Well here we are at the end of November. The end of 2019 is nigh and 2020 is nearly upon us!

I read 14 books this month. Here they are:

• Speaking Up by Gillian Triggs ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
• Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
• Black Marks on the White Page edited byWiti Ihimaera ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
• I’m Not Dying With Young Tonight by Gilly Segal and Kimberly Jones ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
• It Ends with Us by Colleen Hoover ⭐️⭐️⭐️
• Girl, Wash Your Face by Rachel Hollis ⭐️
• What the F: What Swearing Reveals about Our Language by Benjamin K Bergen ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
• Gulpilil by Derek Rielly ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
• North Korea Undercover by John Sweeney ⭐️⭐️⭐️
• The Past is Myself by Christabel Bielenberg ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
• Slay by Brittney Morris ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
• Uglies by Scott Westerfield ⭐️⭐️⭐️
• Pretties by Scott Westerfield ⭐️⭐️⭐️
• Umbrella Academy Vol 3 by Gerard Way ⭐️⭐️⭐️

I’ve already talked about how much I loved Slay. I also loved Gideon the Ninth. I know that there was a recent twitter-storm about Tamsyn Muir linking to her fan fiction work through her Tumblr which contained some dubious content. I am aware that fan fiction is a bit different to published fiction. Twitter annoys me with the way it gets carried away with things so I haven’t really investigated further. I’m also aware that people feel very strongly in a number of ways about this topic. Please feel free to engage in further research should you wish to do so.

Gillian Trigg’s Speaking Up was both amazing and heartbreaking as she talks the reader through her life and work, especially during her time as the Human Rights Commissioner here.

The Past is Myself was also excellent – an understated but very gruelling account by an English woman married to a German man living in Germany during WW2.

Gulpilil was the very interesting biography of David Gulpilil, the Aboriginal actor who has starred in movies like Mad Dog Morgan, Crocodile Dundee and Rabbit-Proof Fence. The book looks at his life and examines the difficulty he has had straddling both his own culture and the white culture.

I won’t be continuing either with the Umbrella Academy comics, or the Pretties series. The style and story telling in Umbrella Academy is a bit too uneven for my taste,and I’m honestly not sure why the Pretties series gets so much attention – also not really my thing.

What did you read in November? What were your favourites? Have you read anything on my list?

Cheers,