October Monthly Recap

It’s time for our monthly recap! Find out which books were favorites, which were duds, and which ones we plan to read the following month. We’ll end our wrap up with a calendar of book-related events/facts from the month of October and we’ll highlight our upcoming November content. We’ve also added a list of upcoming book releases for November (scroll to the end for the list).

One randomly selected follower (email or wordpress follower) will win a $10 amazon gift card. Scroll down to see if you are the winner. The prize is only awarded if you contact us with your email address so make sure to check these monthly recaps each month to see if you won! We also want to hear from you so let us know what you read in October and what you look forward to reading in November. 

Jen:

Favorite book read in November: My favorite October read was David Mitchell’s Bone Clocks. Honorable Mentions: Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Gawande and Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman (for the audio).

Least favorite book read in November: The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat. This was a 2.5 star read for me. Unlike BW, I did not enjoy it. Dishonorable mention: Stephen King’s Dr. Sleep. I didn’t find it boring, just rather silly and disappointing compared to The Shining.

November Goals: I plan to finish up Billy Clegg’s Did you Ever have a Family. November is a relatively busy month for me outside of reading. It’s my daughter’s birthday and we are heading to Disney — probably on the plane as you read this.  I also have a few major work projects coming up. So reading may suffer a little this month. I’ll will be attending Book Riot Live. Anyone going and want to meet up?

Book Worm:

Favourite Book read in October:  Did You Ever Have A Family by Bill Clegg. 5 stars review to appear here soon. Honourable mentions: The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne and Sleeping On Jupiter by Anuradha Roy.

Least favorite book read in October: The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat this was a 3 star read and is only my least favourite book by default and not because I didn’t actually enjoy it.

November Goals: Well I had some success with my October goals, I managed to read 2 more Booker longlist books and 1 more section of Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time. I failed to complete Nicholas Nickleby. So for November my goals are: 1) To finish 2666 by Roberto Bolaño (I am currently about 200 pages into it) and 2) Read Nicholas Nickleby. And following on from a text from my mum which went;

“Have you read life after life”

“No”

“I am about halfway through and its really good, you should read it”

Life After Life is now back at the top of my TBR lets see if November is the month I finally manage to read it.

Here’s a look back at literary events in October:

What can you look forward to on our blog in November? The announcement of our winter reading challenge! This challenge will actually start on December 1st but requires some significant planning on our part. We hope you join in because it will be a fun one. We also will feature our recurring posts: Love it or Hate it, Read Around the World, Featured Author (Jeffrey Eugenides), Kid’s Corner, and Terrible Reviews of Great Books. Finally, we’ll feature regular reviews of both non-list and 1001 list books.

For more on upcoming content you can always check out our event calendar — featured on our sidebar.

Here are a few books that will be released in November:
Avenue of Mysteries by John Irving. Release Date: November 3
Numero Zero by Umberto Ecco. Release Date November 3
The Japanese Lover by Isabel Allende. Release Date: November 3
A Wild Swan: And Other Tales by Michael Cunningham. Release Date November 10
The Master of the Prado by Javier Sierra. Release date: November 17
Gratitude by Oliver Sachs. Release date: November 24

We want to hear from you. What books did you read in October? Which your favorites? Least favorites? Is there anything you are looking forward to in November?

The winner of our follower appreciation is a wordpress follower: Anna at a wondrous book. In order to claim the prize you need to reply to this post or email me saying that you want to claim the prize! You must claim your prize before the end of the November otherwise it will go back into the pool for the next winner. Congrats, you win a $10 gift card to Amazon! NOTE: winners are randomly selected from pool of either wordpress or email followers of this blog.