October Wrap-Up and November Goals

October reads

October Wrap-Up

• Finished: 7
• Started but not finished: 2
• Total pages read: 2,191
• Average rating: 3.71

Another month with a lot of books. The only contemporary fiction, though, was The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins (4/5 stars), which (despite the high rating) was a bit of a disappointment. I love The Hunger Games, but the prequel did not achieve the same level of excitement as the original trilogy. Click the link to read a longer review of book and what I did and didn’t like about it.

 

Classics

I finished two classic novels in October. The Idiot (*Amazon affiliate link) was the last of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s major works that I hadn’t read. The main character Prince Myshkin’s goodness and simplicity lead other people to mistakenly assume that he lacks intelligence and insight. The novel examines the consequences of placing a character others deem as an “idiot” at the center of conflicts and passions of worldly society.

I liked the more humorous beginning, but lost interest in the story as it progressed. That’s something I find happens to me a lot when reading Dostoyevsky. I liked the beginning of Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov as well, but as the books went on, I lost interest amidst all those philosophical conversations. My favorite Dostoyevsky words are the shorter ones I’ve read, The Double and Uncle’s Dream (not Notes from Underground, though, that’s one of the worst books I ever forced myself to finish). Let’s just say Dostoyevsky is not my favorite author, and I only read The Idiot to see what it was about.

The second classic was The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (*Amazon affiliate link). I had wanted to participate in Victober, a month-long challenge for reading Victorian literature. Unfortunately, I have too many books in my physical TBR, but at least one of the books in my TBR was written in the Victorian era. The twelve short stories in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes were originally published in The Strand Magazine from July 1891 to June 1892. The only Sherlock Holmes story I had read before was The Hound of the Baskervilles (*Amazon affiliate link). The twelve stories in this collection were nice short reads, but I must admit I’m not a huge fan of Sherlock Holmes. He’s too smug and arrogant for my taste to be a compelling character, and the plots wrap up rather fast when Sherlock has already solved the mystery before the story has barely started. Maybe the longer Sherlock Holmes novels would be more to my taste, so I do want to try at least The Study in Scarlet at some point.

 

Non-Fiction Reads

I finished four non-fiction books. The first was Britney Spears’s memoir The Woman in Me (*Amazon affiliate link). I was interested in reading Britney’s story of her life and conservatorship in her own words. Her life has truly been horrific, and I’m glad she is now free from her parents. At the same time, I must admit I was disappointed with this book. It doesn’t reach the level of self-reflection I would expect from a memoir. The book barely scratches the surface as Britney doesn't talk much about her experiences in the music industry. There was a lot of repetition and unnecessary details. I think the ghostwriters (apparently there were three) should have edited the book more and prompted Britney to delve deeper into details about her life. As it is, this was a missed opportunity.

I also reread Eusebius’ The Church History. The English translation was the final unread ancient Greek book on my shelves. The two other non-fiction books were in Finnish, Kustannustoimittajan kirja (a book editor’s handbook) and Suomalainen historia by Perttu Immonen (Finnish history from the 19th to the early 21st centuries).

 

November Hopefuls

November hopefuls

As I’m focusing on writing in November, my goal is to finish two books and start another two that I will finish in early December. I’ve already started The Court Dancer by Kuyng-sook Shin. It’s a historical fiction about a former Korean court dancer Yi Jin and her life in the belle epoque Paris. I’ll also start exploring Leigh Bardugo’s Grishaverse. I’ve heard a lot of praise for the books, and I’m excited to read Shadow and Bone and Siege and Storm. The latter I’ll finish in December, and I should have time to read the final book of the trilogy, Ruin and Rising, before Christmas. The non-fiction read of the month will be my old high school Finnish book Äidinkieli ja kirjallisuus. I don’t think I ever read it from cover to cover during my school years, so I think it’s finally time to do that.

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