What We Read in November

I read more books than I thought I would in November considering that we moved and assembled a whole lot of furniture! But I usually chose reading over tv once Paul was in bed.

Similar to last month, I'm sharing my "hits" and "misses."

Mom's Reads:

Hits:
- Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid - I had a good feeling I'd love this book since I've enjoyed her other novels. But it received so much hype that I was worried my expectations might be too high. That was not at all the case! It's a unique format for a novel as it's an oral history of a fictional band, so you get to see the story unfold from multiple perspectives. It's like the literary version of VH1's "Behind the Music" which is a show I used to watch in high school and college. I'd recommend this if you are looking for a light, fast read!

- Fleishman is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner - This falls more in the 'literary fiction' category but is very readable. It's about a husband and wife who have recently separated. They share custody of their son but then the wife disappears and is completely unreachable. The book is told from the perspective of both the husband and wife so you get to see how the marriage dissolved.

Misses:
- Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty - I am definitely in the minority in disliking this book as so many other friends loved it and it was turned into an HBO show. It's about a group of parents with children in kindergarten. What bugged me about this book is that there is a ton of foreshadowing about something that happens at a school fundraiser. You know one of the parents is going to die but you don't know who or how. But she spends 80% of the book building to this school event and it felt kind of manipulative. She did this with another book - "Truly, Madly, Guilty" and it annoyed me. I think maybe her books just aren't for me even though she is an incredibly popular author.

- Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer - Phil has raved about this book and said I had to read it so I had high expectations. The premise of this non-fiction book is interesting - it opens with a murder in a small Mormon community. The murders say they were compelled by God to murder a woman and her child (this part was extremely hard to read). The book then explains the history of the Mormon faith and how this fundamentalist polygamist sect split from the church. The problem was that it read like a very, very dry history book. He just included so much detail that I got so bored and ended up skimming the last half of the book. This isn't the first time I gave 2 stars to a book that Phil raved about. We actually have very different tastes but I've loved 2 other books by Krakauer so thought I would enjoy this one. Wrongo!

Paul's Reads:

Paul got to see a lot of family this month between Thanksgiving and seeing my parents the first 2 weekends of November so he got lots of family reading time! He still loves touch and feel books and lift-the-flap books. He also really enjoyed the Ranger Rick Jr. magazine that he gets every other month from Grandma Joan. He became obsessed with "Spookie Pookie" in late November, which is a Halloween book! We have the Christmas Pookie so I pulled that out at the end of the month and now he's obsessed with that, too.

Reading "Where is Little Fish?" with Nana and Papa

Reading his tractor book with my mom

Reading "That's Not My Snowman" with cousin Anna

Did you read anything notable in November?