November 2021 wrap up

Hello bookworms!! It’s time for the November 2021 wrap up.

I don’t know about you, but when I started writing this back in early December, I felt stuck in this weird “How the hell is it almost 2022? I’m still writing 2020 on things”, but also being “Geez, can we just skip to 2022 already because I am so done with 2021.” Which was a really weird place to be. Because December so far had been 18 minutes long, but also 4 months long. ,I really needed some down time. Which THANKFULLY, I got over the last couple of days. (You can probably tell from all my extra blog posts that have been dropping.)

And with that in mind, let’s look at what I did in November!!

November 2021 wrap up

Look, I don’t really know what happened or how it happened, but somehow I read 16 books in November. My reading this year is so inconsistent it’s outrageous. However, after being 1 book behind my Goodreads schedule at the end of October, I was 6 books in front by the end of November. Which was excellent news!!

the books

Book	Author	Series	Year of publication / Symbols	Rating	Cover
War	Laura Thalassa	The Four Horsemen #2	2019 ⚔️ ❤️ 🐺 🍆 🌑 👩‍🦳 📱	⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
Famine	Laura Thalassa	The Four Horsemen #3	2020 ⚔️ ❤️ 🐺 🍆 🌑 👩‍🦳 📱	⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
Fence: Disarmed	Sarah Rees Brennan	Fence novels #2	2021 ⛱ ❤️ 🗣 🏳️‍🌈 🏈 🧘‍♀️ 🗒 🐨	⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
Signs of Love: Winter	Anyta Sunday	Signs of Love #0.5	2021 ⛱ ❤️ 🍆 🏳️‍🌈 👩‍🦳 📱	⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
Signs of Love: Spring	Anyta Sunday	Signs of Love #0.6	2021 ⛱ ❤️ 🍆 🏳️‍🌈 👩‍🦳 📱	⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
Of Princes and Promises	Sandhya Menon	St Rosetta’s Academy #2	2021 🍄 🧘‍♀️ 🗒	⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
Silenced	Crystal North	Catalina University #1	2021 ❤️ 🐺 🍄 👩‍🦳 📱 🌀	⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
The Love Hypothesis	Ali Hazelwood		2021 ⛱ ❤️ 🎮 👩‍🦳 📱	⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
Ice Planet Barbarians	Ruby Dixon	Ice Planet Barbarians #1	2015 🚀 ❤️ 🍆 🌑 👩‍🦳 📱 🥰	⭐️ ⭐️
Barbarian Alien	Ruby Dixon	Ice Planet Barbarians #2	2015 🚀 ❤️ 🍆 🌑 👩‍🦳 📱 🥰	⭐️ ⭐️
Take Me to the River	Kaci Rose		2021 ⛱ ❤️ 🍆 👩‍🦳 📱	⭐️ ⭐️
Accidentally Engaged	Farah Heron		2021 ⛱ ❤️ 🍆 🖤 🗣 👩‍🦳 📱	⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
You Deserve Each Other	Sarah Hogle		2020 ⛱ ❤️ 🍆 🧠 🌑 👩‍🦳 🗒 📚	🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟
Lore Olympus Vol 1	Rachel Smythe	Lore Olympus #1	2021 ❤️ 🍄 🧠 🧘‍♀️ 🗒 💥	⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
Game On: Tempting Twenty-Eight	Janet Evanovich	Stephanie Plum #28	2021 🔍 🐺 👩‍🦳 🗒	⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
Aurora Burning	Amie Kaufman / Jay Kristoff	The Aurora Cycle #2	2020 🚀 🧠 ♿️ 🧘‍♀️ 📔 🐨 📚 🖋 🪆	⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

the faves

The winners for November were a lot of contemporary romances. If you’ve seen my Top 5 books of 2021 post, then you already know that You Deserve Each Other was my favourite book of the year.

However, I REALLY enjoyed reading Accidentally Engaged and The Love Hypothesis. In fact, if I was still doing half ratings, both books would have been 4.5 stars. They were witty, funny, poignant, and the romances were adorable. I’d highly recommend both of them.

November was a weird month. We started to come out of lockdown in that last weekend of October, but I didn’t really go back into the office properly until mid-late November. So, I spent most of it still at home. I did start venturing out for things around mid-month though. And I got my 6-month booster vaccine at the end of November too.

gaming

In November it was basically just a continuation of all the things I played in October. More Sims, more Spiritfarer, and more Cozy Grove.

I downloaded Disco Elysium on the Switch, but one of my friends wants me to stream it when I play, so I haven’t started it yet… In fact, now that I think about it, I’m pretty sure I uninstalled Streamlabs on my laptop, so I might need to check that soon!

D&D campaigns seem to be a bit on the fritz at the moment. We were due to start another campaign in December, but it’s likely that will pause until January. And our regular Tuesday night game moved to Wednesday and we had to skip a couple of nights because some of the team already had plans that weren’t changeable. (It was me — we had movie tickets booked for premieres.)

tv and movies

Continuing the MCU (+ other Marvel based movies) rewatch I’ve been doing with my friends, in November we watched Venom, which was a rewatch for me. I really pushed for this one ahead of the older Spider-Man films because I knew I’d be seeing Venom 2 at cinemas before Spider-Man: No Way Home.

We had two cinema dates in November:

• Eternals
• No Time to Die

Other things I watched:

• Descendants: The Royal Wedding
• Baby Sitters Club season 2
• New Amsterdam season 4 eps 1-10
• Dynasty season 3
• Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares season 1 (UK)
• The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf
• What’s Your Number?
• Red Notice
• Bombshell
• Jungle Cruise
• Hidden Figures
• First Daughter
• What a Girl Wants (rewatch)
• Can You Keep a Secret (rewatch)
• Pride and Prejudice (2005) (rewatch)
• Jane Eyre (rewatch)
• All Too Well short film

I have to say, I was really disappointed with Eternals. The only other MCU movies I can remember being THAT disheartened by after watching were Thor: The Dark World, and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2. I’m not sure if it was because I felt like they were trying to do way too much and introduce way too many characters, or if it fell flat for other reasons. But, it certainly didn’t hit the bar I was expecting it too.

November was a pretty sad blogging month. Top 5 Tuesday topics were mostly about tropes, so that was fun. Topics were top 5:

• tropes I can’t get enough of
• tropes I dislike
• bad tropes done well
• books I haven’t read yet in 2021, and
• *freebie* — but I did recent reads because I needed something easy 😅

Apart from this and the normal haul and wrap-up posts, November was a pretty quiet blogging month!!

Did I catch up on my October blog hopping?! You bet I did!! I then even blog hopped in November!! Here are some of my fave posts of yours!!

Recommendation lists:

• Marie @ Drizzle and Hurricane books wrote a list of her most anticipated YA books for 2022, AND her most anticipated contemporary romance books for 2022.
• Kat @ Bibliosmile listed 22 YA Robin Hood retellings (and I am here for this!!)
• Nyx @ Drizzle and Hurricane books told us about 10 YA (and 2 bonus adult) fiction books about celebrities
• Vera and Sabrina @ Wordy and Whimsical gave us book recommendations based on Taylor’s Red album (Taylor’s version)
• Jayati @ It’s Just a Coffee Addicted Bibliophile made a list of 20 debut novels from 2021 that need to be on your TBR (if you haven’t already read them)

Discussion posts:

• Tracy @ Truffles Literary Wonders gave us 10 positive affirmations for bookworms (and I adore this post so much)
• Sam @ Fictionally Sam talked about why the kindle app is better than the e-reader (and I whole heartedly agree with everything in this post)
• Malka @ Paper Procrastinators discussed choosing ratings for books, and shared lessons learnt after a year as an affiliate for bookshop.org
• Charvi @ Not Just Fiction talked about why trying to profit from reading might not be a good idea

Reviews:

• CG @ Paperfury reviewed Lakesedge by Lyndall Clipstone 🐨 (and you all know how much I love that book)
• Marie @ Drizzle and Hurricane books reviewed A Cuban Girl’s Guide to Tea and Tomorrow by Laura Taylor Namey
• Kal @ Reader Voracious reviewed All of Us Villains by Amanda Foody
• Meaghan @ Hail and Well Read reviewed Skin of the Sea by Natasha Bowen
• Charvi @ Not Just Fiction gave us 4 reasons to read The Wicker King by K. Ancrum
• Sam @ Fictionally Sam reviewed Crave by Tracy Wolff
• Marie @ Drizzle and Hurricane books reviewed If This Gets Out by Sophie Gonzales and Cale Dietrich 🐨

How was your November?