September In Review
The end of this month has been very busy, which means I haven't had a chance to do much blogging, but I strangely have managed to do a lot of reading - particularly in the last week, when I somehow got through nearly a novel a day. As with August there weren't a huge number of books that I absolutely loved this month, but there also weren't all that many DNFs.
While I largely took a break from the various shortlists I'd previously committed myself to reading, I somehow also found myself reading all of the books on the British Crime Writers' Association (CWA)'s Ian Fleming Steel Dagger award shortlist. The prize was awarded back in June and went to Jordan Harper for Everybody Knows, which was probably my favourite of the books on that list along with S.A. Cosby's All The Sinners Bleed. If I find time in the next few days, while my memory is fresh, I'll try and write some posts about those books.
Alongside those two, my favourite books this month were:
- The Siege of Burning Grass by Premee Mohammed
- The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden
- In The Blink of An Eye by Jo Callaghan
One of my biggest disappointments this month, which I may write about separately if I remember to, was M.L. Rio's Graveyard Shift. I really loved If We Were Villains when I read it, and in hindsight - and having now read The Secret History, too - I've grown to like it even more, so I was really looking forward to her new novella. Unfortunately it just didn't really land for me, feeling very half-finished - like it was the skeleton of a novel, rather than a proper novella. It's a shame, because I had high hopes.
I didn't manage to read much short fiction this month, which is disappointing, but I did manage to listen to a lot of music. My normal monthly playlist is here, and earlier today I started yet another blog to write about music specifically. We'll see how long that lasts.