November Reading Review | 2024

Thank you all for your encouraging comments on Monday’s post! I’ve had a string of very good mornings so far and am hopeful for an adjustment in the kids’ sleeping schedule. I don’t want to jinx it, of course, but it feels like I can finally resume my quiet morning routine? It’s been at least a year since I’ve been able to count on this time.

And yet — despite how frustrated I’ve been with my mornings — I prioritized books and reading as a means for self-care in November. It felt so nice to be able to slip in my earbuds when I wanted to tune out all of the terrible news last month. So let’s take a closer look at what kept me going:

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General Statistics:

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• I met my daily page goal! My goal is to read an average of 150 pages/day and my actual for November was an average of 164 pages/day.
• I read two nonfiction books in November, which is unusual for me.
• Audio, once again, saved the day. It was nearly half of my reading.
• Literary fiction was my most-read genre.

Highlights:

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• I became a Louise Erdrich completist in November! I read both Shadow Tag (an emotionally taxing book about an abusive marriage) and her newest The Mighty Red (about an engrossing teenage love triangle and a mother/daughter relationship. I adored it.)
• I also finished all of Toni Morrison’s novels in November. I’m planning to listen to LeVar Burton read her short story, Recitatif, in December and then I will feel like a true Toni Morrison fiction completist.
• Paradise might be my favorite Toni Morrison. It was excellent — and highly accessible if you’re not sure where to start with her. The structure of this novel created a ton of intrigue and it was hard to put down. I’m already looking forward to rereading it!
• Translated work of the month: The Empusium. I found it to be a bit slow but the ending made it worthwhile for me. More female rage is needed.
• Speaking of female rage, Anita de Monte Laughs Last was amazing. Especially on audio. Anita is based on real-life artist Ana Mendieta, who was murdered by her husband in the 1980s. Anita is total fire and you’re going to fall in love with her.
• Did you like Chouette like I did? Well, Claire Oshetsky published a new novel this year! Poor Deer is a short little book that thinks about grief and guilt in an unusual way.
• Reading The Grey Wolf kept me up-to-date with the Armand Gamache novels.
• The Bone People added one more book to my Female Booker Prize Winners goal. (I’ve now read 8/21 of the books.)
• I really enjoyed The Bog Wife and I’m completely unsure about the ending.
• Intermezzo was the first Sally Rooney I’ve ever finished and I enjoyed it a lot. I have questions about some of Rooney’s choices but I think that frustration only added to my enjoyment of the novel, strangely.
• I finished The Message early in November and am still thinking about it.
• In the Garden of Beasts scared my socks off. It’s about the the family of the American Ambassador to Germany in the 1930s. Horrifying that it’s nonfiction.
• The kids and I REALLY enjoyed our Ra The Mighty readaloud! This is the second book in a series so we ordered the first and third. We’re probably going to take a detour on our writing curricula to make room for these books! (I’m pretty sure there’s already a curriculum available for the first. Maybe the third will be one of our summer readalouds, which are less tied to school work anyway.)

(I didn’t mean to include so many bullet points, but I thought of something else every time I looked at the graphic with all of those covers. It was a good month!)

Plan for November:

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The graphic above is my November TBR from Notion. I followed it pretty closely and only added Poor Deer as a last-minute addition at the end of the month because I had just discovered its existence, it was immediately available on Libby, and it was very short. I knew I could just squeeze it in without much fanfare and without losing much progress on my other plans for the month.

(Note: some of these books I finished in October and some of the books I finished in November are on my December TBR. It all kind of evens out, I think.)

I have found that having a plan like this really helps me prioritize some of the backlist titles that I wouldn’t otherwise get to and helps me figure out where long-term Libby holds fit in. I try to estimate when my hold will come in (that’s not always accurate, of course) and plug those into the estimated month. It helps control the overwhelming feeling when all of your holds start coming in at once. You’ve planned for this accordingly!

I’m in the process of building my 2025 TBR in Notion and combining my TBR with my reading notes. I’ve had them as separate databases in 2024 but I finally figured out how to combine them and I’m excited for the possibilities! Cross your fingers for a blog post on this before the end of the year.

Reading Calendar:

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Just because it looks cool. I wish it wasn’t so blurry!

December TBR:

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And here’s my completely wacky December plan. I know I won’t finish this one either and that’s okay. But it will keep me busy!

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And I think my time at my desk is up. But be sure to tell me: how was your reading in November? Did we overlap at all? Do you have any suggestions for my TBR? I want to know!