What We Read in September

September was a crazy reading month for me. I didn't realize how many books I read until I started working on this post. I know I got a lot of reading done in Charlotte as I read on the plane rides and read more at night since I didn't have work commitments. But this level of reading is NOT typical for me, and a couple of books were very short! I read 12 books - that is not typical! Below are my 6 favorites, 3 that were pretty good and 3 that were ok to meh. 

Best books of September: 

These 6 books were all wonderful. Flying Solo and Nora Goes Off Script are lighter rom/com type of books although they have plenty of depth. I preferred Linda Holmes' previous book (Evvie Drake Starts Over) but Flying Solo was still great and I appreciated the focus on a single protagonist who is approaching 40. The Unsinkable Greta James is about a daughter who goes on a cruise with her dad in place of her mom who recently passed away. Grief features prominently in the storyline. Mom Milestones is a delightful graphic memoir about parenting. I've see the author's work on Cup of Jo so was excited to read it. You can easily read this in one sitting but I tried to savor it. She sums up motherhood so perfectly. This would be an excellent gift for a baby shower or for the mom on her child's first birthday or something like that. These Silent Woods was my book club pick for September and almost everyone really liked it. It's about a father and daughter living in seclusion in Maine. It's a suspense novel and has a strong sense of foreboding through the book. The father suffers from PTSD from his time in the military and I thought that aspect was well-done. Lastly, Heating and Cooling is another short book you could read in a sitting. It's a collection of "micro memoirs." Some are are paragraph, some are a couple of pages. Shout-out to Nicole and NGS for motivating me to read this!

Here are pics of a few pages of Mom Milestones! 

I took a picture of this to use in conversations with Paul about his day

The following 3 books were pretty good. Not my favorites for the month but I enjoyed all 3. 

The last 3 were just ok to meh. All This Could Be Different was raved about by a podcast guest. It's a coming-of-age story and I may have aged out of that genre because I struggled to find sympathy for the protagonist. Never Simple was an interesting memoir about a toxic mother/daughter relationship. It feels weird to give a memoir a lower rating but I didn't love it. It had "The Glass Castle" vibes given the trauma of her childhood.

What Paul Read:

Will continues to take more interest in books but the ones I'm featuring this month are books Paul enjoyed. 

This first one was my favorite and I've since requested everything the author has written! She combines English and Spanish so that makes it extra fun to read since Paul understands Spanish and I'm learning Spanish through Duo Lingo (more on that in another post!). This book is about a daughter needing to use the bathroom and the family rushing to find someone. Surely it will be relatable to anyone who has kids! I heard about this book from a kid lit substack newsletter I subscribe to! You do not need to know Spanish to enjoy this book. She sprinkles words in and you can tell from the context what the word means in English and she includes a translation of all the words at the end. 

This is a book I randomly pulled off the shelf in the library. It is a really sweet story about a bear that wakes up from his winter sleep and is confused about who he is - is he a bird? A moose? A fox? It is very sweet. 

This is another book I randomly pulled off the shelf. It is a good Halloween type of read given the focus on bones. It's about a skeleton in the ocean that is piecing itself back together. It's a fun way to teach kids the names of the different bones. 

Do any of these books sound appealing to you? Did you read anything great in September?