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Keira's Bookmark

October Wrap Up

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Keira @Keira’s Bookmark

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October Wrap Up

October is over and autumn is in full swing! I’m really liking the cold weather recently, actually. I didn’t read a huge amount this month but it was definitely an improvement from last month. I also decided to share some of the music I’ve been liking this past month, so let’s take a look!

  1. TBR Check In
  2. Overview from the Storygraph
  3. Books Read
  4. Books Progressed or DNF’d
  5. Books Acquired
  6. Music of the Month
  7. On the Blog
  8. Around the Blogosphere
  9. Question Time

Disclaimer: Clicking on any of the book covers will take you to their Storygraph page, whilst clicking on the titles will take you to their Bookshop.org UK page (if the book is available there).

The Bookshop Uk links are affiliate links, so I do earn a little bit of comission if you buy through them – this doesn’t affect the price you pay. Mostly, I just want to encourage everyone to stay away from Amazon and use either your library, independent bookshop (or at the very least a dedicated bookshop like Waterstones or Barnes and Noble in the US). Let’s keep our bookshops and libraries in business!

TBR Check In

Italics = I read some of this book this month but didn’t finish it.

  • Bird Talk and Other Stories by Xu Xu
  • The August Sleepwalker by Bei Dao
  • A Very Short Introduction to Chinese Literature by Sabina Knight
  • Save the Cat! Writes A Novel by Jessica Brody
  • The Second Death of Locke by V L Bovalino
  • An Apology for Idlers by Robert Louis Stevenson
  • *2 hours reading of 魔幻時刻 [Magical Moments] by Jedit
  • *4 hours reading worth of The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
  • *2 stories from 이상한 나라의 스물셋 [The Strange World of 23]

Overview from the Storygraph

I read a lot of little bits of books that I’m slowly chipping away at this month.

Books Read

I finished three “book books” this month (i.e. something bound and sold as a cohesive book) and had a pretty good time with them – these are some pretty high 4 stars. And then I also read three short stories and a novella (The Chess Master) for my Chinese lit class.

The Second Death of Locke by V L Bovalino
Bird Talk and Other Stories by Xu Xu
Wintering by Katherine May
Miss Sophie's Diary by Ding Ling
Sealed Off by Eileen Chang
Love Must Not Be Forgotten by Zhang Jie
The Chess Master by Ah Cheng
  • The Second Death of Locke by V. L. Bovalino ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | Review
  • Bird Talk and Other Stories by Xu Xu ⭐⭐⭐⭐
  • Wintering by Katherine May ⭐⭐⭐⭐ (Audiobook)
  • Miss Sophie’s Diary by Ding Ling ⭐⭐⭐ (Reread)
  • Sealed Off by Eileen Chang [Zhang Ailing] ⭐⭐⭐ (Reread)
  • Love Must Not Be Forgotten by Zhang Jie ⭐⭐⭐
  • The King of Chess by Ah Cheng ⭐⭐⭐.5

Books Progressed or DNF’d

I also made a little bit of progress in some other books. I read about 30% of Seishi Yokomizo’s The Honjin Murders, one (really interesting) essay from An Apology for Idlers by Robert Louis Stevenson, and a good ten or so poems from 魔幻時刻 [Magical Moments] by Jedit.

I also read like three pages of 이상한 나라의 스물셋 [The Strange World of 23] as well as 10 pages here and there in various history books that I’m sort of dipping in and out of for my master’s.

The Honjin Murders by Seishi Yokomizo
An Apology for Idlers by Robert Louis Stevenson
魔幻時刻 - Jedit
이상한 나라의 스물샛

Books Acquired

I also bought three books this month, but two were for uni – I bought Bird Talk and Other Stories by Xu Xu to prepare for one of my midterm assignments where we had to write in the style of a Chinese author, and Under Confucian Eyes is a collection of primary sources that I think will be useful for my dissertation. Apart from that, I bought a [one] novel – Show Me Where it Hurts by Claire Gleeson, but I haven’t read it yet.

Bird Talk by Xu Xu
Under Confucian Eyes (edited by Susan Mann and Yu-Yin Cheng
Show Me Where it Hurts by Claire Gleeson

Music of the Month

I thought it might also be fun to share my favourite songs of the month (new or new-to-me or just recently back at the top of my playlist)!

On the Blog

I posted semi-regularly this month hehe. I particularly like my summary of releases for the final quarter of the year and my list of authors I would read (almost) anything by!

Around the Blogosphere

Some of my favourite blog posts from the month! I definitely plan on doing some more blog hopping next month so I have more posts to add here. If you have any posts you’re particularly proud of, let me know and I’ll check them out.

  • Liz @Adventures in reading, running and working for home’s State of the TBR – I’m stealing her idea of noting down when paperback releases are for hardcovers I’ve bought and trying to read them by then. Otherwise it’s such a waste of money!
  • Tasya @ The Literary Huntress’ review of Black Water Sister by Zen Cho

Question Time

What was your favourite book of the month?

If you did a wrap up post of your feel free to link it in the comments and I’ll check it out!

Keira x

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8 responses to “October Wrap Up”

  1. lesscher avatar
    lesscher

    I like your idea of trying to read a hardcover book before the release of the paperback! I will attempt to do the same with my stacks.

    My favorite book in October was The Correspondent by Virginia Evans. The Names by Florence Knapp was a close second.

    I have a monthly summary post here, if you’re interested. It includes travel, books, tv/movies, etc.

    Like

    Reply
    1. Keira @Keira’s Bookmark avatar
      Keira @Keira’s Bookmark

      I think it make a lot of sense, especially with how expensive hardbacks can be these days. I’ll definitely check out your monthly summary post as well!

      Like

      Reply
  2. Emma avatar
    Emma

    Wintering is a book that keeps going on my tbr and I never get to it!
    I like your section on additions, I might incorporate that into my future wrap ups!

    My favourite read from October was The Salt Oracle by Lorraine Wilson. Here is my October summary if you’re interested!

    Like

    Reply
    1. Keira @Keira’s Bookmark avatar
      Keira @Keira’s Bookmark

      It’s not the kind of book I would usually gravitate to and I actually didn’t own it, but I was looking for an audiobook to listen to one night when I couldn’t sleep and it was available through my library’s Libby so I picked it up and ended up actually really enjoying it, especially as something to listen to whilst walking through the park to class and work. It’s perfect for this time of year, although I’m not sure I would have liked it as much as a physical book.

      I’m glad you enjoyed that bit! I used to book blog from about 2015-2021ish and at the time book hauls were a big thing and I enjoyed seeing what people were buying/acquiring, but a) I don’t buy a huge amount of books every month anymore and b) I don’t particularly like to encourage materialism etc. quite so much, so I decided to sort of include that ‘haul’ in my general wrap up as a sort of nod to the types of posts I used to post every month. Not that I never post book hauls on this new blog, but more sparingly for sure!

      I’ll be sure to go and check out your wrap up as well.

      Like

      Reply
      1. Emma avatar
        Emma

        Interesting. I’ll see if my library has it as an audio. I’m not usually an audio person but sometimes they do work better!

        Yes I’m exactly the same, I don’t like to encourage consumption but I also want to share what I’m excited for at the same time. I think having it as a small section in a wrap up is a good compromise!

        Liked by 1 person

        Reply
        1. Keira @Keira’s Bookmark avatar
          Keira @Keira’s Bookmark

          I’m also not usually an audio person but I like reading on my commute and my current commute is walking rather than public transport so I can’t read a physical book/ebook 😓 I’ve found that certain genres and importantly SHORT books work better as audiobooks than other books for me but this one worked particularly well!

          Like

          Reply
  3. Liz Dexter avatar
    Liz Dexter

    Thanks for the shout-out and hope that helps get those hardbacks read! I do share what I acquire each month (ref the discussion in the comments) but I do it to encourage interest in the authors and to say thank you to friends and publishers who send them to me. I hope it doesn’t encourage materialism as there’s a lot of gifting and second-hand-ness going on!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
    1. Keira @Keira’s Bookmark avatar
      Keira @Keira’s Bookmark

      Of course, thanks for the great post 🙂

      I definitely don’t think that sharing books you acquire each month is definitely encouraging materialism, it definitely depends how you do it! For me, it’s also partially about not encouraging myself to buy/acquire books for the sake of having something to post. I’ve been working really hard on reducing the number of books I buy hehe.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

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I’m Keira

Welcome to Keira’s Bookmark, my more personal blog where I talk about my book reading and language learning.

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Weekly language study update 28.7-3.8 Some language and reading plans for August! I decided to use a bingo board to make it a bit more fun and take the pressure off a bit for not completing some goals, as I'm struggling to work whilst staying at my mum's over the summer. I'll mostly be focusing on Japanese with some German and a lot of reading in Korean and Chinese. What are your study plans for August? July is over and it’s time to take a look at the studying I did this month! I didn’t really do any serious language studying in the first half of the month, with the exception of some Korean teacher training, so this is mostly from the final two weeks. I normally prefer slightly longer study sessions but sometimes a train trip is the perfect time to do a little bit of studying and a little bit of reading. Translation as a study method - the dos and don’ts Did some hiragana practice 🇯🇵 over breakfast today and then again later by the lakeside! 🏊‍♀️🏊‍♀️🏊‍♀️ How to adapt photo description tasks for self study? I’ve been making some study plans for the summer (July/August) recently and thought I’d share. They’re a little bit ambitious, but if I can get a decent chunk done I’ll be very happy. My name is Keira, I'm 23 years old from the UK and I love learning languages. I currently work as a Korean-English translator and am preparing for my master's degree in East Asian studies (focus will be premodern history/literature/philosophy). I did my undergraduate degree in Korean and have achieved TOPIK level 6 twice 🇰🇷🇰🇷. I also studied abroad for two semesters at HUFS in Seoul.

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