Best Books of October
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 reads that month. Book reviews are important for authors, and I want to get better at 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 October.
What We Can Know (Ian McEwan): This book is an excellent reminder that sometimes you feel bored or want to stop something or don’t know where it is going, but if you hang in there, you will have your mind blown. What a fantastic ride. What a hard gulp of a thought about what we leave behind and how it will be interpreted in the future. This is one of my favourite reads of 2025.
Lyra’s Oxford (Philip Pullman): A bit thinner as a story than the Collectors or the novels. Enjoyed it because I enjoy all time with Lyra in Oxford, but it feels more like a sketch than a finished drawing. Still, as a completist, I felt like I had to read this one before getting to The Rose Field.
A Particularly Nasty Case (Adam Kay): I liked this but didn’t love it because it felt like a repeat of This Is Going To Hurt without the emotional bits. On the plus side, I laughed quite a few times. It’s a cute cozy mystery with an unlikeable narrator but I wanted to like him. There is a moment early on when the narrator points out why he and Nina should be friends on paper, and that’s kind of how I felt about the book. We should connect on paper.
Serpentine (Philip Pullman): Again, His Dark Materials completist, so I needed to read this tiny novella before continuing on to The Secret Commonwealth. Each tiny Lyra story hurts and heals my heart. This one was no different. I love this world so much. I’m glad I decided to reread and catch up on the novellas I missed on the way to the Rose Field. It is a great way to spend time in this tumultuous world.
Guilty by Definition (Susie Dent): Word nerds, rejoice. I read two books set in Oxford at the same time — The Secret Commonwealth (Philip Pullman, fantasy) and this — and they often visited the same places: The Trout or Cornmarket or Godstow. So it was a very strange experience jumping back and forth from real Oxford to fantasy Oxford, and a great way to experience the word play of this mystery. I loved being in the CED (or… alternate OED) offices, learning about the world, and following the twisting path of the story.
What did you read last month?
2 comments
Fun reads! The Ian McEwan one sounds particularly good. I (shamefully) haven’t read Atonement yet, but maybe I’ll bump it up the TBR since it’s in a pile right behind me! 🙂
For me, I read almost exclusively “scary” books this October. The weirdest of which was Bunny by Mona Awad. Very good, but also very weird and I finished not knowing quite what the heck happened, but it was definitely a thinker! I do think I’ll read the followup “We Love You, Bunny!” just to see where the weirdness goes.
Also read: How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix (possessed dolls and puppets oh my), North American Lake Monsters by Nathan Ballingrud (short stories that made you wonder who the bigger monster is, the fiends or the humans), They Bloom At Night by Trang Thanh Tran (YA, also weird but delightful, author of She Is A Haunting and expert at disturbing imagery), Play Nice by Rachel Harrison (literally exorcising demons of your past), A Mother Always Knows by Sarah Strohmeyer (culty Vermont woods murder mystery), The Elementals by Michael McDowell (visceral haunted house horror in a beach house, and one of Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s favorite horror books), Not a Speck of Light by Laird Barron (super creepy short stories with disturbing illustrations a la “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark,” mostly taking place in remote places like Alaska), and Bunny.
October was an excellent reading month for me (for whatever reason??). I finished 6 books, which is pretty good for me! All reviewed on my blog, and on both Goodreads & StoryGraph.
* “We Solve Murders” by Richard Osman. A re-read for a book club. If you like his Thursday Murder Club books, you’ll enjoy this one too. (4.5-5 stars)
* “The Ministry of Time” by Kaliane Bradley. One of my favourite books that I read this year (despite — ALI content alert! — the unexpected revelation of a child near the end). Civil servant signs up for a top-secret project involving time travel — and (naturally!) romance. (4.5-5 stars)
* “The Two Mrs. Abbotts” by D.E. Stevenson. A chapter-by-chapter (re)reading & discussion with my D.E. Stevenson group. A “home front” book set during WWII and written while the war was still going on. (3.5-4 stars).
* “Deliver Me From Nowhere” by Warren Zanes. About the making of Bruce Springsteen’s “Nebraska” album; the source material for the recent movie of the same name. (4 stars.)
* “Things Fall Apart” by Chinua Achebe, part of another “slow readalong” with Footnotes and Tangents that lasted 5 weeks. About a proud African warrior and his reaction to the arrival of white colonizers. (3 stars)
* “The Safekeep” by Yael van der Wouden. This was recommended by a lot of people and has been critically acclaimed. It kept me turning pages, but it also made me feel faintly queasy at times — a lot of paranoia/tension, set in post-war Netherlands. (4 stars)