Monthly Wrap-Up — November 2025

Books Read – November 2025

Books

1. The Curse of Ill-Gotten Gains (Stephanie Laurens) (reviewed this month)
2. The Queen Who Came In from the Cold (S.J. Bennett) – ARC
3. Apt to Be Suspicious (Celia Lake)
4. Thrones, Dominations (Dorothy L. Sayers and Jill Paton Walsh)*
5. Diamond Fire (Ilona Andrews)

Audiobooks

• Burn For Me (Ilona Andrews) – library (Hoopla)
• White Hot (Ilona Andrews) – library (Hoopla)
• Wildfire (Ilona Andrews) – library (Hoopla)
• Inheritance (Nora Roberts)* (book reviewed on 4/04/2024)
• The Mirror (Nora Roberts)*
• The Seven Rings (Nora Roberts)

Summary: I set a new goal at the beginning of November: to push through the discomfort and read more new-to-me books. I did pretty well with that, on the whole. However, my reading is way down, even though my listening time is up. That’s largely because I’ve been doing other things, including working on downsizing.

I completed a total of 11 books in November, including 8 first-time reads (1 ARC) and 3 rereads, one of which barely counts as a reread since I had forgotten nearly everything about it. As far as reviews, I reviewed one of the books I finished this month, and one book I read earlier in the fall (The Keeper of Magical Things.) Of the 3 books I reread in November, only one had been previously reviewed on the blog.

Challenges (year to date)

Here’s the breakdown of my reading challenges this year so far:

• Goodreads Challenge: 164/140. I finished the challenge! I’m debating whether to increase my yearly goal. I kept it low because I wanted to write more, but so far I haven’t been writing.
• Audiobook challenge: Listened to 29/12; reviewed 6/12
• COYER Out to Lunch challenge: Read 108/25; reviewed 22/25. (If I can get 3 more reviews done, I’ll make my goal for the year.)
• Ilona Andrews series read-along: Read 7; reviewed 3 so far. (I skipped three of the Edge books. I read all the Innkeeper Chronicles books, but need to write several reviews yet.)
• Library Love Challenge: Read 26/12; reviewed 7/12
• NetGalley & Edelweiss Challenge: Read 20/25; reviewed 9/25 (Reviews include 2 books read prior to 2025; I still have a lot of ARCs from this year to review.)
• Robin’s Recs: Read 3/6; reviewed 1/6

Click here to see a detailed (but not entirely up-to-date) list of my challenge reading.

Other Goals and Resolutions

Writing: Sigh. Nope.

Prioritizing reading and writing time over screen time: Not going well, although listening to audiobooks is helping with the reading.

Review more of the books I read: Um….

Unpack and reorganize my book collection: I’m slowly moving on this; see below.

Catalog my books: This is moving along, if not as fast as I’d like. Physical books catalogued so far this year: 289, which means I catalogued 79 books this month! I continue to prune my collection as I go. I have taken 4 boxes of books to the used bookstore; whatever they didn’t take went straight to the library for the Friends of the Library bookshop/sale. (Granted, two of those boxes were Robin’s unwanted books, so they don’t really count. But the rest were mine.) And I have 3 or 4 more boxes ready to go.

Click here for the full list of my 2025 goals and resolutions, excluding challenges.

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