What I have read

I reached my target of 100 books in November and finished the year on 119.

December’s books:

• The Cat in the Hat Comes Back – Dr Seuss
• Christmas Shopaholic (Shopaholic #9) – Sophie Kinsella
• The Day the Crayons Came Home – Drew Daywalt
• Click, Clack, Moo: Cows that Type – Doreen Cronin
• How the Grinch Stole Christmas – Dr Seuss
• Undead and Unappreciated (Undead #3) – MaryJanice Davidson
• Spark Joy – Marie Kondo
• The Exile – Diana Gabaldon
• Five Fall Into Adventure – reviewed here and here
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Slayer Stats – Steve O’Brien
• Discovering Scotland’s Lost Railways – Julian Hollans
• Undead and Unreturnable (Undead #4) – MaryJanice Davidson
• Why is Nothing Ever Simple? (St Mary’s #10.5) – Jodi Taylor
• The Making of Outlander: Official Guide to Seasons 1 & 2 – Tara Bennett
• The Organised Mum Method – Gemma Bray

And I’ve ended the year with a few unfinished books:

• The Naughtiest Girl in the School – I’m doing a text comparison on this one
• Hocus Pocus and the All New Sequel – A.W. Jantha
• Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte

I’m finding both Hocus Pocus and Jane Eyre a slog, but for different reasons. The first part of Hocus Pocus is based on the film and was a decent writing of it, the second half, however, is a new story. It’s not great and worst of all it’s written in first person present tense. First person is fine, but present tense I hate with a passion. It just sounds so ‘me me me’ in a really shallow teenage way.

My problem with Jane Eyre is that I really can’t stand Rochester. I was enjoying it through her childhood and time at boarding school, but then Rochester showed up… and I find him rude and boring in equal measures. Even the mystery of the crazy woman in the attic hasn’t persuaded me to get past 52% read.

On the plus side I forced myself to finish Spark Joy (actually decent once I picked it up again) and The Exile (still dire) so they’re not hovering on my current read list any more.

What I have watched

• Hollyoaks
• Only Connect
• Murder She Wrote, season 7 and I’m now onto 8
• More of His Dark Materials
• A few Christmas films including The Christmas Chronicles
• I’ve also been rewatching the last series of Call the Midwife, to refresh my memory for the new series.

What I have done

• It has been very cold that that didn’t stop us going out to several parks.
• We went to the Transport Museum (again) and got an annual pass to save ourselves some money.
• It was my birthday halfway through the month and of course Christmas at the end so a lot of food was eaten and presents opened. There was also the decorating, shopping, wrapping and general organising for Christmas.
• I went to see Rock the Halls – a concert of Christmas songs – at my local theatre
• I got back into doing jigsaws and did one that I got for Christmas the year before (!), and then I did the one I got this year as well.

It doesn’t sound like a lot but it was a very busy month!