I just finished Babel which was extremely good but ooof, not the right book for this moment in my life.
Can people suggest books that are light and fun but still smart? Genre unimportant.
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Super random suggestions. Sometimes I turn to pop science like Your Inner Fish. If you are not opposed to children’s books, Big Tree by Brian Selznick or The Eyes and the Impossible.
I don’t know what you consider light and fun. The Bandit Queens, Murderbot Diaries, Piranesi?
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The Lady Astronaut series by Mary Robinette Kowal? Alternate history about the space race in 1950s America, with all the bullshit that it implies, but it is addressed pretty well, in my opinion. I think I got this series from the forum, so may already be on your radar. A new book in the series just got released!
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Travis Baldree is masterful at light and fun. Or S A Chakraborty.
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Seconding Murderbot for light and fun and engaging.
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According to my massive archive of digital books I have five books by this author. Winning!
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I love this series and did not know a new one had come out o.o thank you
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this reread of Orwell’s Roses is going really well, and I think I’ll get it for my bookshelves.
The section on Stalin is a little too relevant for this time alas.
I should probably avoid anything covering Robespierre
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Coming in here late but I’m on book 2 of the Scarlet Revolution series by Genevieve Cogman and they are a very fun read! The Scarlet Pimpernel but with vampires basically.
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Hahaha. I started listening to a book I thought was by the author of The Windup Girl. About 5 hours in (to a 35 hr audiobook) I was like “hmm, this is a very different style than I was expecting, but it’s good, I’ll keep going!”
It’s by Christopher Paolini, who is the author of Eragon and is decidedly NOT Paolo Bacigalupi 
I think the Paolo parts of their names got conflated in my head.
I’ll still finish the book, it’s pretty interesting, but a lot of things have already happened in the first 10 hours. I have no idea how there are another 25 hours of book left!
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Haha those are VERY different authors
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Love the Disreputable Dog
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Check out my fine selection of spooky children’s books about specifically hungry ghosts, just in time for October.
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Index, A History of the : a bookish adventure from medieval manuscripts to the digital age
Perhaps influenced by having boxed up all my books and thinking about the room to come, I have been diving into books about the history of the bookcase, of the library, and now of indexes.
This was the best of the batch, and I will look to add it to our shelves.
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Do you have thoughts on any of these titles?
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I got super bogged down in The Sea-Ringed World and now I’m falling further behind on my reading goal. Boo. Enshittification, I enjoyed but it made me mad.
Now I am bogged down again in another book for my mythology and traditional stories project at work! This one is called Summer of the Mariposas and it’s like a girls’ retelling of the Odyssey? But something about adolescent girls being pursued by monsters for being disrespectful is Not Great and somehow it’s just not a smooth read.
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We Have Always Lived in the Castle is one of the greatest books of all time. A Sweet Sting of Salt was not something I planned on reading but it jumped out at me in a library display saying sapphic, feminist, selkies, 19th century, and since those are some of my favorite things I had to read it—I have no complaints about that choice and will be looking for more from Rose Sutherland. Thief of Night and What Stalks the Deep are both delightful sequels by two of my established favorite authors.
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Not a huge reading month for me. I spent most of the month reading about medical ethics instead of reading for fun. Two re-reads and two new books. Definitely not going to hit my 2025 reading goal, but trying to just enjoy reading as much as I have time for, and not stress about trying to fit a ton more books in Nov/Dec
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