november wrap up | a failure?

Welcome to my post, the penultimate wrap up of 2022! In my wrap ups I share what I’ve been reading, watching and listening to. I definitely posted more this month, but sadly I haven’t read much. I actually forgot that November had 30 days not 31, so I thought I had a little more time to finish the book I’m currently reading (Tread of Angels) but I’ll have to update you on that next month instead! Anyway, here are my posts from November:

• October wrap up
• November releases
• Ranking dark academia books
• Netgalley TBR
• December releases
• December readathons & TBR

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Music 

Not much change from last month, but Spotify Wrapped came out which everyone was anticipating! I’m planning to share my stats in a post next week so watch out for that! Here is my seasonal playlist from autumn though:

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TV/Films

 Moving onto what I’ve watched, again I haven’t had a lot of time to watch too much. However, I have started rewatching Doctor Who, one of my favourite comfort series, with my boyfriend who hasn’t watched it before. We’re currently on series 2 of New Who so a long way to go but the new series isn’t releasing until the end of 2023 I think so we’ve got a lot of time. The first film I watched was My Policeman. It’s not something I’d usually choose to watch but my friends wanted to see how good Harry Styles was (not the best) so I watched. I rated it 3 stars because it felt like a pretty unoriginal queer story and it was a little slow, but there were some emotional scenes and I loved the Brighton settings because I’ve been to a lot of the places it was set in. Secondly and lastly, I watched Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and oh my god it was so good. Despite the daunting almost 3 hour run time, for most of the time it was engaging and a nice balance between action and emotional scenes. The tribute to Chadwick Boseman at the start was beautiful and the theme of grief throughout was handled well. I really liked the villain and inclusion of history making him feel like a real and almost justified character because you can see and understand his intentions to an extent. Overall a really great movie and my favourite Marvel film so far, which I gave 4.5 stars.

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Reading Stats

I read 2 books and 667 pages with an average of 22 pages a day!

♡ my average rating was 3.50

♡ 2 digital books, (1 ARC)

♡ 1 fantasy, 1 contemporary/horror

♡ 1 adult, 1 YA

It’s not the worst month for reading of the year in terms of pages, but pretty close! I did read a YA though which is not too common and I got one ARC read at least. I definitely want to read more in December and I think I can in the holidays but we’ll see!

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The Books

I haven’t had a 4 star read for a while but The Sunbearer Trials deserved it! It was fast-paced and had a lot of action, with a bit of mystery and some sweet, emotional scenes sprinkled in. I do think the comparison to Percy Jackson and The Hunger Games a little unfair, because it’s more than that, especially with the mythology, culture and trans identities that it explores. It landed on a twist and cliffhanger, and I can’t wait to read more in the series (I think it’s a duology but I’m not too sure)!

The other book I finished in November is A Certain Hunger. It was a bit of a drag to be honest! I enjoyed the structure and non-linear timeline, but the more mundane parts and endless food references bordering on pretentious were hard to get through. The last 30% saved it from being a lower rating because there were more interesting conversations that I wished had been throughout the book instead, like the concept of love, perception of female criminals and cannibalism in animals. 

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That’s it from my November, thanks for reading! What was your month like?

—ella♥

♦ goodreads ♦