October TBR Stack

Fall reading is some of my favorite reading. As for so many others, fall is my favorite season so I'm usually feeling very positive and open to whatever my reading brings. That's always enhanced by the warm fuzzies I get from the fireplace, cool air, warm spicy drinks, sweaters, chunky hand-knitted socks and my favorite blankets. And I don't really get into Halloween, aside from the giddy excitement of my kids for dressing up in costumes and trick-or-treating, but I do love reading some spooky and macabre stuff to celebrate in my own bookish way. For this October I think I had a pretty good mix of heavy, fun and monstrous stuff.  So far I am a little behind in completing all of these thanks to some personal struggles at the beginning of the month but I'm happy with where I'm at nonetheless.

My ginger boy really wants to knock this stack over.

I selected The Air You Breathe by Frances de Pontes Peebles and Fruit of the Drunken Tree by Ingrid Rojas Contreras. Both of these titles I chose for honoring National Hispanic Heritage Month (Sept 15 - Oct 15). I've always read books by people of color and people from different countries and cultural or ethnic backgrounds, but one of my readerly goals is to increase the frequency with which I do that and diversify my bookshelves even more by reading at least one every single month. I have already finished The Air You Breathe and will soon post my thoughts about it.

I have also finished Time's Convert by Deborah Harkness, which is the fourth book in the All Souls Universe series. I was excited to read this as I loved the first three books beginning with A Discovery of Witches. I'll talk more about it in my end-of-the-month wrap-up but I included it because it's witches and vampires and 'tis the season, am I right?

I love to read Poe every year around Halloween and that's a tradition that continues this year because it's just perfect macabre reading that suits the mood of the season. At the bottom of this stack is European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman by Theodora Goss. It's a chunker for sure, but so far I find that it reads quickly. It's the sequel to The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter, part of The Extraordinary Adventures of the Athena Club series. I really enjoyed the first book, which I wrote a brief review about here on here on Goodreads and I'm digging the second one as well. It's not particularly spooky or scary but it deals with monsters, after a fashion, so I thought it would fit in well with my fall reading.

I'm not sure I'll finish Fruit of the Drunken Tree, though not through any fault of the book. It's a lovely book, I'll likely just run out of time. The same goes for Transcription by Kate Atkinson. These will be finished at some point in the future, they just won't make the October wrap-up, I'm afraid. We shall see.

Pleased To Meet You

Thought I'd kick this blog off with a little about me and my reading preferences since this is a bookish blog. I'm Jessica, living with a husband, two kids and three cats in the Midwest. I am an unrecoverable bibliomaniac and a caffeine addict. My hope is to connect with folks like me who live with their noses in a book almost all the time and prefer the company of fictional characters to real people, also almost all the time. I hope to start a dialogue here where we share our love for a genuine page-turner, our bookish goals and aspirations and of course recommendations for more books we can all fall in love with or throw against the wall. My TBR list is probably as long as an unabridged copy of Les Mis.

As for my reading preferences, I love stories with really crazy M. Night Shyamalan-style plot twists and deeply flawed protagonists. I love books with characters that I hate. I'm not crazy about happy endings, unless they make sense and are really well-written or I've just fallen deeply in love with the characters and want nothing but the best for them. I read across most genres and I don't judge anyone's reading preferences. For me, a book doesn't have to give me warm fuzzies, it just needs to be written well, have a great story populated by interesting characters, and it needs to make me feel something. In fact, some of the best books I've read have been those that I have flung across the room with rage or disgust or have tear stains on most of the pages.

I don't always read the latest, most-hyped books when they first come out. You can often find me living on the backlist, reading whatever strikes my fancy. I enjoy reading from across a diverse breadth of authors from different counties and ethnic or cultural backgrounds, and my reading preferences tend toward the dark, weird and sometimes violent or crude. I don't shy away from books about tragedy, criminal behavior, sex or unconventional beliefs or lifestyles. That's not to say all of the books I recommend here will contain these types of situations, and I'll try to disclaim those that some might find disturbing, but I operate on the assumption that we are all grownups here, so you may come across bad language and adult themes in some of the books I read as well as some of my posts here.  I do not believe in censorship, and banned books will be wholeheartedly celebrated here. I believe reading is a highly subjective pursuit and no one can truly predict whether you will like a book unless they are psychic or knw you really, really well. I am neither so while I will recommend books, my recommendations are based on my own interests, perspectives, opinions and experiences. I can't promise that we'll always agree but I will always listen to a different viewpoint if it is presented in a mature way, makes logical sense and doesn't involve personal attacks.

So comment away, as I'm excited to meet some of you fellow book nerds out there on the interwebs. I look forward to many bookish conversations to come. I'm always open to recommendations, questions and comments so feel free to share. I will post about authors I love, bookish news, events, web sites, other blogs, trends, my neverending TBR, my DNFs, adaptations and the occasional bookish product or Etsy shop owner. And I will write about and defend the existence of libraries because I think they are critecally important in our society and our history, in addition to being sacred places that are built out of and house pure magic.

I intended for this introductory post to be brief but I failed, as I probably will most of the time. Brevity is not my gift but I hope that will not deter you, dear readers and fellow lovers of books, who get just as excited and intoxicated at the smell of an old book as I do. Now, go chip away at that stack of books piling up on your bedside table!