October Wrap Up

This month has been a bit of a blur, and work has been very intense, with an emotional breakdown during the middle of a shift and a weird twitching that has started in my eyes, but it’s over now and im looking at November as a fresh start – I’ll talk more about that later. The start of the month was pretty review heavy, but even though I read quite consistently I haven’t had the chance to sit down and review my latest reads, though there have been some good ones that I look forward to talking more about! So, what did I read?

I kicked off October with the incredible Little Thieves by Margaret Owen, which I’m still thinking about many weeks later, and am very excited about the recent announcement that it’s going to officially be part of a series!

Off the back of that was Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao, which I did really love after pushing through the first 30% and am also looking forward to how that series will progress.

I’ve been reading The Heroine With 1001 Faces by Maria Tatar over the last few months and I finally finished it this month – it’s a really good piece of research and I’ll be writing up a mini review of it soon.

I’d heard a lot about Under The Whispering Door by TJ Klune, so I was very excited to have it approved on NetGalley. It was a delightful read, though I didn’t get as emotional as everyone else seemed to, but it left me with a really warm feeling. I recently started relistening to Welcome to Nightvale, as well, and Cecil and Carlos remind me a bit of Wallace and Hugo, which is cute.

River Kings by Cat Jarman is an incredible book about new findings on the Vikings and their travel. It’s accessible and very interesting, and I wrote a bit about it for the upcoming Norsevember event run my Alex at Spells & Spaceships.

A spooky read for the spooky month, The Monsters of Rookhaven by Padraig Kenny is a really good kids book that feels a bit like the Addams Family with some great creepy characters.

I don’t talk too much about it on this blog, but I do love Italian crime fiction, specifically Andrea Camilleri’s Inspector Montalbano series: Riccardino is the last book in the series, published posthumously, and it was definitely an interesting end to Montalbano’s story. Might talk about it at some point, it gave me a lot to think about

Learwife by JR Thorp is a really interesting telling of what happens to Lear’s wife after the fate of him and his daughters. I really loved the language, but it was very slow so I will admit to skipping through parts. Still, if you like character work, poetic language, and Shakespearean stories then this will definitely be for you.

Ongoing Reads…

There are a few other things that I technically have ongoing that I already mentioned last month, but since I haven’t made much progress with them during October I won’t really count them.

Up next…

…is November, and with it come two things I’m very excited for: SciFiMonth (stay tuned tomorrow for my TBR list) and NaNoWriMo, for which I plan to resurrect and finish draft one of my historical fantasy based on The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. I’ve loved this past year of reading, but I want to get back into my writing so hopefully this month kicks me back into gear. Here’s to hoping it works!