Bookish Repose

Monthly Wrap-up: November & December

November and December were busy months – with my birthday and Christmas it felt a bit like we didn’t stop, but it was still a great time!

What I’ve Been Reading

The book cover for On Writing and Worldbuilding by Timothy Hickson. It is of a barren landscape with a small robed figure with a staff and a light on the top. In the background it looks like there is a big fire.
The Book Cover for Unruly by David Mitchell. It is fairly bare, but does have a bejeweled golden bomb on the front.
The book cover of Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo. It has a photo of a crow in flight and it mentiones that it is in the Grishaverse and is a Netflix series (Shadow and Bone).
This is the book cover for The Full Moon Coffee Shop by Mai Mochizuki. It has a few cats on the cover, the moon, stars, and symbols from astrology. It has also been translated by Jesse Kirkwood.

The Full Moon Coffee Shop: There’s a Foyles near the office that always has a great selection of books. I picked this up on a pre-Christmas perusal and have been enjoying it!

The Great Mortality: I’ve been reading this book off and on since 2020, but finally decided I either needed to take it off of my TBR or finish it. I got the audiobook of it. The Black Death has a lot of nuance – it was tragic and it had a massive impact on social change. This history was really interesting and comprehensive.

Six of Crows: This book was so much fun! The characters are all so unique and well-developed. I’m looking forward to continuing on with Crooked Kingdom.

On Writing and Worldbuilding: Volume 1: Volume 1 has been really interesting and informative. I’m getting close to the end and then will move on to the second book. It’s giving a lot of practical information to write in the Science Fiction/Fantasy genres.

Unruly: I read this book because I watch Ludwig and wanted to experience more of David Mitchell’s comedy. This book is historical non-fiction, but is so funny. I listened on audiobook, which David Mitchell narrates himself, and his wit and dry humour really shine through.

Writing Updates

I haven’t been doing much writing, but I’ve been planning the beginning of the year and reading up on writing (as mentioned above).

Cosy Updates

Crochet

I had the brilliant and simultaneous foolish idea to crochet all of my Christmas gifts – for colleagues and family. I’m really glad that I did it, but I wish that I had given myself more time to make them. It’s a good lesson for the future, at least. I’m looking forward to having more time to set aside for reading and spending time with friends!

Birthday!

A board game board is out that has cards and tokens on it. There are additional cards, a box of small coin-sized cardboard tokens, and a box of small and similarly sized dragon eggs. The cards have different dragons on them.
One of the games we played was played Wyrmspan, which was really fun but I was mostly distracted by all of the pretty dragon cards!

A close friend and I have birthdays close together, so we tend to celebrate together. This year invoved us spending a few days with our partners playing board games and eating tasty food! It was a wonderful time and I love that it’s become a tradition!

Christmas

A living room with bunting above the TV that says "Merry Christmas", an orange cat ona cat tower, and a decorated Christmas tree.

I love Christmas. Relaxing and hanging out with friends and family is a great time to spend the end of the year and feels like it’s setting up the next year for the better.

Cosy Plans for January

Photo by Tirachard Kumtanom on Pexels.com

Crochet

I have a couple of more gifts to crochet – mostly to send back home to Canada. Canada Post was on strike but I’m waiting to send everything over when I’m confident that the backlog has been worked through.

Watching What We Do In the Shadows

We started watching this TV series on Disney+ shortly before Christmas. It’s about vampires living in the US and is really funny.

Continuing Series

This is a repeat from last month, and will likely be a recurring piece in these posts. I have too many series’ to finish and new ones to start!

I’ve always loved Fantasy, but I do dip into other genres. I want to dive back into Fantasy this year and catch-up Fantasy books I’ve been excited to read but haven’t been able to pick up to yet.

Grishaverse

I’m really enjoing the Six of Crows duology and will be starting Crooked Kingdom this month.

ACOTAR

I’m planning on starting A Court of Silver Flames. I’ve loved the series so far, so am really excited to round it off! After I’ve finished this, I’m going to do a re-read of the first two Crescent City books and a new read of the third.

Writing and World Building

This has been one of the most unique books on writing I’ve read, and I’m looking forward to finishing this one and continuing on with the series.

Writing Plans

I haven’t worked a lot on my WIP. My plan at the moment is to gain confidence and routine by regularly posting on this blog and reading books on writing.

I’m also working on building a writing community, including making plans with friends to write with them online and in person and attending one Mslexia salon a month.

Photo by Suzy Hazelwood on Pexels.com

Now that the holidays have passed, I’m looking forward to getting back into a routine, especially in writing and reading. Do you have any cosy plans for January? Please feel free to share!

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