Reading Roundup: September 2025

I slowed down reading in September because I was slogging through ACOTAR for so long, and it almost killed my bedtime reading habit. I was actually curious to find out how long it took me to read it, so I’ve started tracking the date I started reading in my Obsidian database to calculate the duration. It took me 23 days to finish that bloody book, and while it is 419 pages, that is still a lot slower than is usual for me.

I got very excited about Obsidian in general in September and made some beautiful new reading dashboards for tracking books and comics that I’m reading. I’ve been properly keeping a reading log for the first time in my life, and really enjoying doing that! This morning, I also just figured out how to make a “last month” dashboard to make compiling these reading roundup posts easier!

I shared a couple of posts on my reading dashboard and my comic book tracking in Obsidian, if you want to learn more about that.

3 books read: 2 audiobooks and 1 painful ebook!

In Bloom (Sweetpea #2) by C.J. Skuse ⭐⭐⭐

I switched to audio format for these books, and I am so glad I did! The narrator, Georgia Maguire, really brings Rhiannon to life, plus this book started to give me the character development I’d found a bit lacking in the first book.

A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J Maas ⭐⭐

As I already said above, this was a fucking slog. It was somehow not as bad but also worse than I expected it to be. I hated it with a long list of reasons why, and it made me quite depressed about the state of literacy that this poorly written trash is so massively popular. It did explain some things about the state of publishing in 2025.

Dead Head (Sweetpea #3) by C.J. Skuse ⭐⭐⭐⭐

I am finding that this series keeps getting better! The author has a growing understanding of the character, and I am fully along for the ride at this point!

Marvel Unlimited: 46 issues of X-Men

As previously explained, I ran out of published trade paperbacks to track my reading through of Chris Claremont’s X-Men run on Goodreads. This was the main reason why I built my new method for tracking the reading of single issues in Obsidian. So this means the way to report my reading of comic books needs to change, and I’ve not quite worked out how I want to do it yet!

I can now work out that I read 46 single issues of digital comics on Marvel Unlimited in September, and these were across Uncanny X-Men (#253-277), X-Factor (#50-65) and The New Mutants (#87-100) because of story arc crossovers and new characters popping up, I was confused about.

I read from 1989 to 1991, and close to the end of Chris Claremont’s time at Marvel. I can definitely feel things have been getting more chaotic (not least the amount of crossovers), and noticing more story arcs get dropped.

I read through story arcs for “Acts of Vengeance” which I think was a wider Marvel arc that had Loki persuade supervillains to attack heroes they’d not normally attack. Very little of this plot was explicitly on the page in Uncanny X-Men or X-Factor, aside from a confrontation between Loki and Apocalypse.

Alongside this was the “Lady Mandarin Saga“, in which Psylocke (Betsy Braddock) was brainwashed by The Mandarin and had her body transformed into a racially Japanese woman. This is bizarre, extremely jarring and feels really icky. The on-page reason is that they wanted her for her super-powerful psionic powers, but it would be weird to have a white woman hanging out with The Hand, so they changed her face so she looked Japanese AND somehow gave her Ninja skills (this is something to do with the brainwashing, I think).

So now, Psylocke is super hot running around in a swimming costume, doing cool ninja stuff to get all the boys excited. This makes me really sad because I actually loved English Betsy Braddock with her purple hair and her really cool suit of armour with hooded cape look, which she only got to wear for a few issues in the Outback Era! She will never appear in that again. She is now essentially a new and very confusing character.

I also didn’t enjoy this arc because it puts Jubilee front and centre. She’s basically Wolverine’s sidekick here (after she rescued him from the cross the Reavers nailed him to), but she takes the POV, and like Kitty Pryde before her, she is an extremely annoying teenage girl character. In fact, I will say she is even more annoying and bratty than Kitty was (I’m not sure where she is now; she disappeared with Nightcrawler ages ago, possibly into Excaliber?). I now feel bad for calling Kitty annoying in comparison to Jubilee. Only Boom-Boom (The New Mutants) is more annoying, and later on, there is the painful combination of Boom-Boom and Jubilee, who have basically the same personalities and powers (it was kind of funny that they don’t like each other).

It was around this point that I really started to notice the way the female characters are drawn is getting more ridiculously overtly sexual. I think I’m going to need to start to take note of the artists that do this, but definitely books and bums and getting bigger and the poses more ridiculous. There was one where Jean Grey was leaning over to comfort Wolverine and looked like she was breaking her back to make sure her arse cheeks were in frame.

That went straight into another major arc – X-Tinction Agenda, which was basically the mutants battling Genosha. This was where I realised I was going to be forced into reading The New Mutants if I was going to understand everything that was going on. And that I was going to have to go back to #87 and catch up if I was to understand where the hell Cable had appeared from, and why he was the leader of The New Mutants (I still don’t know where Magneto went, I think it was to do with Doug dying, but I’m not reading back any more!). The answer is he just appeared, and nobody else was leading them! Cabel, at least, is very cool as a character and made reading about those teenagers almost bearable.

X-Tinction Agenda was good. It drew on the core of what is interesting about the X-Men (fighting mutant prejudice) and felt extremely high stakes. The villain – a truly unhinged version of Cameron Hodge (from X-Factor) – has wormed his way into the political system of the nation state of Genosha, which has been able to buy their way out of potentially starting a war with the USA. The three teams are drawn together, and even with their numbers almost lose (the resolution to this is some real comic book nonsense). In typically X-Men fashion, a win is never truly a win.

This arc also finally saw Storm getting her adult body and powers back. It was a whole thing, but she was a teenager for quite a long time! After the Siege Perilous nonsense, she got turned into a child by Nanny… never really understood it, but it also reintroduced The Shadow King onto the board (seems he can’t resist a child Storm or Prof X… foreshadowing…). I am tired of Storm getting de-powered over and over (it’s like Jean Grey and being dead!).

The best bit of that whole plot, though, was that it introduced Gambit! Gambit finally! He ends up rescuing child Storm when they’re both robbing the same house in New Orleans, and they’re a duo for a little while. I am really enjoying Gambit, and absolutely dying for him to meet Rogue. They were always my favourites in the cartoon!

Speaking of, there was no Rogue for ages. It turned out the Siege Perilous put her in the Savage Land with Magneto. Nick Fury and some SHIELD guys are also there; they all have to work together to defeat Zaladane, who has Polaris’ magnetic powers. That’s fine, whatever. What I hated about this was that it sowed a little seed of a spark between Magneto (who’s like 60?) and Rogue (who is early twenties). I know that in “the future” other comic book writers will make this a whole thing (and it makes its way in and ruins X-Men ’97), and I hate it. I hate it so fucking much.

Then X-Tinction Agenda leads into The Muir Island Saga that I’m currently reading. There was a brief interlude where Storm, Jean and Scott got to reminisce about old times and try to agree on a way forward for Prof. X’s dream. None of them were on board for Cabel’s plan to prepare a force for the coming war, so he went off with the remaining New Mutants and that title wrapped up at issue #100 and became X-Force, which I’m not bothered about reading (especially as it has Boom-Boom in it”). One cool thing was that in reading #98 and Deadpool and Domino‘s (sort of) first appearance, even if there was some truly terrible Rob Liefield art. I’d heard it was bad, but fucking hell… It’s like first draft sketches he never finished.

Regarding Cabel, if at this point the writers knew he was going to be Nathan Summers, it isn’t obvious, definitely not in his interactions with Jean and Scott! Deadpool (who has been hired to kill him) does call him Nathan, though, in New Mutants #98!

And speaking of them, in X-Factor there was some boring stuff I skimmed through with Iceman and his girlfriend Opal, and then their Ship gets attacked by a group of power-powered villains of some type. The important elements of that are that Jean finally gets her telepathic powers back. She has been telekinetic only since she came back from being dead! The way that happens is pure plot magic; it comes out of the blue and doesn’t really make sense to me, but whatever. And the other thing is Ship is infected with some sort of virus, and this is all Apocalypse’s doing.

In general, it’s been interesting to read all three titles in parallel and feel the difference in quality. Uncanny X-Men had significantly better writers and artists than the other two. I found X-Factor and especially New Mutants often very dull and with cringeworthy, clichéd dialogue. The New Mutants had some unbearably bad art (and not just Rob Liefield). I often don’t notice the good comic book art, but as soon as it’s bad, it really ruins any enjoyment of a story.

Currently Reading

I’ve just finished Sweetpea #3 on audio, and I’ve started Witches Abroad by Terry Pratchett. I’m also nearly done with a re-read of Uprooted by Naomi Novik.

Adding to TBR

I got four new eBooks for 99p in September:

• There There by Tommy Orange
• Under Fortunate Stars by Ren Hutchings
• Written On The Body by Jeanette Winterson
• The Trees by Percival Everett

I’ve also had my eye on the new series of Vintage Classic Weird Girls editions and would love to buy them all because this is exactly my shit, but the Penguin website bundles have clearly not been set up correctly, and the basket does not apply the bundle discount. I tried emailing them, but have heard nothing. Their newsletter sign-up box is also broken, so while it’s making me sad, their website seems poorly managed, and maybe I don’t want to risk it!

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.

1. 10 Books with 10 Villains from Books and Comics
2. 10 Books I’ve Not Read By My Favourite Authors
3. 10 Books On My Autumn 2025 To-Read List
4. Things I could do more if I didn’t have a full-time job