November Wrap Up and December TBR + Updates

Here's what went down in November:

1.  These Broken Stars by Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner (review; 3 stars)

2.  The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin (reread; 5 stars)

3.  The Evolution of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin (reread; 5 stars)

4.  Cruel Beauty by Rosamund Hodge (5 stars)

5.  Four by Veronica Roth (5 stars)

6.  Please Ignore Vera Dietz by A. S. King (5 stars)

7.  Made For You by Melissa Marr (3 stars)

8.  Snow Like Ashes by Sara Raasch (DNF)

9.  The Retribution of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin (5 stars)

November was, as predicted, a strange reading month for me.  I read 7 of these by the 17th of November.  So, as you can see, I haven't read much in the last couple of weeks.  5 of these books were on my TBR last month (or, last, last month, since it's now December), and I'm pretty happy with that.  Looking at my ratings, I had a great month in terms of enjoying what I was reading, and I also look like an extremely lenient reviewer, which I don't think is the case, considering that 6 of the above books are favourites (4 of them new).  I wasn't expecting to love Please Ignore Vera Dietz, but I did and I am so glad I finally picked up an A. S. King book.  I guess I just had some great luck this month!

I don't believe I'm going to write a review for Snow Like Ashes, so I want to quickly address here why I didn't finish it.  It wasn't that I hated it - in fact I thought the idea of it and the setting was cool, and if I'd continued, it probably would have been a 3-star book for me.  Something about the writing style just wasn't clicking with me, and I wasn't connecting with the main character (or any of them) as much as I'd hoped to.  I liked Prince Theron - he reminded me a lot of Prince Maxon from The Selection, Prince Dorian from Throne of Glass and Anden from Legend.  I ended up putting it down at about page 270 out of disinterest.  I just wasn't attached to the story and I doubted I was going to, so, out of laziness I suppose, I decided to stop.  This could be due to it being a bad time for me (I was busy pining over The Retribution of Mara Dyer, of course) and I was expecting it to be amazing because of everything I'd heard about it.

Moving on to the TBR...

1.  The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater

2.  The Bane Chronicles by Cassandra Clare, Sarah Rees Brennan and Maureen Johnson

3.  Attachments by Rainbow Rowell

4.  Dash and Lily's Book of Dares by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan

5.  The Young Elites by Marie Lu

6.  Hysteria by Megan Miranda

7.  My True Love Gave to Me by... Various Authors

8.  Heir of Fire by Sarah J. Maas

9.  Falling Kingdoms by Morgan Rhodes

10.  The Inventors by Alexander Gordon Smith and Jamie Webb

I'm currently reading The Raven Boys and The Bane Chronicles, so those are a couple that I will definitely be finishing this month.  I've got Attachments, Dash and Lily's Book of Dares, The Young Elites, Hysteria and My True Love Gave to Me on queue from the library, so it depends if they get to me in time whether I read them or not, but I'm hoping to so that I can read my First Adult book - Attachments - and a couple of Christmas books this month.  I don't have very high hopes for The Young Elites arriving this month since I am no further through the queue than I was at the beginning of November :(  The Inventors is a recommendation from my brother, so I have to pick that up eventually too.

Now onto the update portion - which you are welcome to skip considering it is mostly for my benefit.

I've been away from blogging for a few weeks, as explained by my last post, but I'm back now.  Luckily - since my computer, well... broke.  It wouldn't work whilst connected to the internet for almost 2 weeks which scared the HECK out of me and stopped me from keeping up with my favourite blogs which really sucked (I got back to the internet to find over 1000 waiting for me.  Uh, no thanks.  I'm just reading the posts which really interest me, rather than all of them).  Then mysteriously yesterday, it started working again.  I didn't do anything to it, and it just fixed itself.  Frustrating, but at least I can use it again!  I have a theory that it just decided to work as a present to me - it was my 18th birthday yesterday!  So, I am now officially an adult (hence, my reservation of Attachments).  I received The Bane Chronicles, which was exciting, as I've been waiting for ages to get that book but due to schoolies (my 4 day trip away with some friends) I'm kind of broke and had no way to get it myself.  Bringing me to my next point: naturally, after weeks of waiting, The Retribution of Mara Dyer arrived at my house mere hours after I had left for this trip.  I swear this will be my last time complaining about this :P

I think I have managed to squeeze everything I wanted to write about my life into that paragraph - I hope it makes at least a little sense.

Congratulations on getting this far into this overly long post!  I hope you had an awesome November and are enjoying December so far!  Happy Holidays!