Hey all, Dani here.
Wow…well it’s been a couple weeks. I’m so sorry I disappeared as soon as November started. I have no answer other than pandemic depression and anxiety are now really starting to kick in for me. I managed to keep my chin up for like six months, but after what would have been my wedding day and honeymoon passed, things started to weigh on me even harder. And now things are getting so much worse out there. At my workplace alone this week, over 50 people have tested positive for COVID-19, and all they do is a quick wipe down sanitization of the area, and then expect us to keep working. This is definitely not going to get better any time soon.
Then, on top of that, I definitely fell into a funk with my reading and writing…in that I wasn’t doing any reading or writing. Because I wasn’t accomplishing any reading and writing I started to get depressed that I wasn’t doing any reading and writing, which then cycled around to more not reading and writing which led to more depression about it.
So I basically wasn’t doing much of anything aside from sleeping and then working and then watching a couple hours of shows and/or movies with Damian every evening. Obviously I also didn’t post my weekly wrap-up the past couple weeks. Sorry. I promise that there wasn’t a whole lot to report, but I’ll talk about everything here in a minute.
My funk has broken a little bit, which is good, but I honestly can’t promise that it won’t surge up again. I can just promise that I’m going to try to keep being present here, and that’s about all I can hope for.
Okay, let’s talk about everything that’s gone on so far this month.
Video Games: Wow, I really wish I had something to report for this. Umm…I guess I did buy a copy of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla–pre-ordered it actually–but I haven’t picked it up yet.
Watches: Okay, so Damian and I just finished watching season four of “Supernatural” and we started season five. We also watched all of “One Punch Man” season one, and we’ve kept up with our weekly episodes of “Critical Role.” I also ended up spending a lazy couple of weekends binge watching stuff on Netflix, so I watched “The Holidate” and “The Queen’s Gambit”–which is amazing and I definitely recommend it, and then I watched “Operation Christmas Drop,” “Midnight at the Magnolia,” and started season one of “Umbrella Academy,” as well as rewatching some of season one of “The Witcher.”
Now, let’s talk about reading. From the beginning of November until roughly November 16th, I read 20 pages here and there, but my focus absolutely sucked, so I ended up pretty much not reading. Then on the 16th I decided I wanted to read, and I wanted something that would be a bit lighter and breezy so I could just get through something and feel accomplished. That ended up being Bringing Down the Duke by Evie Dunmore, and then I picked up the novella The Factory Witches of Lowell by C.S. Malerich. Then I picked up and half-read, half listened to Ready Player One by Ernest Cline in anticipation for the release of the sequel next week. So, over all not a massive amount of reading, but after over two weeks of nothing, even completing these reads feels so wonderful.
My currently reading section is pretty much the same as it was at the end of October, but since that’s been a few weeks, let’s go ahead and go over everything again.
Okay, so the only new book to this list is the last one: The Thousand Deaths of Ardor Benn by Tyler Whitesides. I’m about 150 pages into it, and I’m really liking it so far. The second book in the trilogy was just released, and the conclusion will be out in December. I can definitely say that it’s a book I would recommend for fans of Dungeons & Dragons. Other than that I’m still working my way through The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson, which is a) a big book and b) a re-read, so I tend to set it aside for other books somewhat frequently. I’m also trying to get myself back into finishing the rest of the books I’m reading: Hush by Dylan Farrow, The Archive of the Forgotten by A.J. Hackwith, and The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab. With any luck I’ll actually be able to finish these soon.
As for what I’m hoping to read next…well, I don’t know about making any plans. My currently reading list is pretty big at the moment, and I’m still tiptoeing around reading, scared that I’m going to slump again.
I do think I want to pick up the sequel to Bringing Down the Duke soon because that was an easy somewhat lighthearted read. And there are so many books that I picked up in the past couple months that I’d like to read, but I also have a book order on it’s way and I might want to pick up one of those too.
But we’ll see what happens.
Oh, and in other news looking forward, I’ll be posting my Most Anticipated Winter Releases post towards the end of the month (at least after Thanksgiving here in the US). Then I’ll have my November wrap-up post, my #Jolabokaflod Readathon announcement post, my December Calendar Girls post, and my Top Ten Reads of 2020 Oct-Dec post. I’ll have to look through my overall books read for the year to see if I’ll be posting a Most Disappointing Reads of 2020 post or not.
Also, I’m really hoping to use some of my time off for Thanksgiving break and then the slightly longer time off for Christmas and New Years to try writing up some of my review backlog to start posting somewhat regularly in December and the beginning of next year. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to return to a more frequent blogging schedule in 2021, but if what’s happening here as we wrap-up 2020 is any indication, 2021 is also going to be kind of crappy, at least for the beginning months.
Okay, I think that is all from me for today. Hopefully I’ll be back soon with more bookish content.
Free State of Geek 