September 2025 Book List

 I've been reading a lot lately.  I haven't had a lot of crafting projects that I want to stick with right now--I feel like I'm unraveling projects more than I work on them--but I have been wanting to read.  I've started more than I've finished, but I still worked my way through a lot of books this month that I've really been wanting to read (or re-read).  As always, library books are marked with an asterisk.

What my Instagram looks like currently: basic projects, some of which are yarn-based.

The Need, Helen Phillips.*

In Cold Blood, Truman Capote.

The Women and the Men, Nikki Giovanni.*

The Sequel, Jean Hanff Korelitz.*

Newspaperwoman of the Ozarks: The Life and Times of Lucille Morris Upton, Susan Croce Kelly.*

A Discovery of Witches, Deborah Harkness.*

The Small and the Mighty: Twelve Unsung Americans Who Changed the Course of History, from the Founding to the Civil Rights Movement, Sharon McMahon.*

What You Are Looking For Is In the Library, Michiko Aoyama, trans. Alison Watts.

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The Need: I would recommend this to my sister who likes to read and who is also a mom and she would be so mad at me.  I'll be thinking about it a long time.

In Cold Blood: I'm about 70 years late, but did you know about In Cold Blood? And how crazy the whole case was? And how good of a writer Truman Capote is?  And how good of a researcher and editor Harper Lee is?  Amazing.  Incredible.  I want to read biographies about everyone involved in this.

The Women and the Men: The one bit of poetry I read this month.  

The Sequel: I think this is supposed to be darkly funny?  I don't know.  I took it seriously.  I was rooting for the protagonist the whole time, though. She just wanted to be left alone!  People should have really, really left her alone.  Maybe I should have read The Plot first, but I was able to follow along well enough.  I'm sure I look forward to The Epilogue when that comes out.

Newspaperwoman of the Ozarks: what a life.  This is one of those thoroughly researched and faithfully repeated things that you see in local publishing (U of A Press did this one through a partnership with some Ozarks-loving association).  A labor of love and enthusiasm.

A Discovery of Witches: I read The Black Bird Oracle earlier this year and wow, A Discovery of Witches is so much more fun.

The Small and the Mighty: Sharon McMahon is an enthusiastic teacher and an engaging writer but she takes the long way around this barn to get to some of her points.  On the other hand, I liked learning about the other people involved in the twelve subjects' stories.  None of us do anything alone.  I was just a little impatient and this was a 14-day hold....and those automated emails from the library were awfully persistent.  

What You Are Looking For Is In the Library: this was sweet.  Hopeful.  Encouraging.  Warm.  I'll re-read it soon, probably.

My daughter takes piano lessons and I go to a nearby library and pick up books.  Sometimes I read them there, but libraries are pretty bustling places.  I also read while I wait for things to happen at work, in the car pickup line before we start moving and I think I'll lose my life 5 times in one block, working in the church pumpkin patch, before bed, when insomnia wakes me up but it's probably too late to go back to sleep.  I just want to read.