Oct, 5th - 20:45
Finished the first book of the month: The Glass Town Game, the newest release by Catherynne M. Valente. It's a fantasy novel about the Brontë siblings. Basically, they are sucked into their own game. A bit like Jumanji if you like but the whole book is filled with references to their novels and their characters and it's a fantastic read.
I'm also making my way through My Absolute Darling by Gabriel Tallent and I can tell you now this is gonna be a difficult one for me. It disgustes me most of the time and I've cried several times but at the same time I wanna keep reading because I wanna know where the story is heading.
Oct, 8th - 11:20
Finished My Absolute Darling and I have so many thoughts about this story. Most of the time I found myself disgusted by it. It is not an easy read by any means and I wanted to put it down a lot of times but at the same time I needed to know how the story would end. I needed to know what would happen to Turtle. It's not a book for everybody so I'll say if you don't mind the dark subject matter too much, then go for it, but all readers should be aware of the violent nature of the novel. This should come with trigger warnings at the beginning, especially for sexual abuse/violence. Is this the best debut of 2017 as some people say? I don't really know; however, I can really see why it would be the most talked about debut and it is a story that I will not easily forget.
Now, I did a poll on my instagram *shameless self-promotion* where I asked what my next read will be. The two books to choose from were Girls will be Girls and Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. The latter won and I was planning on picking it up immediately today. However, I just found out the Man Brooker winner will be announced in 9 days and I still have Elmet & History of Wolves to read so they are a priority now. I think I'm gonna start with Elmet. Fingers crossed I read both before we get to know the winner.
Oct, 9th - 20:00
Although I'm halfway through Elmet - which I'm really enjoying - Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell has been looking at me from my nightstand for awhile so I decided to pick it up and read 50 minutes of it every day. I don't care how long it takes me to read it but I'm determined to do so.
Oct, 11th - 20:36
Finished Elmet. Of all the Man Booker shortlisted books I've read this one was by far my favourite. My only problem was that it ended. That is, the story was at a very crucial moment and then it ended. It made me feel a bit underwhelmed. I just wanted more.
Oct, 14th - 18:30
After a very hectic and stressful week I managed to finish A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which is the first of my compulsory reads for my Irish Literature course. I had some issues with it, sometimes I was so engrossed on the read and others I just wanted to throw it across the room. It was my first time reading Joyce and although I own Dubliners, I don't think I see myself reading it in the near future. His other works I'm not even gonna attempt.
I think I'm gonna start History of Wolves. Since the other titles that I need to read for Uni haven't arrived yet, I have time to pick other stuff up.
Oct, 16th - 21:02
After almost DNFing History of Wolves, I pushed myself to finish it and I did so in one afternoon. I wasn't very impressed with it mainly due to the fact I'm pretty sure I'm not the right audience for it. Fridlund does write about some dark and unsettling issues but the whole novel went over my head.
Oct, 16th - 21:02
After almost DNFing History of Wolves, I pushed myself to finish it and I did so in one afternoon. I wasn't very impressed with it mainly due to the fact I'm pretty sure I'm not the right audience for it. Fridlund does write about some dark and unsettling issues but the whole novel went over my head.
Oct, 20th - 23:00
Today was the #cosyreadingnight and I read Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell exclusively for three hours and finally made it halfway through. I'm enjoying the read but I get very distracted sometimes and the footnotes don't help much. I'm always torn about reading them or not because when I do, especially the long-ass ones, I forget what I was reading before reading the footnote if you know what I mean. Tomorrow is the Dewey's readathon and so I will put the book aside and pick the ones I chose for the readathon.
Oct, 21st - 14:00
The Dewey's 24-Hour Readathon started! I have a whole new post for my reading updates so I will link it here if you're interested. Long story short though: I finished the four books on my TBR for the readathon.
Oct, 22nd - 14:00
Just as the Dewey's readathon finished, the Autumn readathon began. As to not make this post too long (which it already is), I made a different post with all my reading updates.
Oct, 28th - 23:59
The Autumn readathon finished! Managed to read 3 books and started a fourth one. Did a whole post with my wrap-up here.
Oct, 31st
I'm updating here once more to tell you The Butcher's Hook was the last book I finished this month. I was hoping to finish both Mariana and Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell but I've been quite busy with Uni work and my free time to read wasn't enough to finish neither of them. I'm halfway through Mariana and I have only 200 pages left of Jonathan Strange. Might try and finish them in the first week of November mainly because this upcoming month is gonna be absolutely mental and I don't wanna postpone finishing these books since I have a lot of required Uni reads to go through.
If you managed to get to the end of the post, CONGRATULATIONS! I know it has been long but I kinda wanted to do something different for my wrap-ups and I thought doing a reading diary where I update each time I finish a book was a good idea. Please, let me know if you like this format or if you find it too long and/or tedious to get through and I'll go back to my original format. Thank you!
How did October treat you? Did you dress up for Halloween?
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