Happy October! I hope you're able to enjoy some nice, cool Fall weather where you are. Temperatures here in the Phoenix area have dropped from three digits to only two, so that's something, even if we're still in the upper 90s. Ugh. 

Enough unpleasantness, let's talk about bookish books. I read three of them in September:

The Librarians by Sherry Thomas—As indicated by the title, this murder mystery revolves around several employees of a quiet library in Austin, Texas. Although the co-workers know each other, it's not until they're faced with solving two murders related to their workplace, that they really begin to trust and rely on each other. As they reveal their secrets to each other, they create a bond that helps them find out what really happened to the murder victims.

As much as I liked the premise of this novel, it didn't end up working very well for me. The story is mostly about the characters and their interpersonal relationships, not about the plot, which made the book a bit of a slog. It took me awhile to read it because it was just so putdownable. Bummer.

Radiant by Vaunda Micheaux Nelson—This middle-grade verse novel is set in 1963 in a mostly white neighborhood in Philadelphia. It stars Cooper Dale, a Black bookworm who's just starting fifth grade. Over the course of the school year, she experiences anxiety, fear, racism, sadness, and worry as well as triumph, joy, acceptance, and love. Through it all, she relies on wise words from her father, the Bible, Martin Luther King, Jr., and her favorite poet, Langston Hughes. Although the book deals with some tough subjects, it's ultimately a hopeful, uplifting read.

Murder By Memory by Olivia Waite—I'm not sure if this novella really counts as bookish, but since it has books on the cover and it references "the library" a lot, I'm going with it. The story is set on a spaceship where people can live forever by changing up their physical bodies whenever they feel like it. If you need a break between lifetimes, you can store your mind in the ship's vast library, where it will be kept safe until you need it again. When ship detective Dorothy Gentleman is yanked out of her rest involuntarily, she's confused. Especially when she spies a dead body nearby. As she investigates the murder, she's shocked to discover that someone is purposely erasing minds from the library. Who would do such a dastardly thing? And why? It's up to her to find out.

I'm not a big fan of short fiction because I like to sink into stories, especially when they involve complicated world-building. Murder By Memory has an interesting premise and world, but I didn't feel like 100 pages was enough to really do any of it justice. Because of that, this was just an okay read for me. I think I would have enjoyed it a lot more if it were a full-length novel.

For the last three months of the year, I'm going to try to read all the books on my "Read Before the End of the Year" list. None of them are overtly bookish, so we'll see what happens. I did start this one yesterday:

The Garden Just Beyond by Lindsey Leavitt—It's a middle-grade book about a family who's known for the life-changing dinners they serve to paying guests. Diners think the magic is in the garden-fresh produce the family uses, but what they don't know is that the garden actually is magic, and the food it produces is able to manipulate people's emotions. When a suspicious person buys up all the property neighboring their secluded farm, the family worries that someone is trying to steal their secrets and run their thriving business into the ground. 

Our narrator is Maggie Gartner, a 14-year-old girl who's socially awkward and counts her books as her only real friends. Her attic bedroom is filled with a library of family history records, journals, account books, and so on. It's her happy place, the one spot where she feels truly at home.