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Dec
02
November Reading Wrap-Up
2009 at 2pm Posted by Rebecca Joines Schinsky
November was an interesting month for me. For the first time since I started blogging, I developed a backlog of books that I’ve finished reading but haven’t yet reviewed. I’ve always been pretty good about writing my review shortly after finishing a book, and while it’s nice to have plenty of material waiting in the wings, I’m feeling a little stressed and would like to be caught up before the holidays.
Here’s what I read in October but reviewed in November. (Covers link to my reviews.)
And here’s what I read and reviewed in November.
And there’s one I read in November but will review in December:
It was a good reading month for me in terms of quality but not necessarily in quantity. I’m sitting at 90 books read for the year and somehow have to find a way to read 10 more this month in order to meet my goal of 100 for the year.
All of my reading this month was pretty great, so I won’t select favorites….both of the fiction selections, In the Woods and Await Your Reply, were well-written modern thrillers, and my nonfiction selections spanned too many subgenres to make them easy to compare. All in all, this wasn’t my best reading month of 2009, but it wasn’t the worst, either. I’m looking forward to wrapping up this year with solid selections and kicking of a new reading philosophy in 2010.
What’s the best book you read in November? Any recommendations for my holiday travel reading?
It drives me mad when I have books sitting, need reviews. Sometimes I’m just not in the freaking mood. I have In the Woods on my TBR Challenge list for next year. I loved The Likeness, but can’t seem to get motivated to read this one. Good books in November? Hmmm…I really liked The Angel’s Game and Her Fearful Symmetry. Night Watch by Sarah Waters was good too. None were five stars, but healthy 4 stars.
My best book for November was The Wife’s Tale by Lori Lansens. I loved it!
I also read In the Woods in November (still no review though). For the last two months I’ve been letting stuff get backlogged as well. For me, it makes for crappy reviews later because I forget the little details that I loved.
I hope you succeed in your goal of 100 books (that’s quite a lot!).
I’ve been forgetting details too, but I write in my books & underline passages, so going back to those has been helping. And I SO hope I meet the 100 because at this point, if I miss it, I’m only going to miss it by a few, and that would just suck.
I’m always always always behind on my book reviews … it is my modus operandi! I’m going for a big push of shorter reviews to get rid of my backlog and start 2010 with a clean slate! The thing is … I don’t even read near 100 books in a year!
And I believe I recently added the Tana French book to my TBR list based on your review.
The best book I read in November was Chains by Laurie Halse Andersen. AMAZING. SOOOOO much better than any of her other books, which I have loved. You must check it out …. even if you’re out of the bookfair biz.
Hey! Thanks for stopping by. I haven’t read any Laurie Halse Anderson yet, but it sounds like everything she’s done is amazing, so I’ll have lots of good choices. Putting her on the list for 2010.
I just started reading Always Looking Up and am enjoying it and have heard great things, it might be an enjoyable but quicker read to add for the big December push!
LOL, I too have a 100 book per annum standard and, factoring in what I can reasonably complete before the end of the year, I will be seven short (and it’s killing me!) Of course, I did go through a four month reading slump after having my love of reading nearly annihilated after reading Eclipse (the third book in the Twilight Saga by Stehenie Meyer) but still…
The best book I read in November was THE NEON RAIN by James Lee Burke. It’s the first in the Dave Robicheaux mystery series and I loved the viscous quality to the descriptive language. The time and the place are New Orleans in the 1980′s and the context of the story involves the US involvement with illegal arms shipments to Central America and, the protag’s flashbacks to his tour in VietNam. Some may demur at the violence in the story, but I really don’t think the bad guys could have been nearly so intimidating had they just been going around giving dirty looks! I’m not a particular advocate of graphic violence but I do think it served to illustrate the true threat of the bad guys in this story.
I started reading Transforming A Rape Culture in November — a book I’d been meaning to pick up for years but finally got to for a school project (on Twilight! ha!). I think you would…enjoy is the wrong word… but appreciate it’s importance and relevance more than 15 years after it was published.
Thanks for the recommendation! I looked it up, and you’re right–I’m definitely interested. I’ve added it to my reading list for 2010, and I would LOVE to know how you connected it to Twilight.