Books Read in September and October 2025

 

I am so far behind on summarizing my monthly reading that I decided to combine my September and October books in one post. I read 5 books in September and 7 books in October and I enjoyed all of them.

Nonfiction

The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning (2017) by Margareta Magnusson

The subtitle of this book is: How to Free Yourself and Your Family from a Lifetime of Clutter. I read it about six years ago, and enjoyed it. On a second reading it did not inspire me so much, even though I have plenty of things to get rid of. This brief book (only about 100 pages) is full of humor and useful hints and reminders of how much you need to let go of as you get older, and written from the author's personal experience. 

Fiction

State of Wonder (2011) by Ann Patchett

This book is set mostly in Brazil. The story is about Dr. Annick Swenson, an older woman who has been researching a proposed fertility drug for a pharmaceutical firm based in Minnesota. She is living in the Amazon jungle working in a lab but she has not reported back on her progress for a long time. The other major character is Dr. Marina Singh, a pharmacologist working for the same firm; she is sent to Brazil by her employer, to find out the status of Dr. Swenson's research. There are many other characters, and they are all interesting. It is a very bizarre story, although it gets very much better at the halfway point. In the end, I liked the story very much. 

Mrs. Dalloway (1925) by Virginia Woolf

Reading Mrs. Dalloway was a good experience for me. It was the first book I had read by Virginia Woolf, plus I had never read anything written in stream of consciousness style. It did take me a good while to adjust to that style of telling a story, and it got even more confusing when the story moves from Mrs. Dalloway's thoughts to various other people's ruminations.

The story is basically a day in the life of Mrs. Dalloway, but as Clarissa Dalloway goes through her day she muses about her past and her future: her daughter; her daughter's friend, who she doesn't like; and her own relationships with men over the years. My review is here.

Get in Trouble (2015) by Kelly Link

This short story collection was a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. There are nine short stories; there are some that are science fiction, some are fantasy, and even one story that is straight fiction. I liked the stories and plan to read more by this author. My review is here.

Oh William! (2021) by Elizabeth Strout

I have loved all of Strout's books that feature Lucy Barton. In My Name is Lucy Barton, Lucy tells of one event in her life while she is married to William, and I really disliked him in that story. In each succeeding novel about their relationship I grew to understand him and Lucy more. The books are all about relationships; in this book, William is married to his third wife and Lucy's second husband died recently. See my thoughts here.

Alternate History / Espionage / Fantasy

At the Table of Wolves (2017) by Kay Kenyon

This is a spy story set in an alternative version of the UK and Germany in the years leading up to World War II. In both countries, there are people with fantastical paranormal abilities; these powers started showing up after World War I. For the most part, the "superpowers" are not very obvious and people have to be trained to use them. See my review here.

Fantasy

Can't Spell Treason Without Tea (2022) by Rebecca Thorne

My son purchased this book at the book sale this year.  I was interested in checking out what a cozy fantasy was like so my son let me read it first. The story is about a lesbian couple who want to leave their current lives behind and open a bookstore in a remote location where no one can find them. The problem is that Reyna is a private guard to a powerful and cruel queen, and Kianthe is a powerful mage. Somehow they both manage to leave their responsibilities behind and move to a small town far from their previous lives to set up a book shop. My review is here.

Guards! Guards! (1989) by Terry Pratchett

This book is the 8th book in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series and the 1st book in the City Watch sub-series. The series stars Sam Vimes, but in this novel, the City Watch police force don't function very well in keeping the peace, because of the corruption at high levels in the city of Ankh-Morpork. This is only the third Discworld book I have read by Pratchett; I read Mort in 2016. So I had to get used to Pratchett's style of writing again. I enjoyed the book, even though it took me about half of the book to get into it and be able to keep track of the characters. The characters are all very strange and the book is satirical. I now have the next book in the City Watch series to read (Men at Arms).

Crime Fiction

The '44 Vintage (1978) by Anthony Price

This is the eighth book in Price's David Audley series of nineteen books, all published between 1970 and 1990. The series is in the spy fiction genre, and the stories are Cold War espionage. Except for this one, which takes place near the end of World War II, and is kind of an origin story for the two main characters in the series, historian and intelligence agent David Audley and Colonel Jack Butler.  I loved this book and all the other books I have read in the series; each book focuses on different historical event. The '44 Vintage would not be a good place to start the series, though.

The Satan Sampler (1979) by Victor Canning

This is the 6th book in a spy fiction series called the Birdcage books. They all revolve around a covert security group in the UK, a branch of the Ministry of Defense. I enjoyed this book, although it wasn't as good as earlier entries in this series. See my thoughts here.

The Dentist (2020) by Tim Sullivan

This is the first book in a series that features an autistic police detective. I was very pleased with the book. The plot was very good,  complicated but realistic. I liked the protagonist, Detective Sergeant George Cross, who has been diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome. I liked everything about the book, including seeing what a person with Asperger's would encounter in a job, and how the person's coworkers may be affected. 

This series started in 2020 and there are already eight books in the series. I have already purchased the second and third books in the series and will be reading them in 2026.

Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect (2023) by Benjamin Stevenson

This is the 2nd book in the Ernest Cunningham series; I read the 1st book earlier this year. Both of the books are highly entertaining and humorous. Ernest, who narrates the story, makes a living writing about how to write mysteries. Prior to this book he has written a memoir about his experience with a serial killer. As the book begins, he is attending a writing conference set on a train.

More cat pictures...

London has now been with us five months. We are still adjusting to London and he to us. When we first got him he sat or slept on cat beds. Now he ignores them and uses the furniture (or sits on books). Click on the images for the best viewing quality. 

Books Read in June 2025

 

I read six books in June, and all of them were from my 20 Books of Summer list. I liked all the books; four of them were upbeat and fun; two of them were more serious and somewhat depressing.

Fiction 

Table for Two (2024) by Amor Towles

This is a short story collection. There are six stories plus one 220 page novella. The short stories are all set in New York City. See my post on some of the short stories here.

In the novella, "Eve in Hollywood," Towles returns to a character in his first novel, Rules of Civility. I did read that book, but I don't think you need to have read it to enjoy the story. "Eve in Hollywood" is set in the Golden Age of Hollywood, and it features Olivia de Havilland as a character. I enjoyed the novella very much.

The Burgess Boys (2013) by Elizabeth Strout

I have read four books by Elizabeth Strout, and I have rated all very highly, but they are always difficult reads, with hard to like characters and family difficulties. This one is my favorite so far. My review here.

Fantasy / Time Travel

Oona Out of Order (2020) by Margarita Montidore

I read this book because I like time travel books and this one was on a list of "time loop" novels (the film Groundhog Day is a good example of a time loop). In this book, Oona jumps from one year to another year in her life, randomly. I liked it. I have been thinking about it off and on since I read it. But it can be frustrating. My review here.

Crime Fiction

Death by Accident (1998) by Bill Crider

This book was my first read for 20 Books of Summer. The Sheriff Dan Rhodes series by Bill Crider is set in a small town in Blacklin County, a fictional county in Texas. It is a cozy series; Sheriff Rhodes solves crime mostly with his intuition and avoids computers where possible. Death by Accident is the 9th book in the series. See my review.

Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone (2022) by Benjamin Stevenson

This story takes place at a remote ski resort in Australia, where Ern Cunningham's family is having a family reunion. They are coming together because Ern's brother is getting out of prison, after having killed a man. Family relationships are strained. Shortly after the majority of the family arrives, a man's frozen body is found near the resort,  and the weather begins to get very bad, threatening to snow in all the guests.

This is a very unusual mystery. Ern Cunningham, who is narrating the story, writes books about how to write mysteries. The books starts with a list of classic rules for mysteries as published by Ronald Knox in 1929. So it is a traditional fair play mystery, but of course there is lots of misdirection in the clues, and for the most part the author kept me fooled for most of the book. I enjoyed the book, although I sometimes got frustrated with the repetition of the "rules." I liked it enough so that I will read the next one to see how it goes.

A Death in Summer (2011) by Benjamin Black

This is the fourth book in the Quirke series written by John Banville, under the name Benjamin Black. Quirke is a pathologist in Dublin, Ireland in the 1950s. He often is called in to examine dead bodies before they are moved, and to perform autopsies. Inspector Hackett will sometimes seek his advice on crimes, when he thinks the case is tricky. I like the slow pace of the writing and the emphasis on the characters as much or more than the crime investigation. I like the continuing characters. This one was about a sordid subject, and depressing. Yet I will persist and read more of them. 

The photos at the top and bottom of this post are recent pictures of plants in our back yard patio area. The top photo is of a cuphea plant (on the left) and a blue sage plant that are hummingbird attractors. They have been doing a good job of attracting hummingbirds and bees.

The two photos below are closer shots of blue sage plants. We have two other pots of those plants in the back. I love the little buds on the blue sage. Click on the images for best viewing quality.