I read a total of 3,284 pages. So that works out as an average of 109 pages per day, which I would say is a pretty good average. I always aim over 100 pages a on average and an average book length of 364 pages. So I read a lot of longer books, I would say this month. That's why it's kind of balanced out. Like 3,254 pages is not too dissimilar to what I've read in other months. Like some months I've read like 4,000, but it's always around this kind of number. I've just read less books because I've read some longer ones, basically. And I had an average rating of 3.33, which is on the lower end. I think my lowest this year has been 3.2 in a month, so it's definitely on the lower end. I did read quite a few books. I was disappointed by this month, which I think contributed to lower ratings, but I also read some like really great books this month. So it was a bit like opposite ends of the spectrum, I feel like. Me reading a five star one minute and a two star the next. I'm getting older. I don't know if I can, if I want all this drama all the time, if I'm being honest. Okay, so more specific for the stars themselves, I read two two stars, one 2.5 star, two three stars, two four stars, one 4.5 and one five star. So quite a lot of like two stars, 2.5, three stars. That's why it is on the lower end of the spectrum. In terms of genre, I read four fantasy, one horror, two mystery, one nonfiction and one thriller. So quite a good mix, I would say. Something that's very different, like not my usual split. I read seven adult books, one middle grade and one YA. Usually it's 50% adult, 50% YA, a little bit of middle grade sprinkled occasionally. I just said young adult and middle grade do not exist to me this month. I said I'm only reading adult books. YA stands when I switch to only reading adult books. You're gonna burn in the flames of hell for this and I'm gonna make sure of it. I think it was just books I ended up having to read for videos and stuff that ended up skewing it that way. But usually I would listen to like one, maybe YA contemporary a month. I felt like that's something I usually do and I didn't do that this month. Oh, I don't wanna hold the laptop like that. That lights me up. In terms of how I acquired the books, I got one from a book box, one from Book of the Month, one was gifted to me, five were books I previously owned and bought myself and one was from Script. I read three books that are part of a series and five that were stand-alones. Listen, at least I didn't read that many books in series. This month I didn't finish any series. So like, listen, the series debacle, do we need to keep making a thing out of it or can we just accept it's a problem in my life that will probably never get sorted and will probably just continue to snowball out of control? Like I feel like we should just accept that and move on with our lives and be happier. And then in terms of author status, two were authors I've read before and seven authors were new to me, which is crazy. I read lots of authors I have never read from before, which I really like. I do like trying out new authors. Some of them were ones I've been wanting to try out for a long time. So I was very happy with that as well. Okay, let's get into talking about each of the books individually. A lot of these I read in reading blogs. Actually, let's start with the few that I haven't read in reading blogs. So I did read just in my own time out of my own enjoyment, Death Around the Bend by T.E. Kinsey. This is a Lady Hardcastle mystery, which are my favorite fucking cozy mystery. Why do I have to feel... I feel like I had to say the F word there. What possessed me to do that? I just really wanted you to understand and emphasize my love of this series. It's a cozy mystery series about this like kind of widowed lady and her maid and they're just like, bestie mates. They just fucking love each other. If they could get married, I think they would. When I first started listening to it, I was like, is this going to be like a weird like power dynamic, but it's not. And they love solving mysteries together. Basically they were employed by like the British government like back in the day to be spies. But now they're trying to live this quiet life. The first one is called a quiet life in the country. But murder has followed them. They have somehow moved the murder hotspot of the world. And in this one, they actually go kind of on like a holiday to visit their friend's house and murder follows on there. Do you ever think you are the problem? Maybe you are the drama, Lady Hardcastle. Look inside yourself. You must be the problem. But anyway, in this, they've gone to like his country estate and there's like car races going on. And someone dies in one of the car races. And it seems that it was like on purpose. Someone messed with the car. They and Demeter investigate it. That's all you really need to know. I would recommend if you ever have a slight inkling, like a slight little hmm about whether you want to read this series, so I would listen to the audiobooks. They are on script for free and they are such good audiobooks. And the writer is amazing. I love these characters so much. I have started collecting them physically, but I do predominantly still listen to the audiobook because it's so good. I gave this one four stars. It wasn't, the second one was my favorite so far. I gave that five stars. And I still loved this, but my reading of it was quite broken up because of other books that I read. And so I feel like I just didn't get to like fully experience it. Also, I think I do prefer the like quaint English town setting that the rest of the books are set in, like where they live. This one, I didn't love like the new cast of characters and stuff as much. I would like to be back in that kind of town setting that we know. But yeah, I would like 100% recommend this series. I think if you want to try out Cozy Mysteries, this is the best place to start. I love them. I'm so excited. Once I finished this series, he has another series of their escapades when they were like employed by the British government. And I'm very excited to start reading that once I have finished kind of this series. I think this is still ongoing, but once I finished what is out of it, I'm going to start that other series. Okay, then I read In The Watchful City by Estra Lee Lu. I, fuck, I cannot, I can not explain this book to you. It's basically about this like surveillance state where like everyone is very much like, like, what's the word? Like surveyed? Security! Can you please escort this lady over here? Watched, controlled, very controlling life. And one of the people who works for the kind of government in this surveillance situation meets this person, this other person who collects like memories and ideas. And so it's kind of like short stories that that person has collected, whilst also the one who works for the government trying to reevaluate the society. The characters in this use they, them pronouns, AAS pronouns, which I really loved reading about characters who use like AAS pronouns. I've never read that from that before. So like gender and sexuality were very much like, well, examined in this book, but not, it wasn't necessarily the focus of the book. It was just a feature of the book, which I appreciated because I feel like we should have characters that use neo pronouns that like do other stuff. You know what I mean? That the book isn't just about that and they can have these wild stories of their own. I gave this three stars. I enjoyed it, but I did not understand most of it. I've just done most of it when I wrote my head. I just did not understand. Listen, I could not tell you any more about it other than what I've told you. Even if you're like, spoil it for me one more time. I could not. There was a story about a mermaid. That's basically all I remember. Fine, but it was confusing. It is convoluted. It is clever. There's a lot going on and I'm not sure if the problem is me or if the problem is the book and it didn't quite pull it off. Perhaps it is just a little bit of both. A lot of the time I was reading it and I could be like, okay, this is clever and interesting, but I don't understand any of it. Two books which I don't actually want to tell you too much about for different reasons. The first is The Death of Jane Lawrence by Caitlin Starling. Now I have got a whole reading vlog coming up for this, a 24-hour reading vlog coming up for this in a couple of days. So I don't really want to tell you much about my thoughts. I will say it started off here and I just went... I gave this 2.5 stars. I was very disappointed by it, but I really loved the beginning. The beginning was like a four star and then it just went downhill. It gets confusing, gets convoluted. Basically we're following this character called Jane Lawrence who marries this doctor because she wants to kind of deliver free life and she proposes it as like a business opportunity between them. She's like, okay, you can do that, but you can never come to my family home where I spend every night. And she's like, okay. And then the first night she does. And she finds him changed and different and terrified. And it's a horror book, but like, fuck me, is this confusing? We'll talk all about it in the vlog in a couple of days, but this book went off the rails. And I don't know what. Jane pissed me off, the book pissed me off, everything pissed me off. The ending was like a one star. I read this for the Literature Dead Book Club for Books and Lawyers Book Club. And at the end, I won't spoil anything, but like at the end of the discussion, I had to ask Kayla and Chanel, like what did that ending mean? And people explained it to me and I was actually shocked because you, I could not believe it. I could not believe it. I can't believe that. I actually can't believe that. I had not believed that that was the ending. Like I had read that ending and I had not caught into a single bit of what actually happened. I just read the words. By that point, I was checked out. Oh, shit, wait. Oh, shit. Actually, the reading vlog will actually already be out. So you can go see that for all my full thoughts, essentially. I feel like I've spoken about it enough. Then I read Cinderella is Dead by Kailin Bayron. And the reason I don't want to talk about this too much is because I read it for my Patreon Book Club and they haven't had any of the stuff from me about it yet. We haven't had the live show for it yet. We haven't had my reading vlog for it yet. I filmed it obviously, I just haven't edited it yet. So I want them to get my first thoughts about it. I don't want to speak about it too much on here. This is about this girl who lives in this society where Cinderella died 200 years ago. And since then, girls have lived in this oppressive society where they are married off to men. Every girl has to go to this royal ball once a year and get basically sold off, like cattle to a man. And she wants to change that. And I gave this two stars. I was very disappointed by it. It just read so basic to me. Basic isn't the right word. Like I just felt like it was very heavy handed in this messaging and it didn't feel complex enough. Like opposite to Death of Jane Lawrence, this was too simple. Like it didn't feel like it had any depth to me sadly. And I didn't really like any of the characters. Didn't really like anything that happened. So I'm giving it two stars. Like one of the stars is for I admire what it's trying to do and what it's trying to say but it wasn't a very enjoyable reading experience for me. Let's just say that. And then we've just got books that I read in reading vlogs. So if you've watched them, you know my thoughts already. But just quickly I read The Last Time I Lied by Riley Sager. And I gave this 4.5 stars. It is by far my favorite Riley Sager that I have ever read. It follows this woman who 15 years ago. I can't remember the time frames. She went to this camp where her camp mates, the ones that she like slept with like in the room went missing and were never found. And she has kind of always blamed herself for that because, you know, she didn't know that they'd left the room and stuff. She woke up to them gone. And she's invited back to the camp to kind of be a camp counselor. And she decides to go to kind of unpack her issues and hopefully try and find out what happened to the girls. And I loved this. The actors, the storyline plots, literally I am obsessed. The atmosphere is so good in this book. The like the atmosphere at the summer camp you can almost feel the flies buzzing. You know, I really loved this. So many fucking twists and turns. Oh my God, I was on the edge of my seat. I could not believe so much of the stuff that happened in this. I did not see it coming. I was so shocked and so much of what happened. And definitely my favorite Riley Sager. If you want some good twists right up to the end, right up to the end, so many good twists. I would really recommend it. But then I read The Wants of Future Witches by Alex E. Harrow. And let me tell you, this is one of my favorite books of the year. I gave it five stars. We're following these three sisters who are witches. It's set in 1893. And it's kind of set around the time of the women's movement right to vote. And they kind of start to intertwine it with the witches movement and figuring out their witch dinners. It's, I find it very hard to just pitch this book. Like, I feel like it's got so many layers to it. So much of it is about sisterhood, about personal discovery. Oh, there's so much going on in it. And I just loved it. This is wordy, but in the best way. Alex E. Harrow knows a lot of words. Let's just say that. There's a lot of words in this book. But I thought the writing was so beautiful and lyrical and gorgeous. And I just loved it. I already feel like I need to reread it. I feel like I didn't take it all in well enough. I feel like I need to sit down. I'm never gonna get the chance to do this. But I feel like I need to sit down and read every page over twice just to experience this book again. I just absolutely loved it. Just their relationship. And there's so many interesting things that I can't tell you that happen in this book that are spoilers. But it's just amazing and you need to read it right now. Like literally write the second go, order it from your library, order it from, I don't care where you order your books, go get it. And then these last three books I read for an episode of Booktube Twin Test where Aaron from Booked and Busy picked what I read. I read The Mystery of Black Hollow Lane by Julia Nobel. This is a middle grade mystery where this girl goes to this private school in the UK and quickly learns that there's certain secrets and her dad who she hasn't seen since she was three has kind of left her. And it's her trying to unpick all of that and solve a mystery that is going on at the school. I really loved the atmosphere and the setting of this book, but I gave it three stars because the ending just wasn't satisfying to me and I didn't feel like, I don't know, I can't really place why I had problems with this book. I just didn't really enjoy the reading experience of it past the halfway mark. It felt a bit simple to me and I discussed this in the vlog how like I'm not saying it read too young, I'm saying it read too simple and they're different things. Like I feel like sometimes people are like, oh, you're reading middle grade, what do you expect? But like that's not an excuse. What's gonna happen? Gonna shoot me? I doubt it. You have to catch me first. I'm like a whip it. That's not a get out of jail free card if you get what I mean. But I think I am gonna give the second in this series a go. Probably just the audio book. I probably won't get the physical book but I'm gonna give the audio book a go because I would like to kind of like continue on the series because I feel like it has a lot of promise and a lot of you told me in the comments as well that the second one is better. Then I surprisingly read Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobb and I really enjoyed this. I gave it four stars. Now, many of you will have heard of this already. We're following Fitz. He is the illegitimate son of the king waiting. He abdicates or like gives up his place in the throne in the line of lineage because of Fitz's existence and Fitz is kind of raised within the kind of royal community but obviously he doesn't have the same access to stuff as if he would if he was a legitimate son. And it's about his relationship with the animals there and him navigating court life and then eventually becoming trained as an Assassin's Apprentice because as an illegitimate son he can kind of gain access to certain communities that he wouldn't be able to if he was the king's actual son or if he just was like a commoner, you know? He has certain privileges and accesses to things that no one else really has that are useful for becoming an assassin. And I really enjoyed this. I loved the writing. I love the fantastical world. I loved all the political court maneuverings. It felt very complex and like it had a lot of layers to it. There was just a little bit of something I feel like I was a little bit disconnected from the characters and that's why it wasn't a five star but I'm very excited to continue on with this series as well. Like Robin Hobbs, like 2,000 books that you need to read. So yeah, I'm very excited to carry on with this trilogy as well. And I feel like it might be one that I get too soon. And then I read The Devil in the White City by Eric Larson. I can't tell you shit about this book. I gave it two stars. I don't really remember reading it. It's a book that shouldn't exist. Oh my God, T Central over here. Because we're following two men, one who was the architect of the Chicago World Fair and one who was a serial killer who lived in Chicago at the time. Now the link between these men is tenuous at best. Like these men, it's like barely in existence. We're grasping at straws here. This poor man, Eric Larson, he just wanted to write about the Chicago World Fair. He just wanted to write about the Chicago World Fair and his editor was like, what about the serial killer? So the parts of the serial killer are more interesting but I feel like less well researched. There's less passion in it from the author and it feels kind of like throw away like guesses and like hints and like, oh, this might have happened. It feels like fictionalization, which doesn't really work for me with the rest of the tone of the novel. It was, I just, I skimmed read most of this. Gonna be honest, gonna be honest. Well, the second half of it, I skimmed read because I was bored. I was so bored and I did not give a fuck. So on that note, that is all the books I read in November. A bit of a mixed reading man, some favorites, like the ones in Fidget Witches but some real disappointments like Death of Jane Lawrence, Cinderella is dead, the white city, like some real disappointments. So let me know down below what your favorite and least favorite of the month were. If you've gotten to the end, comment a shoe emoji for Cinderella is dead, comment like a shoe emoji. If you've gotten to the end of the video and thank you so, so much for watching. As always, I appreciate everything so much and I will see you very soon in another video. Bye.