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September, it turns out, was another unexpectedly good reading month for me. It was also Magical Readathon month (more info in G. of BookRoast’s intro video), which somewhat influenced my reading. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I went out of my way reading books I normally wouldn’t, but I did pay some attention to whether or not the books I picked up fit the readathon prompts.

The readathon itself is a D&D-inspired adventure story complete with character creation challenges and background world-building and stays fairly broad on the individual prompt level, which is always something I appreciate in readathons. The requirement for the September part of the story was to fulfill at least two of the seven prompts and was thus a fairly relaxed affair. (Character creation only has to be finalized by April next year). I decided to not go overboard and aim for the minimum two prompts – and ended up doing much better than that (4 out of 7 story prompts plus one background one).

Overall, the readathon helped me to keep up my momentum from August, even though the actual number of books I finished is slighly lower because one of my picks was nearly six hundred pages. (I always have to make an effort to pick up the 500+ page books on my TBR; one down, several more to go. XD)

Here’s what I read:

Jenny Offill – Weather ★★★☆☆

Technically, I read most of this book in a single sitting in August, but since dividing books up by the months they were (mostly) read in is a somewhat arbitrary system anyway, I’m just gonna include Weather here. It’s a fast read, entertaining, darkly humorous, and sharply observed, but it’s also a bit breezy in a way that makes me wonder how much it will hold up in the long run.

Sayaka Murata – Earthlings ★★★☆☆.5

I’ve been meaning to expand my reading towards more translated fiction, so when I saw this one at my local bookshop,* I took my chances. It comes highly recommended (including by some of my favourite Youtubers/book bloggers) and I can see why. Earthlings is not a pleasant read, but definitely a compelling one. The novel starts of fairly dark and then twists towards the really weird really quickly. I will say that I occasionally found the book’s central conflict about societal control/pressure and freedom treated a bit too bluntly, but I do still recommend picking this up. (I advise checking some content warnings before going in.)

*I’m sure they probably had the German translation available somewhere, too, but I was picking up other English books anyway and I don’t actually have a preferred language to read translations in; it’s just that sometimes English translations are available much sooner than German ones.

Michel Faber – The Book of Strange New Things ★★★★☆.5

I’ve been in the mood for more philosophical SciFi lately, and this book fit that mood. It’s a quiet and slightly odd exploration of faith, otherness, and long-distance relationships that is both confidently and eloquently written. Although it didn’t quite turn out to be the five-star read I’d hoped (I wasn’t a fan of the ending), I did enjoy it very much and am glad that I finally got to it; it has been sitting on my TBR for two years after all.

John Steinbeck – Of Mice and Men ★★★☆☆.5

Novellas are my best friends, at least when I’m craving something new and short after a really long read. I had no idea what I was getting into with this one besides the general information that Steinbeck is a beloved American author and Nobel prize winner. Turns out I really like Steinbeck’s style but found Of Mice and Men a touch too well-constructed to be truly surprising. (It’s the kind of book you read in school: It presents all its important talking points clearly and succinctly, which I – sadly – tend to find a tad boring.)

Jeff VanderMeer – Annihilation ★★★★★

I picked this up on the recommendation of a couple of online friends (who, as far as I know, don’t know each other); it’s part of my current interest in weird fiction and scifi-adjacent stories. Needless to say that I loved it – it’s exactly the kind of low-level creepy, unreliable-narrator-driven story I like. In addition, I really enjoyed the setting and the way the novel reflects on memory and record-keeping.

Colin Dexter – Last Seen Wearing (Inspector Morse #2) ★★☆☆☆.5

Unfortunately a bit of a disappointment like the last installment in this series. These novels work perfectly fine as mysteries (the plotting is actually really good and I do like that Morse’s theories miss the mark more often than not; perfect detectives are a bit boring after all) but goodness are these books sexist. I know the early installments of the series were written in the seventies, but there are books from the same decade where the publication date doesn’t show quite this much. So far, my initial verdict that the TV series are actually better than the books still stands. (I don’t mind desaster humans, I do mind horny, sexist desaster humans.)

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I also read about half the stories in Ted Chiang’s Exhalation in September and it’s shaping up to being one of the best short story collections I’ve read in a long time.

(For those interested in the nitty-gritty readathon mechanics, I read Earthlings for the Ashthorn Tree prompt, The Book of Strange New Things for the Tower of Rumination, Of Mice and Men for the Mist of Solitude, and Last Seen Wearing for Obsidian Falls. Annihilation works as the Wilding character background.)