What I Read – October 2025

Read:

Pick a Colour – Souvankham Thammavongsa (Knopf Canada, 2025) (narrated by Zoe Doyle)

White Nights – Fyodor Dostoevsky (Random House UK, 2025) (narrated by Luke Thompson)

After Birth – Elisa Albert (Mariner Books, 2015)

The Moonstone – Wilkie Collins (Penguin Classics, 1998)

Ripeness – Sarah Moss (MacMillan Audio, 2025) (narrated by Flora Montgomery)

The Bewitching – Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Del Rey, 2025)

Consider Yourself Kissed – Jessica Stanley (Doubleday Canada, 2025)

Did Not Finish:

A Dangerous Friendship – Robin Merle

I kept forgetting about this book. There’s something I really enjoy about books that focus on intense female friendships and so I was interested in this book. But I made it about halfway through and never felt like I had a good grounding of who these characters were.

Currently Reading:

The Fellowship of the Ring – J.R.R. Tolkien

Palace Walk – Naguib Mahfouz

Song of the Sun God – Shankari Chandran

2025 Reading Goals

Pages Read: 23, 710 (1, 455 in October)

Hours Listened: 296 hours, 3 minutes (17 hours, 39 minutes in October)

Goliaths Conquered: 7 (The Moonstone, at 478 pages, is a little under my 500 page threshold but I’m counting it anyway for October)

Translated Works: 13 (White Nights translated from Russian)

Pre-2024 TBR: 22 (White Nights from 2016 and Moonstone from 2023)

Current TBR: 131 (previously 136)

Thoughts:

My total was a little smaller this month at 7 books read, which I’m at least partially blaming on the fact that I’m about halfway through two very large books – Palace Walk and Song of the Sun God. I’m enjoying them both and learning a lot but neither is a book that I find easy to absorb large amounts of at a time. I tried to balance out my reading with somewhat lighter books like The Bewitching and Consider Yourself Kissed. No real standouts for October. I liked what I read but wasn’t blown away by anything. I enjoyed The Moonstone and can recognize its place in literary history but I also felt like it went on too long. After Birth was a powerful exploration of postpartum maternal life and it’s the sort of book that I’m glad exists but it also didn’t speak to me personal or my experiences.

What’s Next:

I picked up a copy of Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively on a friend’s recommendation and am waiting to finish Palace Walk before I start it. (They’re both set in Cairo though with, I imagine, very different characters.) I think my next audiobook will be an ALC I have of Eimear McBride’s new novel, The City Changes Its Face. And, of course, I have one more month to work on my 10 Books of Autumn List.

Let’s see how I’m doing:

1. The Postcard – Anne Berest (translation)
2. Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander – Thomas Merton (non-fiction
3. Visions From San Francisco Bay – Cseslaw Milosz (translation, non-fiction)
4. A Theatre for Dreamers – Polly Samson
5. The Paper Wife – Linda Spalding
6. Divisadero – Michael Ondaatje (re-read)
7. A Horse at Night – Amina Cain (non-fiction
8. The Bewitching – Silvia Moreno-Garcia (ARC)
9. The Moonstone – Wilkie Collins
10. The Boy From the Sea – Garrett Carr