I’m praying that October is a better reading month than September, or I’ll never complete my Goodreads goal! I have so many magical / creepy / just downright perfect books to read this month, and I’d love to get to as many as possible!

• The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle – Stuart Turton
• City of Ghosts – Victoria Schwab
• The Dark Descent Of Elizabeth Frankenstein – Kiersten White
• Stalking Jack the Ripper – Kerri Maniscalco
• Black-eyed Susans – Julia Heaberlin
• The Wicked Deep – Shea Ernshaw
• Bruja Born – Zoraida Córdova
• The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
• Wicked Like a Wildfire and Fierce Like a Firestorm (preordered) – Lana Popović

 

I realise, in spite of a good start to the month, I’ve been a bit absent in my posts. I mean, there are several reasons why that I don’t really want to go into too much (just know that struggling with mental health is absolutely exhausting) and also that so far in August, I’ve read 15 books. FIFTEEN. That’s a new record for me, I’m so proud. This summer I’ve got my Goodreads goal from 19 books behind schedule to 4. How, I don’t know.

September is going to be a strange month I think, I’m not too sure what to expect in terms of time I can spend reading. I’ll be going back to uni, and there’s all the generic admin / catching up / initial reading / appointments / packing that come with that, and I’ve got various things planned as well.

And I need to finish the first draft of my dissertation. Crap.

So, in short, I don’t know how many books I’ll get to, and I’ve been so much of a mood reader recently (more than normal I guess) that it’s hard to pinpoint exactly what I’ll get to in September, so I’ve listed a few that I’d like to get to sooner rather than later. The first two books on this list are for uni though, so those are a given.

• Journals – R. F. Langley
• Complete Poems – R. F. Langley
• Girl Made of Stars – Ashley Herring Blake
• Emergency Contact – Mary H. K. Choi
• Crown of Midnight – Sarah J. Maas (I’m feeling like trying to pick one up every month from this series)
• Marlena – Julie Buntin
• The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender – Leslye Walton (After reading The Price Guide to the Occult in August and adoring it, it’s about time I picked this one up!)
• Only Love Can Break Your Heart – Katherine Webber
• All These Beautiful Strangers – Elizabeth Klehfoth (I’m really enjoying thrillers at the moment for some reason)
• Neverworld Wake – Marisha Pessl

I desperately want to try and catch up on my Goodreads challenge this month, and though I won’t be on track, at least I’ll be heading there. I’ve managed to bring it up from 19 books behind schedule to 10/11 in the past six weeks, so fingers crossed I can bring that number down further.

LucytheReader is hosting a readathon this month – the Classicsathon – which I am going to join in, if only to read one or two books! The aim is to read as many classics as possible, but I want to read a variety in August before uni starts again, so I may just aim for one or two.

I’m so indecisive at the moment, and also worried that I may be going into a reading slump, so I’ve kept this as short as possible so that I can just pick up whatever I may be in the mood for! I’m in the mood for either Rebecca or Jamaica Inn by Daphne Du Maurier, though I can’t decide between them so I’ll see how I feel when I come to pick one up.

• Les Miserables – Victor Hugo (I’m about two-thirds of the way through this already and would just like to read some more of it!)
• The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
• Only Love Can Break Your Heart – Katherine Webber
• It Only Happens in the Movies – Holly Bourne
• A Sky Painted Gold – Laura Wood

I am officially finished with my second year of university now, and it’s such a relief. It’s been undeniably difficult in so many ways, but I have an amazing stack of books that I am desperate to get to and can now work my way through! I’ve come home for a while now, though I’ll be heading back to uni soon, but I have brought plenty of books with me and here are some that I want to get to most:

• The Wicker King – K. Ancrum
• Love, Hate and Other Filters – Samir Ahmed
• Murder Most Unladylike and Arsenic for Tea – Robin Stevens
• Clean – Juno Dawson
• Another Place – Matthew Crow
• Leah on the Offbeat – Becky Albertalli

I have brought more than just these back with me (self-control goes out of the window as I now drive myself back and forth to uni), but realistically these are the ones I’m most like to get to and finish whilst I am home. I have admittedly nearly finished Leah on the Offbeat (and it is amazing), and I just cannot wait to read all of the books I’ve been staring wistfully at for the past few months.

As I write this post, I am three books behind my Goodreads goal, meaning that in order to catch up by the end of the month, I need to read 11 books in March. 11 books is very ambitious for me, especially as I only read four in February and I will have uni work to be getting on with too. However, I do want to focus on getting through some review books from NetGalley, and I find them a lot quicker to get through, so fingers crossed!

Uni books

• NW – Zadie Smith
• Hot Milk – Deborah Levy
• Pond – Claire-Louise Bennett
• Twelfth Night – William Shakespeare

Physical books

• The Exact Opposite of Okay – Laura Steven
• Turtles All the Way Down – John Green
• Murder Most Unladylike – Robin Stevens (I actually have almost the entire series from the library, but we’ll see how many I get through)

NetGalley books

• A Thousand Perfect Notes – C. G. Drews
• The Poet X – Elizabeth Acevedo
• From a Low and Quiet Sea – Donal Ryan
• Children of Blood and Bone – Tomi Adeyemi
• The Astonishing Colour of After – Emily X. R. Pan
• Clean – Juno Dawson
• The Taste of Blue Light – Lydia Ruffles
• Love, Hate & Other Filters – Samira Ahmed
• Piecing Me Together – Renée Watson

So I have decided to challenge myself this weekend to read as much as possible. I love the idea of the 24 in 48 readathon, though realistically I will not be able to read that much as I have other things that I need to do – go to the gym, cook, some uni work etc.

However, I’m aiming for roughly 8 hours a day of reading, and I have created a short (ish) TBR to work through:

• The Quickening Maze – Adam Foulds
• Goodbye, Perfect – Sara Barnard
• Things a Bright Girl Can Do – Sally Nicholls
• Percy Jackson and the Titan’s Curse – Rick Riordan
• A Skinful of Shadows – Francis Hardinge

Though I have already started some of them, I don’t think that I’ll have time to make it through all of these, but they are the ones at the top of my list – I will be seeing Sally Nicholls and Francis Hardinge the following Tuesday and I would love to have read at least one of the books in time!

 

Who knows how many I will get to this month, I’m just hoping I can stay on track with uni reading if I’m honest! I also need to catch up on Rick Riordan’s books for the read-along I am participating in.

Uni books:

• Harvest – Jim Crace
• The Quickening Maze – Adam Foulds
• N-W – Zadie Smith
• Romeo and Juliet – Shakespeare
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Shakespeare
• Twelfth Night – Shakespeare
• The Winter’s Tale – Shakespeare
• Twenty-First-Century Fiction: A Critical Introduction – Peter Boxall

Epic Riordan Readalong: 

• Percy Jackson and the Titan’s Curse
• Percy Jackson and the Battle of the Labyrinth
• Percy Jackson and the Last Olympian
• Heroes of Olympus – The Lost Hero
• Heroes of Olympus – The Son of Neptune
• Heroes of Olympus – The Mark of Athena
• Heroes of Olympus – The House of Hades

It’s after typing this list out that I realise how far behind I am…

This is a long shot, but any extras I may manage to fit in:

• Call Me By Your Name – André Aciman
• Simon Vs The Homo Sapiens Agenda – Becky Albertalli
• Goodbye, Perfect – Sara Barnard
• Things a Bright Girl Can Do – Sally Nicholls