So I made a last minute decision to do NaNoWriMo this month and that has slowed down my reading a lot. The only thing I’ve finished since readathon was Gilded by Marissa Meyer, a book too long to start with. It was alright but it didn’t feel like there was enough story for the length of it and it’s a duology. I was reading it for the Popsugar duology prompt but I don’t feel like reading Cursed, so I’m going to bend the prompt a little and use a book from a different duology for the second part. My challenge, my rules!

It was also my birthday last week. We were meant to be going out for cheese and wine but then we got a thunderstorm warning and we couldn’t leave our scaredy-dog home alone, so we did wine and cheese at home and a jigsaw puzzle. Thunderstorm never happened anyway. Here she is inspecting the largest pumpkin I have ever seen:

Labrador dog sniffing pumpkin that's twice the size of her

We took her with us on a jaunt round the outskirts of Winchester the other week. There’s a nice circular walk that can be done from the park and ride, down the River Itchen and up St. Catherine’s Hill where you get a lovely view of the city. It’s all very autumnal right now.

Labrador dog's head in front of autumn leaves

Since my last update I did share my review of House of Hunger and round up the November releases on my radar.

New books acquired:

[gifted] The World We Make by N.K. Jemisin (Orbit)
[gifted] The Last Tale of the Flower Bride by Roshani Chokshi (Hodder)
Isaac and the Egg by Bobby Palmer (ebook)
Ordinary Monsters by J.M. Miro (ebook)
Tokyo Ever After by Emiko Jean (ebook)
Small Miracles by Anne Booth (ebook)

The World We Make by N.K. Jemison