September was the month three different books ended somewhere I was not ready for, and one of them had me crying while I vacuumed the house. It was also the month the two books I was still in the middle of when August closed both finished at five stars. This is the table of contents for my month: every book, an honest review, and which ones inspired me to write something emotional or head down a rabbit hole.
September by the numbers
Books finished: 8
Dollars spent on books: 0, all free from the library
Google searches: 9 rabbit holes, including a 1955 pill that got called “emotional aspirin”, whether a fantasy animal I read about for hundreds of pages was actually real, and a war over coal I was never taught in school
Emotional essays incoming: 1, about the seeds that grow inside you for years before you notice they have branches, going out Sunday
Reading trees growing: 4, including a brand new one planted by a single word I had to look up
Stars: three 5 star, three 4 star, one 3 star, and one 2 star
Format split: 5 audiobooks, 3 ebooks
Narrators: a thirteen voice full cast on The Correspondent, Charlie Thurston on Demon Copperhead, Susan Bennett on The Mad Wife, Nikki Massoud on I Who Have Never Known Men, and Barrie Kreinik on Ariadne. No Julia Whelan for the second month in a row
Listening time: 57 hours 26 minutes at normal speed, or 38 hours 17 minutes at my usual 1.5x
Pages: 3,486 across all eight
Days of my life: about 2.9 days spent with a book this month
Top genre: a tie, literary fiction and fantasy with 2 each
Currently reading: Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry on ebook and A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara on audio, both from the library
The Correspondent by Virginia Evans
🎧 Audiobook (Library) ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
I told you last month I was ninety percent through this one. Here is the other ten percent: I did not think it was the kind of book that would make me cry, and then I spent its last hour vacuuming my house and crying at the same time. It is a novel told entirely in letters, from Sybil Van Antwerp, a retired lawyer in her seventies who has been writing to family, friends and strangers for decades. It turns in a direction I did not see coming, and a lot of what came before looks different afterward.
One honest thing about the audio. The narration reads out the full mailing address and ZIP code at the top of every letter, which your eye would skip right past in print, and that got a little annoying partway through. It never ruined anything, though, and what you get in exchange is a full cast with a different narrator for each person Sybil writes to, which in a book made of nothing but letters really works. It is Virginia Evans’s debut, so there is no backlist to go read yet, but I will read whatever she writes next.
Where this book is sending me next: Lonesome Dove. My library finally let me have it, and I’m about 10 percent into it while writing this recap.
Reading Trees: the letter writing in Such a Fun Age is part of what sent me here, so this is the first branch on a brand new tree about letters. The next branches are the books Sybil names in her own letters, starting with Lonesome Dove.
The Will of the Many by James Islington
📱 eBook (Library) ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Last month I was sixty percent through this one. It is long, and it took me a while to figure out how Will works in this world, but once it clicked I loved it. The world building is some of the best I have read, basically ancient Rome turned into a power system where the rules you learn early keep coming back later. I picked it up because it was everywhere, and I liked it so much I went straight into book two.
Things I Googled: whether “vek” is a real curse word and whether alupi are real animals. Both answers are in this month’s Things I Googled.
Where this book is sending me next: the only place it is sending me is the rest of the series.
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
🎧 Audiobook (Library) ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Twenty one hours with Damon Fields, a kid born in a trailer in Lee County, Virginia, talking straight into my ears through foster care, football and the arrival of OxyContin. I picked it up because I kept seeing it recommended as a great audiobook. I had never really read a book like it, and the closest thing it reminded me of was Educated by Tara Westover. I will be reading more Kingsolver.
Things I Googled: the word Melungeon, which the book uses for Damon and his father like everyone already knows what it means, and a line about the second biggest war in American history being fought over coal. Both are in this month’s Things I Googled article, so be sure to check it out.
Where this book is sending me next: an emotional essay about the seeds that grow inside you for years before you notice they have branches, going out Sunday.
Reading Trees: this one didn't grow off any of my existing trees, but it planted a brand new one. The word Melungeon is the seed, and Demon Copperhead is the root.
The Mad Wife by Meagan Church
🎧 Audiobook (Library) ⭐⭐⭐⭐
It is 1955, Lulu Mayfield has the perfect house in a perfect suburb and a brand new baby, and something is slipping. I did not see the ending coming until it was already there. Looking back there was a little foreshadowing, but I never put the full picture together, and I am not going to give you any more than that here.
Things I Googled: a pile of them, starting with “housewife syndrome” and a little pill called Miltown that went on sale the same year the book is set. Some of what I looked up gives away the ending, so in this month’s Things I Googled that part sits behind a clear spoiler warning.
Reading Trees: this one grew straight off The Yellow Wallpaper, which makes it the third book on the tree that started with Mad Honey, and I can finally see what that tree is about.
I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman
🎧 Audiobook (Library) ⭐⭐⭐
I picked this one for the least romantic reason there is: it was popular and it was available on Libby the night I needed a new book. Thirty nine women and one girl in an underground cage, watched by guards who never speak. It was a good palate cleanser. I did not love it and I did not hate it, but the premise is a really interesting one.
Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
📱 eBook (Library) ⭐⭐
A café in Tokyo where one seat takes you into the past, as long as you stay in the chair and come back before your coffee goes cold. I love that premise. I keep it short here for books that land under three stars for me. A book that didn’t hit for me could easily be someone else’s favorite, and I’d rather you decide for yourself than skip it because of me.
Reading Trees: not a branch on any of my trees, more like a sibling growing right next to one. It is the third book about getting a second chance by walking into a magic place that I have rated low, which is starting to tell me something about myself.
The Strength of the Few by James Islington
📱 eBook (Library) ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Book two of the Hierarchy series, and I read a few hours every night because it is so easy to fall right back into this world. Keeping track of three different synchronous worlds bugged me at first, but once it got moving I really enjoyed it. Fair warning if you are starting the series: Islington always seems to kill off the character who breaks your heart, and he did it again.
Where this book is sending me next: I highlighted two passages I am still thinking through, so one of them may turn into an essay down the road. After that, book three in the series scheduled to be released in 2027.
Ariadne by Jennifer Saint
🎧 Audiobook (Library) ⭐⭐⭐⭐
The Minotaur myth told by the princess who helps Theseus through the labyrinth, and by her sister Phaedra. The start takes some work, since a lot of names come at you at once and on audio you cannot flip back to check who is who. Once the family tree settles, it moves. I had two and a half hours left one morning and finished it through a shower, getting ready and a round of errands, and it ended just as I was pulling out of the Target parking lot. I said “wait, that’s how it ends?” out loud to nobody, which is how I knew it had me.
Where this book is sending me next: Elektra or Atalanta, depending on what my library has.
Reading Trees: a new branch on my Greek myth tree, growing off Stone Blind, and the first one on that tree by a different author.
All eight of these got a full review on Goodreads too, along with everything else I finish, including the books that never turn into an article here. If reading the reviews is the part you like, that is where all of them live. Come follow me over there.
The thread running through September
Three books this month ended somewhere I was not ready for. The Correspondent turned in its last hour and had me crying over the vacuum, and the ending of The Mad Wife had been sitting right in front of me the whole time without me putting it together. Ariadne just stopped, while I was pulling out of a parking lot still braced for another hour of it.
That is my favorite thing a book can do to me, and it is the one thing I can never plan for. I can follow a reading tree or a hunch or a Libby waitlist, but nobody can hand me a book and promise the ending will catch me off guard. The two books I was still in the middle of when August closed both paid off at five stars, which is the other lesson of the month: finishing is sometimes the whole trick.
The best book I read in September, and I am calling it a tie
Demon Copperhead and the Hierarchy series. Demon Copperhead was unlike anything I had read before, and it handed me an essay and a brand new reading tree. The Will of the Many and The Strength of the Few are the two books I kept falling right back into every night, and book three can’t come soon enough.
Reading Trees
A reading tree starts with one root book and the itch it leaves behind, a topic, a place, a feeling you are not done with yet. From there it grows branches, other books that reach back to that same root, whether it is a direct mention in the text, the same region, or just chasing the same gut punch. It is not a genre list and it is not an author’s backlist. It is a line you can trace from root to newest branch.
Four of them grew in September. One is brand new and started with a single word I had to look up, and another is sending me into a book I have been meaning to read for years.
Trees keep growing every time one book hands me the next one. Paid subscribers get the full tree, root to newest branch, plus a new tree every month, and founding members get a personalized tree of their own once a year. Everything else, the rabbit holes, the essays, all of it, stays free right here.
Free and paid
This recap is free, always will be. The reading trees are the one thing that lives behind the paywall, one new tree a month plus the full growing vault, and founding members get a personalized tree of their own once a year. Everything else, the Google rabbit holes, the essays, all of it, stays right here for everyone.
I don’t have a shelf yet. I have a map.
A note on my links: I’m a library person first, always. If you can borrow it, borrow it. But if you’re a book buyer and you’re going to own a copy anyway, my Bookshop.org links support indie bookstores and send a little back my way. Both can be true.
Tell me in the comments: what is the last book whose ending caught you completely off guard?