I thought I was handling things well, but writing this monthly wrap-up has made it clear that wow, no, I’m not doing okay. Almost nothing written, and (by my standards) almost nothing read. Sigh.

ARCs Received

Putting a unicorn on your cover guarantees that I’ll request it, and a BONE unicorn only has me more intrigued in Premee Mohamed’s The Butcher of the Forest. And after really enjoying Grace Curtis’ Frontier last month, Floating Hotel is probably the arc I was most gleeful to be approved of in September.

The Poisons We Drink I nabbed as part of a Netgalley promotion. I’ve been hearing such incredible things about this book!

Read

…Yeah, I’m not okay. 10 books in a month??? Is this seriously all I read? Jaysus.

Most of these were amazing, though; Greenwode blew me away and ripped my heart out, which is very unfair; rereading the Tremontaine series was a delight; The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two was obviously excellent; and Cold Magic completely sucked me in, despite me having bounced off it two or three times before.

To the best of my knowledge, 40% of this month’s books had BIPOC authors. Mostly because several of the contributors to the Tremontaine series are BIPOC, although they’re not the majority. So I’m not sure this counts as a score, but I don’t know how else to count ’em.

Reviewed

This is just tragic. I have so many reviews I need to write, but only managed two? Blegh. And I wasn’t impressed with the ones I wrote, either.

DNF-ed

Last September was the first month I had no DNFs; this month there were four, which isn’t bad.

ARCs Outstanding

Soooooooo much to read. So much. I’m officially falling behind – I’ve missed the pub dates of several of these, and I don’t think I’m going to get Menewood and Jinn-Bot finished and reviewed for their release next week, either. I’m glad I have no more requests pending – I think it’d be best if I didn’t request any more arcs for a while!

Misc

I’ve started working on my Best of the Year list, and a second, Best Backlist Reads list too – because I want to spotlight the excellent books I read this year that weren’t released this year. You know?

This was also the month that my Top Ten Tuesday prompt went out – it was fun to see what other bloggers did with it!

Looking Forward

I was really happy to learn Like a Charm was getting a US release, because the UK edition never came out as an ebook, and as we know, I can’t physically hold paper books because Disabled. But the US edition will have an ebook release, so I can finally read it! I’m neck-deep in Menewood at the moment, and it’s so beautiful; and we’re getting new books from Hal Schrieve and Alix Harrow! Plus, Cassandra Khaw and Richard Kadrey’s collab The Dead Take a Train, which will probably give me nightmares but which I’m looking forward to anyway.

And yes, yes, I am actually excited for the new Cassandra Clare book. Bite me.

May we all have an outstanding October!