I always suspected September would be a month too far in the tightrope of work vs well-being, and that pretty much panned out as expected. Exhaustion and headaches made for a short temper, a terrible attention span and less blogging than I would have liked, but thankfully didn’t completely curtail my reading. And I now get some time off, HOORAY!

Reading Round-up 

I started the month still in a reading slump – not because I didn’t want to read, but because I got so far behind with reviews that I didn’t feel I should read until I caught up. Catch-22! Too tired to review, too anxious to read – what a mess. Tremontaine came to the rescue – I shall be beside myself when it finishes at the end of the year (time to finally dip my toe into Book Burners or The Witch Who Came In From The Cold until Born to the Blade returns? Maybe!). But when I returned to my books, I hit a stellar streak of reads.

Let’s not talk about Alanna, though. I feel so let down by my best girl. As of this reread, there’s only one Alanna book for me. There were no sequels. See, I feel better already.

• Ghost Wall – Sarah Moss     
• Shelter – Dave Hutchinson      
• The Poppy War – R F Kuang      
• The Girl Who Rides Like a Man – Tamora Pierce   
• The Little Stranger – Sarah Waters      
• Tremontaine: The Final Season – Ellen Kushner et al
  • Potential – Tessa Gratton
  • What’s Goes Up – Joel Derfner & Liz Duffy Adams
  • Building Bridges – Liz Duffy Adams & Delia Sherman

Review Round-up

• The Defiant Heir – Melissa Caruso      
• Throwback Thursday: Three Parts Dead – Max Gladstone     
• Throwback Thursday: The Goblin Emperor – Katherine Addison     
• Tremontaine: Season Three – Ellen Kushner, Joel Derfner, Karen Lord, Tessa Gratton, Racheline Maltese, Paul Witcover
  • Sword and Spirit | A Blur of Bright Water | Dragon Rampant | Surrounded | A City’s Favor

Stacking the shelves

I made no effort to manage my book buying this month, partly because I was over-tired, stressed and consequently not very happy. And when you have a huge TBR and don’t know what to read next, acquiring more books is what you do, right?

Reading statistics

My goal – as always – is to read diversely and to love every book. I’ve put no targets on my reading this year beyond a number of books, but I’m tracking some stats for my own interest.

• 64 / 75 books or novellas + 3 DNFs
• 20 male (31%) / 37 female (58%) / 5 trans, non-binary or genderfluid (8%) + 1 group effort
• 21 (33%) – by authors of colour
• 6 (9%) – by LGBTQIA authors
• 14 ARCs / 10 off the shelf (it doesn’t count if I bought them to read them straight away)
• Game of Books score: 331 / 400

There’s always room for one more… reading event (wait, make that two)

Spooktastic Reads

Feel like a long time since Wyrd and Wonder? Got a hankering for some Hallowe’en themed reads next month? We’ll be combining our urges with a Wyrd and Wonder mini-event: Spooktastic Reads, running for 13 days (well obviously) from Friday 19th October through to Hallowe’en. No sign up required – just read along, tweet along and tag us in so we can huddle around your fire to share our love of chilling tales.

SciFi Month

…and before you know it, it will be November and you know what that means around: SciFi Month! Lisa and I will be hosting your favourite month-long SF extravaganza again this year, so join us to share the love for all things scifi. We’ll boost the signal as you blog, tweet, tumblr, instagram, or otherwise share your enthusiasm for any flavour of scifi throughout November. Sign up so we know to watch out for you – and to enter the SciFi Month giveaway!

How has your month been?