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but I made up for it in October...

My September reads:

- A Baby's Bones by Rebecca Alexander- Set...somewhere in England, a pregnant archaeologist discovers human remains in an old well, on a property experiencing some strange phenomena. The past of course collides with the present before too long...I don't want to say more because it would slightly spoil the story. What I will say is this: what is up with England's obsession with the occult? This is, I believe, the third book I've read in the last year that involved demons or satanic rituals or dark evil (as opposed to light and cheery evil <g>). It's a loooooong book and a fairly satisfying read; I enjoyed the ending very much. MAJOR TRIGGER WARNING: there is a rather graphic bit involving not so nice treatment of a cat and her kittens that really upset me...and I'm not one to get easily upset at bad things happening to fictitious animals. B+...would've been an A- except for the bit with the felines.

Awake the Floating City by Susanna Kwan - I picked this one up before I vowed to stop reading books by Gen Z authors...it's a story, set in a future where San Francisco is all but underwater, of a young woman who's about to abandon her city apartment until she gets a request to be a caregiver for one of the building's "super seniors". The premise was interesting, as was the basic theme of how our memories and experiences shape who we are and how we need compassion in trying times--but the execution was not great. The book dragged. I didn't care for our heroine; she was in a bad situation and was offered multiple ways out of it but kept refusing to accept the lifeline (for...reasons, though it was admittedly better by the end). There was WAY too much description of the heroine's art, both past and present. All in all, a slow burn that only barely pays off in the end (and the sci-fi angle was completely unnecessary). C...maybe a C-.

My October reads:

Our Endless Numbered Days by Claire Fuller - A London girl is taken by her survivalist father to live in the forest after he tells her the rest of the world is "gone". Years later, she returns home. The book alternates between the past and the present, between her time with her father, scrabbling out a living, and the present, where she tries to rekindle her relationship with her mother and reconcile her feelings towards her father, not to mention get to know the brother born just months after she was taken. Readers over at Goodreads were divided; some loved the book and some were disturbed by the admittedly horrific things that happened while our heroine was in the wild. I was more "meh" on the book...I wasn't really bothered by the various revelations (and indeed predicted some of them) but I *did* think the author should've done a bit better job with the set up. The payoff took WAY too long to get to (literally the last few pages of the book), and I would've appreciated a chapter or two to sit with the dark secrets that were revealed in the end. B-.

The Book of Dreams by Nina George - Nina George is one of my favorite authors. I read, and enjoyed, The Little Paris Bookshop and The Little Village of Book Lovers (I'm a sucker for books about books, libraries, bookshops, book discussion groups, etc.). The Book of Dreams might been even better than those two. We begin with a man who saves a young girl from drowning in a river only to be hit by a car moments after he pulls her to safety. Hovering between life and death, the man relives key moments in his life and experiences what would've been had he made different choices. Meanwhile, his son--whose mother kept him away from his father--and his former lover become friends when they run into each other while visiting our hero in his hospital bed. A beautifully written book about life, loss and choices made...solid A.

The Golden Age of Italian Jews by Geno Segre - An excellent example of "vanity publishing"...this is a slender, non-fiction book about how Jews in Italy overcame prejudice and rose to positions of power between the mid 1840s and the early 1940s. It's mostly a work of vanity because the author is related to some of those politicians, scientists, scholars and architects. The chapters are only a few pages long and it could've been better proof read. I'm not even sure why I picked this up at the library--its place of prominence on the new book shelf perhaps?--and it didn't really hold my interest. C-, but it's a nice memento for the author's children and grandchildren, I'm sure.

The Staircase in the Woods by Chuck Wendig - An excellent spooky read for October...a quintet of high school friends, bound by an "oath" to always stick together and protect one another, discover a staircase in the middle of the woods. One of them climbs it...and vanishes. The rest drift apart but 20 years later, when the staircase mysteriously reappears, one of the group convinces the others to climb the staircase and search for their missing friend. I can't say any more without giving away the plot but I will say I loved the suspense, the different characterizations (though once again, there was IMO an unnecessary bit about how one of the friends grew up to follow a fictitious politician that's clearly a stand in for our current President and one of the other friends hates him now for it...) and the various realizations the different characters come to as the story progresses. I also loved the ending. Solid A for me.

Guts by Kristen Johnson- Not your typical celebrity autobiography...Kristen Johnson may be best known for playing the alien Sally on Third Rock From the Sun (she also currently plays the sister in Chuck Lorre's sitcom "Leanne" on Netflix). She's also a former alcohol and drug addict...and very, very funny. Instead of writing about her life, she writes about the moment she hit rock bottom, requiring major surgery while in London to perform in a play. Despite the narrow focus, the book is pretty well-paced, and Johnson never wallows in self-pity. Instead, she's brutally honest, but also kind of hilarious. I'll give her an A, and accolades for staying clean all these years.