5 Books I’m Reading this Fall

(and you should too)

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The fall season is in full swing. I’m watching the tree outside my window turn more orange and red every day. 

A lucky effect of the season is that I’m in a reading surge. Nothing sounds better than being cozy under the covers with a good book in hand. 

I don’t normally do fall TBRs, or really any to be read lists because of how fickle my reading mood is, but I’ve been inspired by our bookstagram community. Lauren’s post is where I found the recommendation for Revenge. Lanny is another book I cannot wait to read. I can’t remember where I saw someone reading it, but all the reviews I’ve read make me excited to pick it up. 

The rest are books from my shelves! Fingers crossed I get through at least two (hopefully more) of these.

Here’s my bookshop playlist. Bookshop is having an Anti-Prime day for the next 30 hours or so, which means free shipping and, as always, supporting independent bookstores. 

You can also watch the video for this here. Thank you!

I’m sharing a link to a GoFundMe for Hala and her family. If you’re able to, please consider donating and sharing. 

Payback’s a Witch by Lana Harper

Emmy Harlow goes back to her hometown after years of avoiding it. At a spellcasting tournament, she meets Talia and Linden, both wanting revenge against Gareth. There might be more than magic in the air.

Quote:

“Places from the past are usually much smaller than you remember when you return to them years later, shocked that they’d ever managed to command so much space in your brain at all.”

Lanny by Max Porter

In a village near London, where people belong, lives a host of folk.What happens when Dead Papa Toothwort awakens and listens to the village?

Quote:

“We are but pitiful narrative creatures... obsessing over the agony of not knowing. Sisyphus, Atlas, Echo, all those poor souls, now us. It is the oldest story of them all; never-ending pain.”

The Other by Thomas Tryon

1935, New England. Two twins live in a small town. One is good, one is evil.

Quote:

“I wish I could help,” he murmured, with a turn to the Victrola handle. “We help one another by understanding one another: that is the only help there is.”

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

In the weeks leading to Christmas, Bill faces a busy time of year. Reminders of the past plague him and he faces the complicitness of others.

Quote:

“It was easy to understand why women feared men with their physical strength and lust and social powers, but women, with their canny intuitions, were so much deeper: they could predict what was to come long before it came, dream it overnight, and read your mind.”

Revenge by Yoko Ogawa

An interweaving of events and lives. Morbid and emotional. “Murderers and mourners, mothers and children, lovers and innocent bystanders—their fates converge in a darkly beautiful web that they are each powerless to escape.”

Quote:

“When I’m curled up in his arms like this, I can never tell how my body looks to him. I worry that I seem completely ridiculous, but I have the ability to squeeze into any little space he leaves for me. I fold my legs until they take up almost no room at all, and curl in my shoulders until they’re practically dislocated. Like a mummy in a tomb. And when I get like this, I don’t care if I never get out; or maybe that’s exactly what I hope will happen.”

1 bonus book:

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Jane becomes governess at the isolated Thornfield Hall. There she meets, Rochester, an at once aloof and sardonic employer. Are the secrets she discovers enough to scare her away?

Quote:

“Do you think I am an automaton? — a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! — I have as much soul as you — and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh: it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God's feet, equal — as we are!”