September has been a very busy month. We're selling our place, which we've lived in for longer than any other place since childhood. The move is going to come very soon and I am very much not prepared. Where are we moving to, you ask? Not entirely sure, but we're working on it. It's only making me very stressed. Hopefully I'll be settled by the next wrap up but honestly who knows!
Somehow though I managed to get a fair amount of reading done in September. Stress reading? Perhaps! I had a couple starts and stops, picking up books and listening to a bit before realizing this wasn't the right time for me. Why don't we just get to those stats?
Total books read
5
The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
Honey Girl by Morgan Rogers
Four Aunties and a Wedding by Jesse Q. Sutanto
Finlay Donovan is Killing It by Elle Cosimano
An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us by Ed Young
The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
LOVED THIS! Love a good mystery with competent amateur detectives (looking at you, other cozy mysteries where those characters seem new to the concept of interacting with other humans). Loved the characters and the back and forth between focus on the cases to the minutiae of everyday life in this retirement community. Elizabeth is wonderful and I love all of the little clues to her past and also hope they never full flesh that out in other books. I feel like I flew through the book, even reading it as a physical copy vs an audiobook (the wait at the library was "several months, don't hold your breath"), making it only the 3rd physical book I've read this year.
Rating: 5 stars
Honey Girl by Morgan Rogers
I can't remember where I first heard of this book (I really should write that down) but I very much enjoyed this sorta romance, sorta coming of age (even if she's a bit older than the usual coming-of-age character). Grace wakes up after a drunken night in Vegas to find that she got married to a woman she doesn't remember. This is wildly out of character for Grace, who has followed a clear path to her astronomy PhD only to find that something is missing. She doesn't know what she wants but what if she finds that wife of hers? The story gets slow at times and there's a bit of manic pixie dream girl energy that sometimes works but overall it was a compelling story.
Rating: 3.75 stars
Four Aunties and a Wedding by Jesse Q. Sutanto
The sequel to Dial A for Aunties involves more Aunties, more mayhem, more misunderstandings. Meddy and Nathan are getting married and while her Ma and Aunties won't be working the wedding, they're causing Meddy enough stress without the fact that some folks in the mafia are trying to take someone out at her wedding. It's over the top, there's chaos and awkward moments, and of course lots of fun with the Aunties personalities.
Rating: 4 stars
Finlay Donovan is Killing It by Elle Cosimano
I was going through a reading slump. I tried a few books but I just wasn't in the right mood for them. Then a friend mentioned she was reading this book and it sounded like a fun mystery and something that was a better choice for the time. It took me a little time to get into it (but that may have been the reading slump bit) but once I did, I was hooked. Finlay is a single mom, barely holding it together, trying (and often failing) to keep the lights on. She's a suspense romance author and when someone overhears her talking about her latest book and mistakes her for a contract killer, well things get complicated and Finlay finds herself in the middle of an actual murder.
Rating: 4 stars
An Immense World: How Animals Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us by Ed Young
We tend to think of senses in the terms of how we experience things (sight, sound, smell, taste, touch) and sure we may think of dogs as having better smell than humans or eagles as better sight but Young pushes to consider it goes beyond that. It's not just that dogs have a strong sense of smell but the way that they experience the world through smell is an important piece of their world (umwelt). Instead the book encourages people to think about animals within the context of their experiences. The book does a good job bringing what could be very complicated ideas to a general audience and while things can get a little dry at times, overall Young brings his enthusiasm for this world to the page.
Rating: 4 stars
Total pages read
1,735
Fiction
80%
Female authors
60%
BIPOC authors
60%
US authors
40%
Book format
audiobook: 80%
paperback: 20%
Where'd I get the book
Indie: 20%
Library: 80%
Readalong/Bookclub
20%
Decade published
2020s: 100%
Resolution reads
80%
Thursday Murder Club is by a UK author
Honey Girl is by a Black and queer author
Four Aunties and a Wedding is by Singaporean author
An Immense World is by a Malaysian author
