…when I’m wondering why I have so much Christmas decoration that I cannot put up because of the cats.
Have you ever tried having a lovely looking book tree with tinsel and fairy lights with two nosy cats? I have, last year. Ended in disaster for the tinsel and fairy lights, luckily the books escaped without much harm. This year, I had the idea of creating a Jolabokaflod book tree. If you are not familiar with the term Jolabokaflod, it’s Icelandic for Christmas book flood. The Icelandic tradition is to give and receive lots of books on Christmas Eve (that’s the brief version). So, my Plan -with a capital P- is to wrap all of the books that I have for the kids, and for myself, and put up a book tree. I’ll forego the tinsel and lights this time; better safe than sorry. What is keeping me from doing this? The amount of books I’d have to wrap. It’s somewhere around 50 or 60, I think. (Yes, I went all out.) Also, the time that goes into wrapping all those books, I would rather be reading!
I’d best be procrastinating by telling you about whether I have planned any reading for December? But first, did I get any reading done in November?


November seemed like a slow month for me, maybe it’s because I did not read twenty or more books. I’ve read/listened to The Broken Earth trilogy by N.K. Jemisin. I’ve read, and partly re-read and buddyread with my son, The Scythe trilogy by Neal Shusterman; review to come. There were a few juicy romance novels in November, which I totally blame on the foggy weather. I skimmed along the Sceptre Buddyread, The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow. We, that is the Sceptres, also read R.F. Kuang’s The Poppy War together; a review is forthcoming. I’ve managed to read a few ARCs off my NetGalley shelf, gave feedback on two beta-reads, and I read a lot of chapters from different books to my daughter.

In December I plan to read that slim volume of Twelve Angry Men by Reginald Rose for my postal book club. There is the Sceptre Buddyread, which is lying right next to me, but since TheMarquessMagpie and TheLadyDuckOfDoom haven’t got their books yet, I am keeping mum about the title. [ETA: they both got their copies, we all know what the title is; you’ll find out in our title reveal post] There will, of course, be more books to read, but I don’t know what I will pick at this moment. There will be ARCs, that’s for sure, there might be some books that have collected actual and virtual dust over the past months/years. I’ll tell you in January.
For now I am off. There are books to be wrapped, tinsel to be stuffed into a cat prove box, biscuit dough to be prepared. I’ll put on an audiobook to entertain me, can’t waste precious reading time on listening to the ticking of the clock.