What a month November was. Looking back to my past wrap ups, everything feels so insignificant compared to the past thirty days. This blog mainly follows my journey with books, a journey showcasing how many different ways words can be strung together to produce something so beautiful, unique, and impactful. This month, we got to see just that, how millions and millions of voices rang out, saying enough is enough. So many words, from so many voices, from so many different people, demanding change. There’s so much to work to do, especially considering the fact that what we’ve won is far from perfection, but it’s an opening to a door that’ll hopefully lead to something better. A door that we’re going to have to work hard to make sure stays open and leads to good things for everyone.
This month, somehow, ended up being my best reading month. I only managed to read three books, but my gosh did I enjoy this month of reading. I’m going to be super vague about two of these books because I want to do a whole new post on them in more detail so be on the look out for that!
The three books I read this month are:
- Nevermoor – Jessica Townsend
- The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World- Melinda Gates
- Untamed – Glennon Doyle
Untamed, honestly changed me forever. Even sitting here, typing away at this post, I’m still thinking about it. I don’t know how it’s possible to feel so complete yet empty at the same time, but I feel exactly that. This book breathed life into me and honestly made me love reading and living and existing. And for those very reasons, I’m so sad that I’ve finished it and I honestly think I may pick it up right back up again.
I read The Moment of Lift as an audiobook, and it reminded me how much I love a good audiobook. I want to try to listen to more audiobooks but so far, I’ve only listened to non-fiction audiobooks. I haven’t really stepped into the fictional side of audiobooks as I tend to not be as immersed into the story as I am with non-fiction reads. For me, non-fiction audiobooks feel like podcasts. They feel more casual and I don’t have to pay attention to the world building or character dynamics. When I listed to fictional audiobooks, I want to be super attentive but I also can’t really listen to audiobooks without multitasking. I know I technically can read fictional audiobooks and multitask but I’m just scared of missing something . It’s a conundrum lol but I’m hoping to change that this coming year! I’ll be going into this book in my upcoming post so once again, sorry for the vagueness!
After way too many months, I finally finished Nevermoor. I really enjoyed the beginning of the book, but towards the middle, I wasn’t as hooked as I wanted to be. I enjoyed the whimsical world building and the friendships but the plot felt a bit dragged out and repetitive at times. The end had me sucked back in though, and while I didn’t love the book as much as I wanted to, I’m open to picking up the sequel. It’s a solid three stars from me. I had way too many high expectations going into this book and the writing just didn’t cut it out for me as much as I wanted it to.
Let’s take a minute to note that I started and finished only two books this month and I feel a m a z I n g. There are so many people out there who feel upset when they’re not reading at a certain pace to reach whatever goal they’ve set out for themselves but,
q u a l I t y over q u a n t I t y.
By this, I don’t mean the quality of the writing, but the experience. Did you have fun strongly disliking the book? Do you remember calling up your non-reader friend and cackling at some of the stuff that happened in a fictional book that they have no idea about? Or did you make a copious amount of journal spreads from your favorite passages because your hands wanted to piece together the words and feelings in your heart and brain onto something two dimensional so you can carry them with you everywhere?
Reading is meant to be fun friends, let’s make sure we keep it that way.
I love how the first part of the month had me so stressed, that I was up way late at night or early morning, however you see it, refreshing my phone to see which way the world was going to be when the sun would come to greet us.
But the last bits of November, ah, those were some of the best days I’ve had in a while. I had some days off work and it had me really looking into myself and resulted in many, many journal spreads that have been started and yet to be finished. That’s another favorite of mine this month, my aesthetic journal. It’s turning into something that I look forward to every weekend and I’ve started to stretch what I include in it. Sometimes, it’s a bit more personal entry that probably should be in my personal diary but other times, it’s a list of my favorite tv shows I’ve watched recently. There’s something so calming to have somewhere to spill your hear onto through collages, messy text, and sketches.
As for music, I discovered many songs, but I thought I’d leave you with some of the more, softer listens.
- Favorite Place – by Humbear
- I’ll Be There – Jess Glynne
- Therefore I Am – Billie Eilish
- Seagull – Saturday Sun
- Coffee – beabadoobee
How was your month? What was your favorite song? Your favorite read? Your favorite memory?