Best Books of September
As I say every month, I’m shamelessly stealing this idea from Jessica Lahey. She has a recurring monthly date where she reviews all the books she read that month. Book reviews are important for authors, and I want to get better about doing this.
So. I’m going to review them here and also online, but I’m going to do it a little differently. I’m only going to review the stuff I really liked. I don’t see a reason to spend my time writing about something I didn’t love; it’s just using up more of my energy. So only positive reviews.
These are the books I liked (or mostly liked) from September.
Murder Before Evensong (Richard Coles): Did I have any business buying this book? That was the question I asked myself as I stood in the bookstore. I’m not Christian, so I was nervous it would be over my head, but Coles did a lovely job making the reading experience inclusive of everyone – British or American, Christian or not. This book felt like the love child of Thursday Murder Club (writing style) and Louise Penny (town building). It was such a quiet, pleasurable read. I’ve made a note to get the next book when it comes out.
Less (Andrew Sean Greer): I cannot believe I waited this long to read this book. I’ve owned it in e-book and paper form for years. By delaying it, all I did was miss out on having this beautiful story in my brain for more time. I laughed. I got teary. It was a perfect ending.
Fairy Tale (Stephen King): I have very complicated feelings about this book. I started out loving it. I kept telling Josh that it was a masterclass in storytelling. And I was excited because if I liked it this much above ground, how much more would I love it when he entered the magical world? But… I didn’t. By the time I decided that I wasn’t enjoying it, I was 57% of the way through and thought I should stick it out because maybe it improved. It didn’t for me, but a lot of people love it, so your mileage may vary. So… complicated… because I loved the first third.
What did you read last month?
6 comments
I finally read _My Name is Lucy Barton_ (meh?) and I’m most of the way through _The Twelve Tribes of Hattie_ (jury is still out…I’m waiting for threads to connect). I can’t remember when I finished _Black Cake_ (which I liked quite a lot)…that was somewhere in there too. But I’m currently listening to _Lost Connections_ by Johann Hariri and it’s rocking my world…even though I don’t tropically like nonfiction.
Ack-typically…should never try to type comments on my phone!
Far From the Tree. A lovely YA story. That’s it. It was a sad month for reading and I started and stopped multiple books. October is looking similar. Hoping to be out of this rut soon.
Only two books in September… but they were pretty good ones! (Both reviewed on my blog as well as Goodreads.)
* “Tales of the City” by Armistead Maupin. This was a book club read. I didn’t LOVE it — a big cast of characters & plots to keep track of, which made it somewhat episodic (it was originally a newspaper serial, which made sense when I found that out!) — but it was well written and very evocative of the time & place (San Francisco in the 1970s). 3. 5 stars, rounded down.
* “The Bullet That Missed” by Richard Osman — the third, latest and possibly best yet “Thursday Murder Club” mystery! I love this series, and I enjoyed this one hugely — just so much fun. 🙂 5 stars.
I didn’t find Less as captivating as some people did. It was, at best, meh for me.
Once again, your post highlights books I haven’t read, although for once, at least one of your books is on my TBR list: my FIL recently gifted me a copy of Fairy Tale by Stephen King. I read a lot of his work when I was younger but haven’t read one of his novels in ages and was looking forward to this one until I read your review. 😉
Here are a few books I read and enjoyed in September:
Finding Me by Viola Davis. I went into this book not knowing much about the author, apart from my enjoyment of several of her movies. Wow, what a story. I “read” it on audiobook, which she narrates herself, and this heightened the enjoyment for me, as I love her voice.
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. Yeah, I know (because my 10-year-old son told me) that this is technically a book “for kids,” but I thoroughly enjoyed it. The audiobook features Wil Wheaton as narrator, and I’m a fan.
The Forgotten Kingdom by Signe Pike. Another audiobook. This book is the second of a trilogy (book #3 has not yet been released – sniff!), and it was told in three different first-person perspectives, in contrast to the first book. I like the world that the author has built and the strong female characters.
BTW, it’s odd to me that three of my favorite books of the month were audiobooks. I did actually read some books, too. I used to rarely do audiobooks (weirdly, I didn’t really consider it reading, at least for me), but I got into them during the pandemic and have continued. I mostly listen while exercising or doing chores but sometimes for a half hour or so before falling asleep at night, too.