It’s the last month of 2024 and I’m torn on how to feel about that. Year ends are always so mixed for me because I both hate change and also need variety in my life. So on the one hand, I am so excited for a chance to embrace and create some change in my life. New habits, new goals, and new direction. But, on the other hand, that scares me! I feel like at the year end I have to force myself to say goodbye to the things that I have tried that haven’t worked out.

Anyways, it’s all very complex and I have a lot of feelings. All that to say, take my December TBR with a grain of salt because honestly anything could happen I might get sad and need to reread some favorites, who knows!

Let’s talk about November though. A truly incredible month of reading, once again. I enjoyed every book that I picked up and I also felt like I got to learn a lot in November. I focused on Indigenous voices for the month to honor Native American Heritage Month. No Country for Eight-Spot Butterflies was absolutely incredible and such a perfect harmony between information and poetry. At times it felt like a journal. I loved every entry. Never Whistle at Night was of course spectacular and made even more enjoyable by the discussions I had with Khnix about it. I also snuck in a collection of poetry by Māori poet Tayi Tibble and it was so dang cool. Modern poetry is rad.

Beyond books, November had another really exciting piece of media I enjoyed: Arcane season two. I won’t reveal how many times I’ve watched it already (or how many times I’ve listened to the french pop song from that season on repeat) but it’s safe to say it absolutely impacted the books I wanted to read.

So, the December TBR. I’m not a big holiday person so honestly… I considered finding a holiday book to add but nothing was sticking out to me. Instead I have a sapphic ARC that I received from my local bookstore (because I am on the ARC team now how dang cool is that), two books about nature and the climate crisis because it’s on my mind (more on that below, check out my December fundraising efforts) and a whole lot of books with tough badass ladies. And yeah, okay, I’ll admit it, it’s because I want Vi but in a zillion different characters and I’m hoping maybe I’ll get a bit of that in some of these. It’s a lot of books, again, and I have travel coming up in December so we’ll see what happens. But I’m excited to get to as many of these as I can!

November Reads

November Numbers

📚 total: 5 books
📖 read: 1,502 pages
🎧 listened: 0.0 hours

December TBR

Jingle Jam 2024 fundraising for Cool Earth

This year Bella is participating in Jingle Jam, a two-week-long fundraising effort in the beginning of December hosted by Yogscast supporting eight different charities! Bella is joining in and fundraising for Cool Earth, an organization working to protect the rainforests and fight climate change by supporting people.

If you are interested in donating you can do so on Tiltify through December 14. If you donate £35+ you can get the Jingle Jam 2024 Games Collection, a set of 18 Steam keys and some extra stuff. An incredible price and it all goes to charity!

Donate here: https://tilt.fyi/mV4pvuOFrZ

Bella’s Book Recs

I’ve shared a few different lists of book recommendations (my list of books with queer representation and my list of books that are great for halloween) but I’ve realized I didn’t have just a general list of books that I recommend… so now I do! This is a list that will continue to evolve and grow as I come up with more recommendations so keep in mind it’s not exactly 100% done, but I hope you enjoy!

Books with Pals

Books with Pals will be back in 2025! If you’re interested in participating as a guest please send Bella a message on Discord, BlueSky, or by email to [email protected]. Include suggestions for a book to buddy read or a potential theme for discussion and Bella will let you know when might be a good month to have you on stream!

More Book Stuff

You can watch the VOD of recent Books with Bella streams and keep an eye out for future streams on my Twitch channel. If you miss a Books with Bella stream you can catch up on all of them in this YouTube playlist. I also post regularly on my book-focused Instagram and recently also on my book-focused TikTok account.

Great places to get books:

  • Audiobooks: Libro.FM (use my referral code: lfm461686)
  • Free books: use the Libby app to get audiobooks and ebooks for free with your library card
  • Public domain books: use the Project Gutenberg website to view ebooks and digital copies of books in the public domain
  • Digital ARC books for reviewers: NetGalley