Remember last year when I vowed to get more personal on the blog – less reviews and more open unstructured updates? Like here. That died a pretty quick death. I once more got tied up with too much work and just didn’t have the energy to keep it up.
Thinking back now, I guess weekly or fortnightly updates were a bit too ambitious for me. Maybe a monthly cadence would work better.
I dunno, but here I am kickstarting this series again – this time with general rambly updates about what I got up to this month.
After what seems like ages, I started having a regular routine this month – going home from work before my kids’ dinner, and spending quality time with the family. As you all have probably guessed by now, I work in IT, and every year we have a massive release around this time, and July to October gets absolutely crazy. Thankfully now, release is done, and I can finally get some time to myself doing the things I want to do – endless board games with the kids, books, Netflix, planning for a year-end family trip to Sri Lanka, and some sort of social life as well.
First up, I want to talk about books. Although I have been pretty relaxed this month, my mind was still on overdrive and I found I could concentrate only on the lightest of light books. Hence a lot of fluffy chick-lit and Fantasy.
Here are the books I started and finished in October.
Mrs. Funnybones – a book fashioned out of a newspaper column by Twinkle Khanna was light and well-written. I finished it over the space of an hour, but ended up a bit disappointed with it. I was in the mood for fluff, but this was too wafer thin even for me. The Tennis Party by Sophie Kinsella writing as Madeleine Wickham was more my style. It’s all about upper-class Brit people having a fancy tennis party where scandal erupts. While it was light reading, there was a vein of seriousness in it that I quite liked.
I read and blogged the second book in the Dark Artifices series (Lord of Shadows), and A Court of Wings and Ruin by Sarah J.Maas. Lord of Shadows was lovely, and A Court of Wings and Ruin was solid.
I also embarked on A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles. It’s been all over the blogosphere, and I just had to see what all the fuss was about. So far, it’s pretty slow-going. I like the book, but I am not yet in that phase where I can’t stop reading it. Hopefully, I get there soon.
I started off this month wanting to read/watch some good horror (Halloween month). Netflix gave that me to with The Haunting of Hill House. I binge-watched it over two weekends, and just loved it. I haven’t read the book, so I can’t compare the two. Anyway, comparisons are worthless as the series has just picked up a kernel from the book. The rest of it is completely different. Still, an amazing watch and I can’t recommend it enough.
Another guilty pleasure has been Pretty Little Lies. It started off slow and a little boring. But it’s got some decent chills. I am still in the second season, and finding it quite gripping.
I also caught Jodha Akbar on Netflix. This is a Bollywood movie I’ve been wanting to see ever since visiting the gorgeous Amer Fort in May. Portions of the movie are shot here, and I wanted to see it featured in the movie.
The movie was a bit dull though, and the cinematography meh. I think I captured the place better in my photos. I stuck through three-fourths of the movie before giving up, and switching back to binge-watching Pretty Little Liars.
Life otherwise has slowed down (thankfully). Piglet and Snubnose had their term exams, and they both did reasonably well (actually better than expected). We are all now neck-deep in festival season (first Dussehra in October), and preparing for Diwali in November. My family is going to be in town, and I am looking forward to some good times chilling with them. October was also the month where I tentatively accepted some blog assignments again. There was a fun and extremely luxe dinner at the Ritz-Carlton that I attended and blogged about.
Equally fun was a Halloween-themed night out at Reservoire. The drinks (Jameson whiskey-based cocktails mixed by Cillian Mulligan) were flowing aplenty, the atmosphere and music were on-point, and the crowd a whole bunch of fun.
We postponed the actual Halloween trick or treating to tonight because it conflicted with Karnataka Rajyotsava celebrations (I told you festival season in India). This time we are doing it fairly simple. Snubnose is growing out of trick n treating, she only agreed to come out this night to keep Piglet company. Piglet was more interested in decorating the house for Halloween than dressing himself. So, we bought more props (cobwebs, and spiders, and bats), and kept both their outfits simple.
Can’t wait for tonight!
So that was October 2018! More of in-house hygge and coziness. Lots of books and Netflix!
How was your October?
