Why does October always pass so quickly? It’s such a great month. It should stick around longer. November is always a busy month around here, and I want the laid-back October vibes to linger on.

Alas.

It is November.

At least the weather has turned beautifully cool and the leaves have changed to some lovely shades of yellow. If things continue as they have, it won’t be long before we get our first snow. I always look forward to that. There’s something about the quiet that comes along with falling snow that you just can’t beat.

What I Read in October:

I read thirteen things in October. Mostly novels, but there were a few graphic novels, thanks to a desire to finish up Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London series early on. A desire that flared out quickly, as I have just one book left to read in the series, and a few graphic novels to finish. But my brain went on a Gothic novel kick at mid-month, so here we are.

• A Master of Djinn by (The Dead Djinn Universe) P. Djèlí Clark, audiobook narrated by Suehyla El-Attar
• Body Work (A Rivers of London Graphic Novel) by Ben Aaronovitch, Luis Guerrero, Andrew Cartmel, Lee Sullivan
• Lies Sleeping (Rivers of London #7) by Ben Aaronovitch, audiobook narrated by Kobna Holdbrook-Smith
• A Memory Called Empire (Teixcalaan #1) by Arkady Martine
• Night Witch (Rivers of London Graphic Novel #2) by Ben Aaronovitch, Andrew Cartmel, Lee Sullivan
• Monstrous Tales: Stories of Strange Creatures and Fearsome Beasts from Around the World by Various authors, illustrated by Sija Hong
• Black Mould (Rivers of London Graphic Novel #3) by Andrew Cartmel, Ben Aaronovitch, Lee Sullivan
• The Iron Wyrm Affair (Bannon and Clare #1) by Lilith Saintcrow
• The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison, audiobook narrated by Kyle McCarley
• Rogue Elements (Star Trek: Picard #3) by John Jackson Miller
• Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss, audiobook narrated by Christine Hewitt
• The Lost Apothecary by Sarah Penner
• The Ring of Words: Tolkien and the Oxford English Dictionary by Peter Gilliver, Jeremy Marshall, and Edmund Weiner

Statistically speaking:

• 53.8% of what I read was written by man, 38.5% was written by women, and 7.7% was written by both men and women
• Half of what I read was written by English authors, and half was written by American authors. Hrm…
• 46.2% of what I read were physical books, 30.8% were audiobooks, and 23.1% were graphic novels, which I decided to shift into this section this month, instead of putting them under genre
• 61.5% were fantasy books, 15.4% were science fiction, and 7.7% each were nonfiction, historical fiction, and general fiction
• 69.2% of the books came from the library, while 30.8% were from my own shelves. Which explains why I never manage to shrink the number of unread books that I own
• Publication dates ranged from 2006 to 2021

Diversity of books was apparently not the name of the game in October. They were quite homogenous when it comes to author nationality and publication date. I’m not sure I’m thrilled about that, as I prefer to have a wider variety of these things, but here we are. Fresh start in November!

My favorite new-to-me reads were A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine, A Master of Djinn by P. Djèlí Clark, and Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss.

I wasn’t so keen on The Iron Wyrm Affair by Lility Saintcrow. It hurried through everything and provided not quite enough exposition to explain why this Steampunk version of London was just marginally different from our real London when it came to names of places, what various things were when they were relevant to the story, and overall failed to give me cause to care about either the characters or the place. I will not be reading the rest of this trilogy.

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What’s On Tap for November:

Mostly, ARCs. I managed to request and be approved for three books due out on the same day– December 7– have another book due out on November 30, and a last-minute approval show up for a book due out on November 16. So I have quite a lot of ARC reading to get through.

I really hope I like these books.

One of them, Jade Legacy, I have already started and am mostly enjoying, though the pacing is a little weird thanks to multiple time jumps. I’m assuming that Fonda Lee will wrap up what’s turning into a generational saga with a bang, and leave off in a good, strong place for the Kaul family. I may not like them as people, but I find them endlessly compelling.

• Jade Legacy (The Green Bone Saga #3) by Fonda Lee, eARC provided by NetGalley
• Around the World in 80 Books by David Damrosch, eArc provided by NetGalley
• Observations by Gaslight: Stories from the World of Sherlock Holmes by Lyndsay Faye, eARC provided by NetGalley
• The Cat Who Saved Books by Sōsuke Natsukawa, translated from the Japanese by Louise Heal Kawai, eARC provided by NetGalley
• Absynthe by Brendan P. Bellecourt, eARC provided by NetGalley

There are other books on my TBR for November, but who knows when or even if I’ll get to them. I can be easily persuaded to read other things that are not the books that have been sitting on my shelf, staring at me for the last five months. What even is a TBR?

I think November’s going to be a weird month.