LibraryRat

30. Golden Hill by Francis Spufford

Manhattan, 1746. Mr. Smith arrives at the counting-house with an order for 1000 pounds.

Why is he there? What's the money for?

Mr. Smith gets into all kinds of scrapes, and I really enjoyed following his story.

Really fun historical fiction.

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29. Real Life by Brandon Taylor

Wallace, a gay Black graduate student, finds himself at a crossroads after his father dies. An unexpected encounter with a straight white man brings things to a head one weekend.

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28. This Wretched Valley by Jenny Kiefer

Rock climbing trip goes wrong. Our protagonists can't get back to the car, no matter how long they walk. Also, ghosts. The land wants blood.

A good palate cleanser for me after a rough reading month in July.

🩸📚💙

27. Silence is My Mother Tongue by Sulaiman Addonia

Longlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction.

Solid novel about life in a refugee camp. I'm in a bit of a reading slump lately, and I never quite locked in to it. At least I finished it. Can't say that about some of my July reads.

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26. Nightmare Alley by William Lindsay Gresham

Small-time grifter Stan rises from magician in a carnival to Spiritualist preacher to the ultra-rich. Then he falls.

Stan is a dirtbag. The book is a bummer. But overall, a very well-written noir-adjacent story.

📚💙

25. The Haunting of Velkwood by Gwendolyn Kiste

Talitha returns to her old neighborhood, which has been been separate from our reality for the last twenty years. No one could enter or leave, except the three survivors.

Sad story about ghosts literal and figurative.

🩸📚💙

24. Blackwater Falls by Ausma Zehanat Khan

Detective Rahman is tasked with investigating the murder of a young woman whose body is found in a mosque.

Socially-conscious police procedural. Police corruption, racist Evangelicals, biker gangs, etc.

Good, but gets bogged down by info dumps.

⚡️📚💙

6/21/25 update:

Reading slump. Shit.

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23. The Ox-Bow Incident by Walter Van Tilburg Clark

Angry men search for a murderer to hang. But are they on the right track?

Peer pressure is bad. Left me thinking about the consequences of my actions for hours.

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BookTube is doing a "June on the The Range" event, where they read Westerns,so I figured I'd try it. May also be why you've been hearing about it.

This and Lonesome Dove have been coming up a lot

Reading The Ox-Bow Incident by Walter Van Tilburg Clark. Don't read many westerns, but I'm enjoying this one.

Had a horrible thought today. How often do I do things because an algorithm presented me with the idea?

Existential crisis Saturday night!

Good reading month! Expanding my reading outside of just horror has been beneficial for me this year. 💙📚

22. How To Stand Up To a Dictator by Maria Ressa

Memoir by the Nobel-winning journalist. Goes over her career, as well as how social media is used to attack journalists and spread lies.

Sobering, but not without hope for the future.

💙📚💡

21. Maeve Fly by C.J. Leede

Maeve likes routine. She plays a theme-park princess and lives with her grandma. But when Gideon comes to town, routines are upset. And Maeve has to grapple with the parts of herself that she tries to ignore.

Super-dark humor, sex, and murder.

A great debut.

💙📚🩸

20. Yellow Bird by Sierra Crane Murdoch

Lissa Yellow Bird searches for a missing oil worker. She's not long out of prison, and the oil boom on her reservation complicates things at all levels.

A little slow, but Lissa is super complicated and interesting.

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19. The Old Drift by Namwali Serpell

Three families are intertwined by an accident in Zambia. We follow these families over 100+ years, from British colonialism all the way to some light sci-fi.

Multi-generational epics aren't always my thing, but I dug this. Will look for more from Serpell.

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The Old Drift by Namwali Serpell. It's a generation-spanning family saga set in Zambia. Maybe a little magical realism in there, too?

Nice! I have it on my shelf. I'll try to get to it soon.

Haven't read NOITAT yet. But I loved Priestdaddy!

18. Excavations by Hannah Michell

The skyscraper where Sae's husband is working construction collapses, but no one knows where he is. She goes searching for answers, and ends up with many more questions about her husband.

A decent thriller. I did learn a bit about South Korean history.

💙📚 ⚡️

Changing Hands in Phoenix

17. All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days by Rebecca Donner

The nonfiction story of Mildred Harnack, the American PhD student who was a central part of the resistance to Hitler in Berlin.

I was afraid this might be a slog. But it flies by. Regular people fighting back against tyranny.

💙📚 💡

All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days by Rebecca Donner

Highly-readable nonfiction about an American woman involved in the German resistance to Hitler.

16. All the Fiends of Hell by Adam Nevill

Karl wakes to find that everyone has disappeared.

Almost everyone. A few people remain. And terrible creatures roam the earth, half-seen, picking off the stragglers.

Creepy as hell. The apocalypse with a dude who's kind of a fuck-up. 🩸📚 💙

It had a big impact on me. That said, I think I'd recommend something else for someone who is just setting out to be a good ally to people with disabilities.

What that other thing is, I'm not sure. But I could see many people bouncing off this one.

I think what resonated most was the feeling that society didn't know what to do with me, because I have a disability, but I'm happy and feel good about my life.

I'll need to reread at some point. Still processing it.

You?

15. I Live a Life Like Yours by Jan Grue

Memoir of a man living with a disability, from school, all the way to marriage and becoming a parent.

This one was a lot for me, as I have a disability, myself. Very moving. Made me think about some things I don't love thinking about.

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Thanks! My TBR is insane at the moment, but I'm putting those two on the list

This was my first of hers. I'll probably pick up more.