So November was a month. It was not the most productive month I’ve ever had. This was partly due to my being busy at work and partly due to being in a bit of a reading slump. It’s not like I didn’t want to read, I just couldn’t pick anything. Or, I didn’t have enough time at lunch for reading like I normally do. But I’ve been reading up a storm in the past few days, so I don’t have to worry about developing a full-on reading slump.

I’ve done next to no baking in the past couple of weeks. I just haven’t had time, especially with the Thanksgiving travel and extra hours at work. I’m going to try to make something this weekend, but I don’t know if that will happen. I have all my other housework to do around extra work hours so baking might have to be sidelined. We’ll see.

So anyway. What did I read in November?

• Monstress Vol. 3: Haven by Marjorie Liu, art by Sana Takeda
• O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
• Faithful Place by Tana French
• The Unquiet Dead by Ausma Zehanat Khan
• The Black Tides of Heaven by JY Yang
• Broken Harbor by Tana French
• Extravagaria by Pablo Neruda

Three of my November reads were mysteries, two were fantasies (one of which was a graphic novel), one was fiction, and one was a book of poetry. A decent spread of genres this month, if nothing else. Five of my seven titles were written by women (71% – Marjorie Liu, Tana French, Willa Cather, Ausma Zehanat Khan), one was written by a man (14% – Pablo Neruda), and one was written by a gender non-binary person (14% – JY Yang)

Three of the books counted toward my Read the World Challenge:

• The Unquiet Dead by Ausma Zehanat Khan, Canada
• The Black Tides of Heaven by JY Yang, Singapore
• Extravagaria by Pablo Neruda, Chile

I definitely could have read more in November, but oh well. I hit my yearly goal of 100 books back in August, and there’s no way I can attain my Read the World goal at this point. I decided not to stress out over it and get some sleep and baking done instead, during my somewhat rare free time. Not every month has to involve massive amounts of reading.

What’s on tap for December? ARCs! I’ve had two January releases waiting for me to get to them for the past couple of months, and I received two more this week, so I have four ARCs to get through in December. It shouldn’t be a problem, because I was looking forward to three of the releases already, and one of them is about the Tudor dynasty in England, which is my favorite point in British history.

December ARCs:

• The Paragon Hotel by Lyndsay Faye
• Henry VIII and the Men Who Made Him by Tracy Borman
• The Winter of the Witch by Katherine Arden
• The Monster Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson

I’m already a third of the way through The Winter of the Witch, which is the final installment in Arden’s excellent Winternight Trilogy, and it’s wonderful so far! I’m also partway through The Monster Baru Cormorant, which was a late approval. I’d requested it back in October before it was published but did not receive the approval until a couple of days ago. It came out on October 30th, and I already have a copy from the library. I guess it just helps my NetGalley percentage since I was planning to write a review for it anyway.

What else am I planning to read in December? I’m not sure right now. There is, of course, a lot that I want to read, but as moody of a reader as I can be, I’m not sure what will be next. I have several options:

• Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
• The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry
• Sixpence House by Paul Collins
• Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata
• The Blue Fox by Sjón
• Snowblind by Ragnar Jonasson

And maybe I’ll go nuts and read all of them in December! They’re not super long books, after all. But my first priority will be the ARCs since I have an obligation to the publishers to review them. This will not be hard work. In fact, it will be fun!

Look at the book nerd over here, writing book reports for fun.

Anyway. November was a slow reading month, but one where I went and did other things and worked a lot. December promises a lot of work, too, but given the way November’s weather is going, I may be spending the rest of my time at home. It’s been cold, rainy, snowy, and icy for the past week, and the forecast doesn’t sound like it’s going to improve any time soon.

Because December is the end of the year, I’ll be writing some Best/Worst of 2018 Posts, as well as providing a summary of my (somewhat unsuccessful) Read the World Challenge, as well as my 2019 reading plan. My The Lord of the Rings Reread project continues on, and the post covering the first two chapters of The Two Towers, ‘They Went Thataway‘, went live last Saturday, so pop on over to my Lord of the Rings Reread page if you want to get caught up.

That’s all for now. I hope your holiday season is warm, cozy, and full of books!