I got back on track by finished 6 books in September!
After August was a flop I was happy to get back into a reading groove in September, helped by finally finishing Deadhouse Gates and finding some fun audiobooks to get me out my slump!
As usual, any linked book titles will take you to my review.
6 books finished in September
Funny Story by Emily Henry – ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 3.5/5 Stars
A fun little rom-com, I was really happy this was on the right side of the Emily Henry tropes continuum for me! It got a bit iffier at the end, which it lost a star for, but otherwise I enjoyed it a lot.
Deadhouse Gates (Malazan Book of the Fallen #2) by Stephen Erikson – ⭐ 1.5/5 Stars
Look, I finished it. I would not have finished it if I hadn’t been so determined to give Book 3 a chance before I give up the series! I you want to read my reasons for giving this 1 star click the title to go to my review.
Vacuum in the Dark by Jen Beagin – ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4/5 Stars
I loved revisiting Mona! She is such a strong character, and I felt this second book was more focused than Pretend I’m Dead so it got an extra star.
The Murderbot Diaries #1-2 by Martha Wells – ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4/5 Stars
I read the first two novellas in this series – All Systems Red and Artificial Condition – and fell in love with Murderbot! These are short and sweet stories (about 4 hours of audiobook each) but they are so delightful! The audiobook production is excellent, the narrator does a brilliant job at bringing Murderbot to life.
Foe by Iain Reid – ⭐⭐⭐ 3/5 Stars
After this was a persistent feature in my TBR pulls, when I finally read it I was a little disappointed. I think We Spread by the same author is a lot better. Foe has cool elements but I just found it dragged in the middle of the story.
Then She Vanishes by Claire Douglas – ⭐⭐⭐ 3/5 Stars
Eh.. this was a very “mid” mystery thriller. It’s serviceable but held no surprises, not a single twist would not be correctly predicted from reading the blurb if you are even a casual mystery fan.
Comic books
I read fewer comic books last month after I got back into listening to audiobooks on my commute again, though I am still amazed I only read 6 issues! I am now onto the 2010 run of New Avengers which is essentially the same team (with additions) and follows right on so I don’t know why they restarted the series with the same name, but that is comic books for you.
This is what I’ve read as they are collected into the trade paperbacks.
New Avengers, Vol 1 (2010 series, issues #1-6)
I enjoyed this one! After getting bored at the end of the previous New Avengers run (all the endless Norman Osborne/HAMMER/Siege stuff was such a drag) I’m glad this reset has moved away from that. Now the New Avengers have a new HQ and the blessing of Steve Rogers and Tony Stark post-Civil War. The Thing/Ben Grimm has also joined them (not sure why but cool).
Some serious mystic shit goes down almost immediately, Doctor Strange, and Daimen Hellstrom (I do enjoy him with Strange!) get possessed and then Luke. Doctor Voodoo has not done the best job as Sorcerer Supreme… Pretty sure keeping hold of the Eye of Agamotto is like #1!
I was gripped by the story more than I’ve been in a long while reading New Avengers. I loved Jessica Jones getting more involved with the action, but I also enjoyed the mystic stuff. Loved a super-duper powered up Wolverine! Between this and the new Agatha All Along TV series I might look for some more of the sorcerer stories!
Currently reading
I am now reading Memories of Ice (Malazan #3) and I’ve got Murderbot #4 on audio! I am actually enjoying Memories of Ice so far, after Deadhouse Gates it is a huge relief to be back with characters I know and largely like, it feels like there is some life on the page again.
Adding to TBR
I only bought one book – and on 1st October so technically I should save this for next month’s roundup – but it’s a big super exciting one! I got Rouge my Mona Awad, FINALLY! I had been waiting for it to crop up on a 99p Kindle deal before I read it because I know I am going to want to make a million highlights and notes, and that is a million times easier to do on Kindle rather than messing around with a paperback copy. However, I also plan to buy a paperback copy so I didn’t want to spend £9.99 on an ebook (I hate spending that much on an e-book) and then the same again on a physical copy.
So I now have extra motivation to get Memories of Ice read as quickly as possible, with reading Rouge as my reward!
Book Tag/TTT!
I’m really loving joining in with Top Ten Tuesday! I’ve now added a category to my blog for these posts to make them easier to find. It is a really fun way to find new blogs and potential book friends.
- 10 Books Involving Food (Top Ten Tuesday) – this was quite tough but I got to ten!
- 9 Books I Read To Escape On The Most Painful Holiday Of My Life (Top Ten Tuesday) – I got a little more personal in this one!
- 10 Characters the Author Surprisingly Redeemed – again I found it hard to think of books where I had started disliking a character and then liked them by the end.
- 10 Books On My Autumn To Read List – I don’t read to themes or seasons so this is just the ten books I am most likely to read over the next few months.
TBR Pulls
Right now I have 45 books waiting on my Kindle in my “to read” collection! Each month I browse through and pick the 3 that are calling to me most.
Last time I picked out She’s A Killer, The Rose Code and Vacuum in the Dark – which I read. This time obviously Rogue is top of the list, and following that I think I’ll want more of a straight mystery so I think I’ll pick up Kala, and then after that maybe I’ll want to get weird and literary again and finally, finally read Lapvona!
Rouge by Mona Awad
For as long as she can remember, Belle has been insidiously obsessed with her skin and skincare videos. When her estranged mother Noelle mysteriously dies, Belle finds herself back in Southern California, dealing with her mother’s considerable debts and grappling with lingering questions about her death. The stakes escalate when a strange woman in red appears at the funeral, offering a tantalizing clue about her mother’s demise, followed by a cryptic video about a transformative spa experience. With the help of a pair of red shoes, Belle is lured into the barbed embrace of La Maison de Méduse, the same lavish, culty spa to which her mother was devoted. There, Belle discovers the frightening secret behind her (and her mother’s) obsession with the mirror—and the great shimmering depths (and demons) that lurk on the other side of the glass.
Snow White meets Eyes Wide Shut in this surreal descent into the dark side of beauty, envy, grief, and the complicated love between mothers and daughters. With black humor and seductive horror, Rouge explores the cult-like nature of the beauty industry—as well as the danger of internalizing its pitiless gaze. Brimming with California sunshine and blood-red rose petals, Rouge holds up a warped mirror to our relationship with mortality, our collective fixation with the surface, and the wondrous, deep longing that might lie beneath.
Kala by Colin Walsh
In the seaside village of Kinlough, on Ireland’s west coast, three old friends meet for the first time in years. They—Helen, Joe and Mush—were part of an original group of six inseparable teenagers in the summer of 2003, with motherless, reckless Kala Lanann at its white-hot center. But later that year, Kala disappeared without a trace. Now remains have been discovered in the woods—including a skull with a Polaroid photo tucked inside—and the town is both aghast and titillated at reopening this old wound.
On the eve of this gruesome discovery, Helen had reluctantly returned for her father’s wedding, the world-famous musician Joe had come home to dry out and reconnect with something authentic, and Mush had never left, too shattered by the events of that summer to venture beyond the counter of his mother’s café. But when two more girls go missing, they are forced to confront their own complicity in the events that led to Kala’s disappearance. Ultimately, they must do what others should have done before to stop the violent patterns of their town’s past repeating themselves once again.
In cracklingly vivid prose, Kala brilliantly examines the sometimes brutal costs of belonging, as well as the battle in the human heart between vengeance and forgiveness, despair and redemption.
Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh
In a village in a medieval fiefdom buffeted by natural disasters, a motherless shepherd boy finds himself the unlikely pivot of a power struggle that puts all manner of faith to a savage test, in a spellbinding novel that represents Ottessa Moshfegh’s most exciting leap yet
Little Marek, the abused and delusional son of the village shepherd, never knew his mother; his father told him she died in childbirth. One of life’s few consolations for Marek is his enduring bond with the blind village midwife, Ina, who suckled him as a baby, as she did so many of the village’s children. Ina’s gifts extend beyond childcare: she possesses a unique ability to communicate with the natural world. Her gift often brings her the transmission of sacred knowledge on levels far beyond those available to other villagers, however religious they might be. For some people, Ina’s home in the woods outside of the village is a place to fear and to avoid, a godless place.
Among their number is Father Barnabas, the town priest and lackey for the depraved lord and governor, Villiam, whose hilltop manor contains a secret embarrassment of riches. The people’s desperate need to believe that there are powers that be who have their best interests at heart is put to a cruel test by Villiam and the priest, especially in this year of record drought and famine. But when fate brings Marek into violent proximity to the lord’s family, new and occult forces upset the old order. By year’s end, the veil between blindness and sight, life and death, the natural world and the spirit world, civility and savagery, will prove to be very thin indeed.
What books are you excited to read at the moment?
