November 2025 Breakdown

It’s truly wild to me how we’re in the last stretch of the year and this is pretty much the last wrap up I’ll be writing for this year (December will be up in early January next year). November brought a chill in the air and snow towards the end, but for a good part of the month I didn’t have to worry about turning on the heater to my car every morning. I won’t complain if this was a year round thing. 😂

The leaves have been falling like confetti, but in the meantime let’s chat about November, shall we?

November Musings

• [2 Nov] New Blogging Chapters: Bookwyrming Thoughts is Now Hannah, Fully
• [7 Nov] September + October 2025 Breakdown: What I’ve Been Up to During the Rebrand Hiatus
• [18 Nov] Trying a Five Year Diary
• [28 Nov] The Things Gods Break by Abigail Owen ★★★★★

Book Hauls and Reading

Three books were added to my collection this month, and one eARC.

The first book was The Things Gods Break by Abigail Owen, which I was hesitant to get and waited until I read the sequel on Kindle Unlimited before I brought my own copy (in case I don’t like it, then I can just sell off my copy of the first). But thankfully I enjoyed it a lot! It’s one of my favorites this year.

The second book was the second volume of Under the Oak Tree by Suji Kim, which I admittedly have not read the first volume of. However, I did read the webtoon on Manta and it’s one of my favorites, so I’m not worried about disliking the books and I’m planning on reading the first volume soon!*

*Watch me not read until six months later. Or six years.

And lastly, the third book I acquired was the collector’s edition for Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins. Here’s hoping the rest of the series will get the same edition one day in the near future — I’m not a huge fan of having paperbacks since they tend to live a shorter life in my hands. 🥹

I also got one eARC: The Faraway Inn by Sarah Beth Durst, which I got from Booktrovert during one of their giveaways. I’m usually missing out on those, so it’s nice to catch one that seems interesting!

As for reading, I started picking up novels again, so I guess you can safely say my reading mood is back for now. I even finished the two books that were in Currently Reading purgatory since 2022 (The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea and Daughter of the Moon Goddess). I’m fully taking advantage of it while I can because I have no clue how long it’ll last — maybe by December I’ll be back to not reading anything.

(Although as of this post being written around the end of November, I’ve stopped reading in favor of reading webtoons. Currently catching up on Under the Oak Tree!)

What I’ve Been Reading in November

• A Forgery of Fate by Elizabeth Lim (eARC)
• Women, Seated by Zhang Yueran
• Snow White with the Red Hair Vol. 16-26 by Sorata Akiduki – I found out this is still ongoing… I’ll catch up on other manga in the meantime.
• The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea by Axie Oh
• The Things Gods Break by Abigail Owen
• Daughter of the Moon Goddess by Sue Lynn Tan (DNF) – 2022 me really liked the prose a lot, so it’s possible I wouldn’t have DNFed this one back then. 2025 me still liked the prose, but didn’t like the execution.
• Final Face-Off by Molly Knox Ostertag

Music

• Rainbow by Highlight
• Weather by Chrissy Costanza
• Elizabeth Taylor by Taylor Swift
• The Life of a Showgirl by Taylor Swift ft. Sabrina Carpenter
• number one rockstar by Dayoung
• Waterfalls by U-Know and Kai
• Jaded by blindlove
• Superpower (Peak) by xikers
• Tunnel Vision by ITZY
• Do It by Stray Kids

Movies

I’ve been trying super hard to bring down my number of checked out items at the library to under 20 in November, but it’s a little hard when I see a movie I like and figure I could go watch it later at night (and then don’t get around to it until 2-3 weeks later, whoops). There’s a lot of Marvel movies since I finally caught myself mostly up in the MCU.

• Avengers: Infinity War – I forgot this in October’s wrap up, oops.
• Flow – this was absolutely amazing. 11/10 no notes.
• Ant-Man and the Wasp
• Avengers: Endgame – I spoiled myself because I watched Spider-Man: Far from Home first (back before I realized maybe I should put a list together of the movies chronologically released…), so I know exactly what happens
• Spider-Man: No Way Home
• Marvel: Love and Thunder
• Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania

The Breakdown

A breakdown of what the universe had in store for the month (or longer).

This little blog of mine turned 13 (a teen!) on November 2 — with another trip around the sun completed for the blog, the rebrand went officially live (though I did migrate it to the current domain a few weeks earlier just to work out any final issues). I’ve noticed since the rebrand I’ve been having more desire to blog, even if it might not be a review or about books anymore. At the very least I have a draft always going somewhere on Google Docs. I can’t tell if it’s just that feeling of an essentially shiny new blog that’ll die down or if the name has been an issue. Only time will tell, I suppose.

I’ve started working on setting up my 2026 daily planner that I got from Sterling Ink, which I intend on using as a journal since I’m expecting to finish up the current notebook that I have. Some of my monthly tabs and stickers that I wanted to use for this one came in during the month, so I finally got to put the journal into its cover. Now I can go drop it willy-nilly without worrying too much. 🤪

During that time I’ve been brainstorming on what I want to do with the monthly, quarterly and yearly pages that come with the planner since I don’t like my planners and journals in the same place, but I also wanted to make full use of those pages. So far, I think I’ll do a daily washi swatch for each day on the monthly pages; it’ll be randomly drawn, and I think that’ll give me the opportunity to use my washi collection throughout the year. I’ve yet to decide on the yearly and quarterly ones, though, but I have until near the end of December to figure that out.

I also created a spreadsheet for my stationery collection since I want to do an inventory of those and organize my stuff. Currently, I have things scattered about in various places in my room or throughout plastic sticker envelopes and folders, and I want to consolidate them together and better organize them so I can figure out what things I already have so I don’t end up buying things I don’t need. Also, my washi tape collection has grown a little too much for my comfort (although I guess ~150 rolls isn’t nearly as bad as some of the collections out there*) this year, so I want to inventory those to keep track of them.

*I know it comes across as shaming and shunning, but I’m not shunning anyone for having a large collection. You do you as long as you have the financial means to do so. I’m just not personally comfortable with having so much washi myself.

It also makes it easier to do my washi of the day for my monthly pages in my journal next year since the numbers will already be there, and it makes it easy to pull out for my friends when I want to give out washi samples from my collection or if they ask for something from my collection. I could just dig into my collection with my eyes closed, but I figure it would be better to just have a spreadsheet and use the row numbers through a random number generator. My washi tape journal can supplement in figuring out what the tape looks like.

Additionally, I’m thinking of taking on a stationery no-buy in 2026* and creating a Washi Tape Usage Challenge just for fun (and for myself), and having the spreadsheet also helps with figuring out what themes I can do for myself. I might do a post just for the hell of it (and so I can refer to easily later in the year). I’m working on January layouts currently, so I’ve come up with a theme already.

*It’s going to be so difficult, send help.

No Buy

November’s No Buy went pretty well until the end with Black Friday sales.

One of my favorite stationery shops is closing in 2026 so they had a huge sale, and I stocked up on some things (plus a cute little wonton plushie I was planning on being sometime next year that I’ve been eyeing for the past few months) that I very frequently use (including an extra of this cute starry night themed art table that I got earlier this year and somehow have already used up nearly half? It’s clearly a favorite.). I also grabbed one of their mystery boxes to open at a later intended time next year.

There were also some things at other shops that I needed to get as well since I’m running low on those, so I got enough to last for a good part of next year (but will probably run out sooner) along with the remaining of my 2026 setup, and then I got some stickers from the STICKII sale — some for myself, some for friends. I also got a couple of games on Steam: For the King II (along with the DLCs) and RWBY: Arrowfell that I likely won’t get a chance to play until next year since I have other priorities to worry about in December and the early part of next year.

Let’s talk!

Stay warm, friends! Tell me what you’ve been up to in November!