My Week In Books 📚 // Victober diaries #2: Mary Barton, a Sense and Sensibility adaptation and bookshopping!

 Hi Everyone!

After much deliberation, I decided to do another one of these Victober diaries. I'm going to try to get through more of the books I'm currently reading to hopefully finish them before the end of the month, which is the focus of this week! Some of what I mention in this post may be confusing if you haven't read my other Victober diaries post so you can take a look at it here! This will be similar in the sense that I'm still working so there isn't much content apart from what I'm reading! This will only run from Monday to Thursday though because I'm going away on Friday! Enjoy :)

Monday 18th October 

I've finished my schoolwork so I've got the afternoon to relax! Last weekend, I made some progress with Gothic Tales but I'm not loving the story I'm currently reading so this morning I decided to start Mary Barton because I'm very excited for it and I really want to challenge myself to finish it before the end of the readathon, which may sound easy as I'm off school for half term next week but we're going away so I don't know how much time I will have to read. I'm now on page 112 of Gothic Tales and I made it to page 10 of Mary Barton and so far I like it, but I don't think it will beat A Welsh Witch...we'll have to see! 

I've made a little more progress with Mary Barton, I'm now on page 28 and wow, what a chapter! I just love all the social commentary; I find it fascinating! I'm very interested in what life was like for both factory workers and factory owners and this book is proving to shed light on both of these topics. I just love it! It's something I definitely missed in A Welsh Witch because although there was a little commentary about the mining communities, there wasn't anything really about industrialization so it's nice to read a novel a little more typically Victorian! 

Tuesday 19th October 

This morning I reached page 52 of Mary Barton and I LOVE IT. It's SO GOOD! I can't wait to carry on delving into it and honestly, putting Gothic Tales down was such a great decision! I'm liking Mary Barton so much more and I actually want to pick it up, which I didn't feel with Gothic Tales!

I've just finished watching Sense and Sensibility with my mum after having read it this summer. I have it all documented in two posts similar to this one and my review is linked here! This was the 1995 one with Emma Thompson and Hugh Grant and I found it very faithful to the novel and it was very enjoyable!

As for school, I also finished my schoolwork in good time, although a lot of it is revision now! 

Wednesday 20th October

Last night we had a huge thunderstorm and I woke up early because of it! That meant I could read more so I actually got to page 88! I'm still loving it so much and I can tell that my understanding of the language has got a lot better, as I read North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell this time last year. I didn't understand all of it, although I adored it! This time I understand pretty much all of it! 

Even if early this morning it was tipping it down and we had lightning and a full on storm, now it's beautiful sunshine so I'm going to make the most of it by going on a walk with my mum.

Thursday 21st October

This will be my last update for this week as I'm going away tomorrow! I read a fair amount last night and this morning and got to page 122 of Mary Barton. I love all the general Victorian life aspects of the novel, but if you were to ask me what's actually happened my answer would simply be: a bunch of people have died and economically, these people are struggling. That's literally it! And yet, it isn't in the slightest boring or dull! I will try to read more and hopefully finish it when we are away but I'm not sure if it will be possible, honestly, but I'm sure you'll hear all about that in my Victober wrap up!

This afternoon, I had to go and do a Covid test so I am okay to travel tomorrow. It was in Exeter and my mum had a hair appointment there just before so I had an hour to kill, so where better place to do it than Waterstones? I actually haven't been in a while so it was so nice! I ended up getting 6 books. The first one is The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo, the author of Clap When You Land. I loved Clap When You Land and also may have some plans involving it coming up (more on that soon!) so I wanted to read some more Elizabeth Acevedo. I also got This Winter by Alice Oseman. She is one of my favourite authors and this was the last book of hers that I didn't have. This is a novella so very short and I read it in the Waterstones cafe! One of the other books I got was The Perks Of Being A Wallflower by Stephen Chboosky. I've heard a lot about this one and I'm not sure when I'll get to it, but I will! Another one I got was Afterlove by Tanya Byrne. I heard about this one on Goodreads so I'm excited to give it a go! As to the Classics, I got Vera by Elizabeth Von Arnim because I watched a Lucy Powrie video (it's not like I watch a lot of them or anything) and she was talking about it. It sounds similar to Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier and seeing as I love Rebecca so much, I'm excited to give this one a try! Finally, I got The Adventures Of The Six Napoleons and Other Cases by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. This is in the STUNNING penguin English library edition and it is a collection of Sherlock Holmes novellas. I'm also very much looking forward to reading this sometime!

The fruit of my book buying...

I always love browsing bookshops and it was so nice to get to do that today!

That's it for this week! I've scheduled a long overdue post for Wednesday so look out for that, it should have come out a month ago but I've been bombarding you with Victober posts instead!

Thank you SO much for all your support for my blog, it really means the world! 

Happy Victober!

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