October Reading - What I Read This Month

Happy Halloween! Pictured above are all of the books I read in the month of October (not including Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban which I read in the illustrated edition, or The Wild Silence, which I’ve lent to my mum). I was really lucky to have enjoyed all the books I read this month, and my particular favourites were Sarah Waters' Fingersmith, Sara Collins' The Confessions of Frannie Langton and Max Porter's Lanny. As I mentioned in my review (a few posts back), I was a little disappointed with Elaine Cook's The New Wilderness and it fell slightly short of expectation for me, but I still liked it for the most part. My review of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, which I finished reading last night, will be posted in a few days - this was such a feat of a novel at 1,006 pages and I really loved it!

I definitely enjoyed reading between genres this month, with some non-fiction, some historical fiction, a dystopian fiction and some magical realism all thrown into the mix, and I tried to make each read vaguely Halloween-themed - whether that be through the book's themes, elements of the supernatural or the setting. I didn't get round to writing a review of The Behaviour of Moths by Poppy Adams but I enjoyed this quirky little thriller, which focuses in on a lepidopterist (someone who studies butterflies and moths) whose sister falls from the roof of a tower when they are children. The accident leaves her sister unable to have children and the siblings become estranged for many years, until they reunite as old ladies. The story is a slow burner but really builds tension and pace towards the end, and I highly enjoyed it.

My November plans include tackling Hillary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, which I read a few years back and found pretty tough. I think that because it was on the university curriculum and I had a time restriction, I felt a little overwhelmed by the size and scope of the novel. I’m hoping that as a more mature reader (and reading to my own clock!) I will appreciate it more and end up reading the entire trilogy. I’d also like to read some poetry and perhaps a Dickens in the next month. If you're reading this, I'd love to hear what you read in October and what your plans for November are!