I did it, you guys! Not only did I catch up on my reading this month, but I’m three books AHEAD! I’m so excited! Now if I can just keep this momentum up and finish out the year strong, that would be great… October should be a good reading month, but I’m contemplating doing NaNoWriMo again this year, which will probably make my reading tank through November. That being said, I’m going to really enjoy this brief moment of being “ahead”.

September was really just the perfect storm of finishing up a lot of books that I had been reading for a while, and also getting swept head over heels into a mystery series. See, reading too many books at once does pay off eventually! 😉 If nothing else, it should motivate me to focus a little bit more on finishing books rather than just adding new ones every time I hit the library.

The Books I Read

1. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. This was my second time through this book. The first time through (a year or two ago now) I listened to the audiobook. It was fantastic, and I didn’t realize how much the audible narration helped to keep the multiple timelines and storylines from becoming confusing… until I read the actual book. It is a fantastic novel, but it is a tad bit confusing in the beginning before you sort out the story lines.
2. As You Like It by William Shakespeare. I don’t know that counting plays really counts, but I have had a goal to read more Shakespeare this year, so I’m counting it. The more I read Shakespeare, the more I love him. He is witty, memorable, and eloquent, and I love reading through his work and realizing how many phrases have trickled down from him into common language or my favorite books.
3. A Dying Fall (Ruth Galloway #5) by Elly Griffiths. Aaaaand here we go with my insanity this month. I warned you all last month that every once in a while I find a mystery series and absolutely can.not.stop until I’ve read them all. Thankfully (for my more productive reading, anyways) this series only has 12 books out right now.
4. Structuring Your Novel: Essential Keys for Writing an Outstanding Story by K. M. Weiland. And NaNoWriMo prep! This was a fantastic book about developing plot and scene in a novel. If I ever manage to apply what I’ve read, I just might write a novel worth reading! Ha!
5. The Outcast Dead (Ruth Galloway #6) by Elly Griffiths.
6. The Weather Machine: A Journey Inside the Forecast by Andrew Blum. This was a fascinating look at the world weather forecasting model, the history of weather forecasting, and the potential for the future. Fantastic read–educational, but colloquial enough to be grasped easily by somebody with no background in meteorology. I read it especially to prepare myself for our next unit in science–we’ll be learning all about the weather!
7. The Ghost Fields (Ruth Galloway #7) by Elly Griffiths.
8. Understood Betsy by Dorothy Canfield Fisher. This was a read aloud with my kids, but it was so lovely and heart warming that I was just as excited as they were to read it every time. Highly recommend, especially as a read-aloud with youngsters.
9. The Woman in Blue (Ruth Galloway #8) by Elly Griffiths.
10. The Chalk Pit (Ruth Galloway #9) by Elly Griffiths. As I looked over my goodreads for this post, I was pretty proud of myself for alternating between my fluffy fiction and other reads… and now, never mind.
11. The Dark Angel (Ruth Galloway #10) by Elly Griffiths.
12. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C. S. Lewis. Another read aloud with the kids, but again, one that I am always happy to reread.
13. Mother Culture by Karen Andreola. This was a really lovely, meditative read. I read a chapter a morning for the last several months and gleaned a lot of really good, inspiring thoughts from it, not only about home education, but about how I want to keep our home atmosphere and myself.
14. The Stone Circle (Ruth Galloway #11) by Elly Griffiths.
15. Dark Witch (The Cousins O’Dwyer Trilogy #1) by Nora Roberts. I looked up books set in Ireland, because we’re planning a trip there for next year and so that’s a reading theme now, and this trilogy popped up. Nora Roberts is generally more racy than I like to read, but these are really fun fantasy reads, so I skip over certain parts and just enjoy the story. This was a fun one!

And that’s a wrap! Whew! That was a long one! Good for you, if you stuck it out through the whole post. What were your favorite reads in September?