I didn't blog for September. My bad, y'all.
Once I realized it was October, I thought I would just wait, and do a nice, thought-out, two-month blog post, because it really had been a diverse list, and I was going to try a few more things, and I thought I could write about Genres and whether or not libraries should genrify their collections, and how this all tied in with my discoveries about myself as a reader and I could hazard a guess as to whether genrified libraries would have made me a better/more voracious reader as a child and teen. But then Halloween passed and now here we are and ^that's all I've got on the subject of genres at the moment.
I'm just going to be really honest and say that I am in a slump. Fall is not my season. I've been looking back at things I've written in years past, Sept-Nov. (blog posts, facebook posts, journal entries, etc.) and it's kind of a recurring theme. I get stressed out when things from the new school year start kicking into high gear, and I get crabby when the weather gets cold and it gets dark early. I'd love to be witty and/or interesting and/or insightful but all I've got is a list of books, lots of snark and a little residual anxiety. And since you probably are only interested in the first item on that list, I've got the books I've read recently listed below. The list is surprisingly longer than it felt when I was reading. My progress has felt ridiculously slow these past few weeks. I'm out of my groove, y'all.
Anyway, here goes (with some brief parenthetical asides):
9/1 The Diary of Melanie Martin, by Carol Weston (as far as kid diary books go, I can't complain)
9/3 Ava & Pip, by Carol Weston (just a cute, cute, story about sisterhood and palindromes)
9/6 Re Jane, by Patricia Park (totally underwhelming Jane Eyre retelling)
9/11 The Casual Vacancy, by J.K. Rowling (stick with Harry Potter)
9/17 Kitchen, by Banana Yoshimoto (probably the first book I've read by an author with the same name as a fruit)
9/20 In the Time of the Butterflies, by Julia Alvarez (it took me forever but I made it. also I thought it was a true story so that was a trip)
9/23 Cold Sassy Tree, by Olive Ann Burns (I have so many mixed feelings on this one I don't even know where to begin. let me know if you've read it because seriously I need some secondary opinions)
9/24 Of Mess and Moxie, by Jen Hatmaker (I stayed up until 4am to finish this one)
9/29 Go Set a Watchman, by Harper Lee (hmm. yeah editing is a good thing.)
10/1 We Are Okay, by Nina LaCour (honestly I liked it but don't see why everyone is so obsessed with it)
10/6 Forever, by Judy Blume (this is actually a first-time read! Somehow I never made it past Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, in the Judy Blume repertoire as a kid)
10/8 Radium Girls, by Kate Moore (seriously, their lives were trainwrecks. go read about it)
10/11 The Remains of the Day, by Kazuo Ishiguro (damn. this guy won the Nobel for a reason)
10/27 By Book or By Crook, by Eva Gates (cozy mystery about a librarian who lives in a lighthouse. pretty self-explanatory)
10/28 Spell It Out, by David Crystal (the history of English spelling might sound boring, but for real this was one of the most fascinating books I've read in awhile)
So there you have it, folks. That's all I can crank out for now. We'll see how November goes.
