Happy Halloween! I hope everyone has been loving spooky season and enjoys the day today however you choose. My wife and I will be giving out buckets and buckets of candy (our neighborhood is quite popular and takes Halloween very seriously), and I’m looking forward to it. This month has been pretty quiet. I’ve enjoyed spending more time outside during the little bit of cool weather we have had. It has also been a pretty great reading month. All of the books I’ve read have been 3-star reads or above, with most of them being 4 or 5 star reads. I also read manga for the first time, and it is a medium I definitely plan to explore more moving forward.
For those that were following along here and on Twitter, I failed my book buying ban pretty early on. Initially, I wanted to avoid buying books for the entire month, but I only lasted 8 days. I did, however, manage to buy far fewer books this month and didn’t buy any for the last two weeks of the month. I still consider that to be a pretty big accomplishment, and I’m thankful for it considering how many books I’ll be buying in November…
Progress On My 2021 Reading Goal
After meeting my annual goal last month, I’ve been less focused on acquiring certain numbers. However, I still added quite a few books to my annual total this month, which brought me up to 117 for the year, so far.
October 2021 Reviews
In total, I completed 4 full-length book reviews, 6 mini book reviews, 2 comic book reviews, 4 manga reviews, and 1 audio drama series review. I reviewed the following books:
- Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo | See the review!
- Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao | See the review!
- Shang-Chi (2020) by Gene Yang | See the review!
- The Crystal Cave by Mary Stewart | See the review!
- Child of Light by Terry Brooks | See the review!
- A Promise of Return by Rebecca Crunden | See the review!
- More Happy Than Not by Adam Silvera | See the review!
- Star Wars: Visions: Ronin by Emma Mieko Candon | See the review!
- Sinister War by Nick Spencer | See the review!
- The Magi Menagerie by Kale Lawrence | See the review!
- The Bone Shard Daughter by Andrea Stewart | See the review!
- Constance by Matthew FitzSimmons | See the review!
- The Way of the House Husband Vol. 1 by Kousuke Oono | See the review!
- The Way of the House Husband Vol. 2 by Kousuke Oono | See the review!
- The Way of the House Husband Vol. 3 by Kousuke Oono | See the review!
- The Way of the House Husband Vol. 4 by Kousuke Oono | See the review!
- Doctor Who: The Ninth Doctor Adventure: Ravagers by Nicholas Briggs | See the review!
Blog Posts
I continued participating in First Lines Fridays throughout the month. However, I did my last Stacking the Shelves and transitioned to a weekly wrap-up post instead since I was trying to acquire less books. I like the new format better and will be sticking with it for the foreseeable future.
I also participated in one Top 5 Tuesday, wrote a post detailing my reaction to the new Superman being bi, and wrote a post about my 9 most anticipated releases of November 2021.
Final Thoughts
Looking back on my TBR for October, I met almost all of my goals. I finished reading all but one of the books on my TBR, and I finished reading all the comics I set out to read. I got a lot of new ARCs, but I also read several this month. My NetGalley feedback ratio is beginning to take somewhat of dive. So, I’m going to have to be a little pickier about what I request for the near future. I also wish I could have done more Halloween themed posts, but I had such a packed schedule of reading/content that it didn’t really happen. I’ll definitely be planning better for next year. Overall, though, it’s been a great month. I enjoyed having a bit more flexibility in my reading choices since I wasn’t taking part in a readathon this month. I hope you all had a great month and wish you the best for November! Happy Halloween!
wait- there’s doctor who books?????? omg
There are!!! The Ravagers story isn’t a book, though. It’s an audio drama produced by Big Finish. They do a bunch of them, and most of the ones I’ve listened to have been great.
omg definitely going to have to look into it!! thank you.
Sounds like you read a lot of great books this month! Hope you had a great Halloween and handed out lots of candy.
Thank you! We gave out all 200 bags in less than two hours. We ran out long before people stopped coming by, unfortunately. I’ll have to buy more next year. I hope you had a great Halloween, as well!
I definitely accepted way too many ARCs this year and I’m trying to be better about next year (I already have titles that don’t come out until April 2022!). I don’t have many for December so I’m hoping to catch up on all the Netgalley ones at least with the goal of having all the 2021 galleys read by the end of the year. It looks like you have a good reading month. Check out what I read at Girl Who Reads.
Yeah. I’ve been requesting a lot of stuff for next year too, but I still have quite a few to get through before the year ends. So, the next couple months will be really busy!
[…] Monthly Wrap-Up – October 2021 – This post highlights all of my posts, reads, and other progress from the month of October. […]
You definitely had a great reading month! I’ve heard Iron Widow is one not to miss. I’ve tried not to buy as many books too, and actually did well in October and hope that since my birthday and Christmas are coming soon that I can wait and keep my fingers crossed my family gifts me books from my wish list.
I hope you get everything on your wish list!