It’s the first Thursday of the month. Time to report!
What’s the best book you read in October 2023 and why did you love it?
It doesn’t have to be a newly published book, or even SFF, or even fiction. We just want to share some great reading material.
Feel free to post a full review of the book here, or a link to the review on your blog, or just write a few sentences about why you thought it was awesome.
And don’t forget that we always have plenty more reading recommendations on our 5-Star SFF page.
One commenter with a U.S. mailing address will choose one of these prizes:
- a FanLit T-shirt (we have sizes M, L, XL)
- a book from our stacks.
- a $5 Amazon gift card (this is the only option for non-USA addresses).
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I actually read a few fantasy books last month! I reread The Engineer by C.S. Poe, steampunk/magic-is-real set in the American West, because I absolutely love her contemporary Larkin/Doyle police procedural series. Eh. I did rate it 4 stars this go-around. I’ll try the next book at some point. OTOH, Larkin is a cold case detective in NYC. When he was a young man, he suffered a traumatic brain injury which gave him near perfect memory, including emotional recall of past events which can be debilitating. Doyle is also a police detective but works as an artist. The mysteries are tricky and bound up in the history of the city.
Another series called Big Bad Wolf by Charlie Adhara, Agent Cooper Dayton is a human member of an FBI offshoot, Bureau of Special Investigations. It’s known, but not widely that werewolves are real. He’s teamed up with a werewolf agent as new era of working in tandem is starting. No MPREG, but some mention of “alpha” ability. It kept getting recced and I like police procedurals so I asked if the main character keeps getting special powers/powering up and was reassured that was not the case! (I was thinking about Anita Blake and her (and everyone else’s) continual power-ups).
Finally, someone recommended The Lodestar of Ys by Amy Rae Durreson. I haven’t read it yet, but I read several of her shorts: The Holly Groweth Green (world war vet gets stranded over the holidays in a remote house with a charming but old-fashioned host in rural England), Gaudete (not fantasy, comtemporary about two people reconnecting during the holiday season after years apart), and Emyr’s Smile, which is set in the same world as Lodestar of Ys, but on a remote island where traveling between them is done by airship (sad and grumpy shopkeeper and rolling stone artist make a connection).
And, finally, just because…these are contemporary, MM with neurodivergent/ace/demi. Ada Maria Soto’s His Quiet Agent, Merlin in the Library, and Agents in Winter. Arthur is an analyst in an unnamed agency like the CIA. When he changes floors, he tries a little desperately to make connections but just comes across as weird. He ends up trying to figure out the person everyone calls The Alien. Martin had a crazy childhood and finds the Agency relatively easy to work at–interesting puzzles, no one bothers him, etc. Arthur starts asking Martin about what he’s reading, trying to get him to eat more than the 6 apple slices he usually eats, and so on. All 3 are relatively short and it’s a somewhat low-key friendship/maybe love story that occurs over a long period between two messed up people. Arthur has his own messed up childhood.
I’ve just read “14” by Peter Clines. I was really intrigued by the plot description, but did not know what the plot might entail–I thought from the plot write-up and the cover design that the book might be some kind of horror thriller. But it edged into Lovecraftian Eldritch horror. I see from searching this site that people here are quite familiar with Clines and a lot of his books.
I should have read it before the recent post about scary houses. The creepy historic 1895 L.A. apartment building in the book is pretty bizarre and memorable, sort of a steampunk “The Dakota.”
Nghi Vo’s Mammoths at the Gate was my pick for best fiction work of October, one of only two that I read. As in the previous novellas in the Singing Hills cycle, the story is subdued but artfully constructed, in this case in its portrayal of what wandering Cleric Chih finds when they finally return to their monastery. Each tale in the series is pleasingly told, with a moral or two to be drawn if you’d care to, without trying to wow you with high drama. The second work was The Other Passenger, a 1940s horror-adjacent short story collection by John Keir Cross, which was a little too unsympathetic in the author’s portrayal of his characters. Am taking a short break from M. A. Carrick’s Labyrinth’s Heart, the source of most of my reading struggles for the month, in order to read Thomas Frank’s Listen, Liberal (an analysis of how the Democratic party repudiated the working class as a base in favor of affluent, highly educated professionals). At this rate I am not going to get to my goal of 100 fiction books read in 2023. Maybe it’s time to admit that old age is having an effect, although reading more nonfiction has also gotten in the way. Next up: what I expect to be a difficult though short read, Alan Garner’s Treacle Walker; plus Robert Aickman’s collection Cold Hand in Mine, and Alex Grecian’s novel Red Rabbit.
If It Bleeds by Stephen King – I enjoyed all four novellas in this collection. Just learned that Mike Flanagan is making a series adaptation from one of the novellas, “The Life of Chuck.” Should be a good one. My favorites in the collection were “If It Bleeds” because Holly Gibney is one of my favorite characters, and “Rat” because it was about a writer, and it was compelling.
There is renovation at my place, so not a lot of reading happened last month. I think I will go with the true-crime comic book ‘Did You Hear What Eddie Gein Done?’ by Eric Powell and Harold Schechter which explore the Gein family and the creation of Ed Gein. I wasn’t too familiar with the name and knew he was the inspiration for Psycho, but didn’t realize how much more influential he was on the whole horror movie genre. And what a dark and haunting story that is! The kind you find yourself thinking about it with a little bit of chill.
Elric of Melnibone (The Elric Saga #1) and The Sailor on the Seas of Fate (The Elric Saga #2) by Michael Moorcock.
I’d heard of this series for decades and finally found 4 of the 6 books in a discount bookstore. I loved these first two books. Reading them was like discovering a great band from the ’60s that you can tell were a major influence on current musicians. Both books are very short, but the world building is vivid and clear. I wish I had started this series a long time ago.
Best genre book for me in October was The Fragile Threads of Power by V.E. Schwab
Best non-fiction book (and best book overall) was Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution by Cat Bohannon
The third part of the Avatar: The Last Airbender graphic novel trilogy “The Search” was a roller-coaster of emotions with a series of major revelations about Ursa and her family, and even Koh the Face Stealer turns out to have skeletons in his closet. Azula’s escape by the end of the story sets up more graphic novels to come.
“The Elder Machine” represents a delve into themes of psychological horror in the fourth book of Goldeen Ogawa’s “Professor Odd” series, with the reader dropped into a scenario where for some reason the titular professor’s companion Alistair Bane is supposedly living a normal life with no Professor Odd in sight, until he’s confronted by hallucinations and nightmares that make it clear all is not as it seems.
Note: I accidentally called the book “Reversible Errors” by the title “Reversible Injuries” in last month’s comment, getting it mixed with the book before it, “Personal Injuries”.
The next Kindle County legal thriller by Scott Turow following “Reversible Errors” is the simply named “Limitations”. This one features the same protagonist as “Personal Injuries”, George Mason, at a much later time in his life where he is now a judge rather than a defense attorney. However, with a combination of a uniquely disturbing case, his wife being diagnosed, and a series of threatening emails, his comfortable life begins to unravel.
The Sunlit Man By Brandon Sanderson. Written for his fans of the cosmere, it was a great end to his kickstarter campaign.
Librarian’s Apprentice, if you live in the USA, you win a Fan Lit T-shirt (please specify 1st and 2nd preferred sizes) OR a book of your choice from our stacks, OR a $5 Amazon gift card. If your address is outside of the USA, you will get a $5 Amazon gift card.
Please contact me (Marion) with your choice and a US address. Happy reading!