My Bookish Month of October 2023

Hi and welcome to another monthly overview!

After the tough month that was September, I started October hoping for the best but fearing the worst, and fortunately for me, it turned out better than I’d feared. I reacted better to my covid jab than usually, and my fatigue let up a bit, despite regular bouts of insomnia. Things at work calmed down, which certainly helped, and there was a lot less socialising, which helped too. I stopped feeling like I was hanging on by a thread, which was a huge relief.

My bookish month was fantastic! I managed a few re-reads and found I still love these stories as much as I did the first time around. I prioritised spooky / moody / witchy reads and horror and I well and truly had a ball, #spooktober rocks! I did have a few duds, and I’ve come to realise there is just something about Ray Bradbury’s writing that doesn’t work for me and I should just accept that, but those struggles were soon forgotten thanks to other, far more riveting, books.

Honourable mentions to Bonesmith, Red Dirt Road, the RHS Garden Almanac 2024, How to Survive Your Murder, The September House, Boys in the Valley, Hemlock Island and Black River Orchard (I did say I had a fantastic month 😂) but these were my favourite reads of the month:

In figures October looks like this:

October
Novels: 6403 pages across 19 books
Audiobooks: 71 hours across 11 books

And here’s what I did in October and some of what I’ll be posting in November:

What I read:

Mister Magic, Kiersten White
A Killer Among Us, Charles Bosworth
Bonesmith, Nicki Pau Preto
Red Dirt Road, S.R. White
I Did it For You, Jayne Cowie
Mermaids Never Drown, ed. Zoraida Córdova & Natalie C. Parker
The Fall of the House of Usher, Edgar Allan Poe
The Gardener’s Almanac 2024, Greg Loades (review to follow)
Sanctuary, V.V. James
RHS Garden Almanac 2024 (review to follow)
The Toll House, Carly Reagon
The Christmas Appeal, Janice Hallett
How to Survive Your Murder, Danielle Valentine
So Pretty, Ronnie Turner
The September House, Carissa Orlando
The Black Feathers, Rebecca Netley
Something Wicked This Way Comes, Ray Bradbury
A Haunting in the Arctic, C.J. Cooke
Black River Orchard, Chuck Wendig

What I listened to:

Razorblade Tears, S.A. Cosby
Six Stories, Matt Wesolowski
The Route of Ice and Salt, José Luis Zárate
My Enemy’s Tears: The Witch of Northampton, Karen Vorbeck Williams
Killer Within, Jeff Gunhus
Boys in the Valley, Philip Fracassi
Hunted, Darcy Coates
The Haunting of Blackwood House, Darcy Coates
Hemlock Island, Kelley Armstrong
A Spoonful Of Murder, J.M. Hall
Agave Blues, Ruthie Marlenée

What I read earlier but reviewed in October:

Mirror Image, Gunnar Staalesen
Stigma, Thomas Enger & Jørn Lier Horst
His Favourite Graves, Paul Cleave
Upstairs at the Beresford, Will Carver

I also posted an extract from The Beaver Theory by Antti Tuomainen and White as Snow by Lilja Sigurðardóttir and I had a look at my bookish quarter in pie charts.

Let’s have a look at the books that landed on my lap in October:

Two highly anticipated reads and four for the Orenda collection:

Two 99p deals and two NetGalley eARCs:

I hope you had a good month and that you are safe and well! Thanks for joining me today and happy reading xxx