October Wrap Up: The Month of H🎃lloween

Hi all!

October was 👻 Spooky Season 🎃 a.k.a Halloween a.k.a. my favourite time of the year! And boy, am I sad it’s over. I’m already looking forward to next year tbh!

This month I watched some scary movies, read a few more scary books, and generally tried to live out the autumn aesthetic … aside from the fact that it’s Spring here in Melbourne 😅.

Books read

Read: 4 books, 3 audiobooks, 2 graphic novels, 1 short story, 1 poetry collection

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Book of the Month

The best book I read this month was Restored by Joanna Chambers, the fifth book in the Enlightenment series. The first three books follow the same couple, the fourth a different couple, and this fifth one a different couple again.

I really loved this addition to the series! It was quite slow and very heartbreaking, as it was a second-chance romance 18 years later! The book is so sad and made me cry so many times. One of the main characters, Henry, talks a lot about the death of his five-year-old daughter and how, no matter how many years have passed, he thinks about her every day. And the other main character, Kit, used to be a sex worker who talks about how he was abused by one of his clients. Again, so heartbreaking for a romance, but I really appreciated all the conversations this book had!

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Monthly disappointment

I haven’t had a monthly disappointment for ages, and I’m so upset that its happened this month. I fully intended to love The Red Parts by Maggie Nelson because I really enjoyed her previous novel, The Argonauts. But this book was so boring and really unnecessary. It’s a memoir about Nelson’s aunt who was murdered before Nelson had ever been born, and it was marketed as a memoir about the trial … but the trial wasn’t mentioned until 65% of the way through the book! The rest of the novel was about Nelson’s life — and absolutely nothing about her aunt. Such a waste of time reading this.

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ARCs received

ARCs

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ALCs

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Non-bookish Stuff

This month, I watched a lot of TV. I’m ashamed to say I watched all 23 seasons of South Park 😅. Admittedly, I didn’t watch the entirety of the show this month, but I finished it. I enjoyed most of it, especially the earlier seasons, but the show really decreased since then. Ah well.

I also rewatched (for the third time) The Haunting of Hill House because it’s one of my favourite shows ever — I love everything about it, from the directing, to the characters, to the family dynamics. *chefs kiss*

Then I rewatched (I can’t even remember how many times) my favourite TV show Over the Garden Wall. It’s the perfect autumnal show, and even though it’s spring here, I still had to watch it for Halloween.

In terms of movies, I watched so many! I’m not usually a movie watcher, and this month I managed to watch the first two films in the Chronicles of Narnia trilogy, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Prince Caspian. I absolutely loved them! The first film was so lovely and innocent and magical, and then the second movie is like WAR. GENOCIDE. MURDER. Amazing.

I also watched Clue for the first time, which I adored. I now consider that to be one of my favourite films, it’s so wonderfully written. And then I watched Ready or Not which I enjoyed so much more than I thought I would!

Looking Forward: November

Reviews to come:

1. Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
2. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis

Tentative TBR:

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HOW WAS YOUR OCTOBER? WHAT BOOKS DID YOU READ? WHAT SHOWS ARE YOU WATCHING? LET ME KNOW!