This month I finished 4 novels and 1 novella. And I started 3 books which I’m hoping to finish next month!

Happy Halloween folks!

Anybody going out this Halloween?
Have a great time and stay safe!

My Halloween plans are watching Gogglebox, Chatty Man and The Graham Norton Show.

Hardcore.

Anyway, here are the books and novella I completed in the month of October!
So excited for November! I turn 18 in 13 days!!!

2 of the things I read this month aren’t pictured!
Bel Ami – Guy De Maupassant.
Address Unknown – Kressman Taylor.

The first book I finished this month was Bel-Ami by Guy De Maupassant! A novel originally published in French in the late 19th century about a man called Georges Duroy  who, when he comes back from the Army, bumps into an old friend who happens to be a successful journalist and offers Duroy a job at his newspaper. We then follow Duroy as he manipulates his way to the top.

I liked this book. I thought it was good. I did a (somewhat) full review which you can check out here!

I gave this 3/5 stars.

I’d recommend if you’re into French literature or general journalism. There’s also a film of this novel with Robert Pattinson and Jessica Chastain that I want to get my hands on and see how they adapted it! 🙂

The second book I finished this month was This Book is Gay by James Dawson. This is a non-fiction self help guide for the LGBTQIA+ community. This book deals with topics from coming out to sex education and keeping yourself safe before/during/after sex to the origins of the LGBTQIA+ sexualities.

I LOVED this book. This book is so educational and insightful and it’s also bloody hilarious!

I did a review of this book heeeeeeeeere 🙂
I’d highly, highly recommend it! 🙂

I, then, read a novella called Address Unknown by Kressman Taylor. This novella is told in the form of letters. It is set on the backdrop of Hitler’s rise to power. We follow two friends and business partners as they communicate overseas.

We read this in one of my creative writing lessons at college and I really, really loved it. The writing style is so clever and precise and it was fantastic.

I believe this is studied in schools/colleges alot so there’s a chance it may sound familiar!

I also did a review of this here! 

The next two books I didn’t review fully but I will give you a few sprinklings of my thoughts!

Next, I read Dash and Lily’s Book of Dares by Rachel Cohn + David Levithan .

I didn’t really enjoy this. It was a bit too sickly sweet for me.
Maybe this is aimed at young adults 16 and under! Idk it wasn’t for me.
Dash and Lily were annoying characters at times.
So this girl called Lily’s parents go on their overdue honeymoon over Christmas leaving Lily and her brother in New York City, where they live.
Lily is bored so her brother tells her to make a book of dares to put in The Strand bookstore. Dash is the guy who picks it up and they go on an adventure together only using the book as communication.

It was a bit unrealistic in my opinion. Like, I get what the writers were trying to do but it was predictable at times and just boring. Just all of a sudden Lily has these relatives that work all over New York City. Lol cool.

I did like the setting though. I went to NYC and The Strand back in May and adored it so I could see why they chose to place the story in that setting! 🙂

Then I finally finished Great Expectation – Charles Dickens!
I started that bad boy back in June hahaha.
If you don’t know the plot line, there’s this boy called Pip. He lives in the middle of nowhere and when he gets older comes into a sum of money and moves to London to become a gentleman. Of course it’s not as straight forward as that!
I enjoyed it! I prefer the bigger picture to the actual story. I’ve seen a couple of adaptations of Great Expectations. The BBC miniseries with Douglas Booth as Pip is my favourite one. We studied a bit of this for GCSE a couple years ago. It’s a very slow moving story, which is why it took me a long time to read. But I’ve heard that’s the norm with Dickens. Hopefully the more I read of his work, the more I can get used to his style of writing.

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