I normally try to get this up during the last couple of days of a month, as I have successfully done for nearly every month before now0 since I started, except for one. But, on September 30 I had to say goodbye to an animal companion who’d been with me for just over 13 years, and I frankly forgot that I even needed to write one of these up. Then, I just needed some time. Without further delay, I’ve now got the motivation and time to put this up.

I’ll not linger on this any longer. Let’s talk about some books.

New Books

I wasted no time picking up The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers since featuring it in last month’s post. I really like this hardcover edition, though perhaps it’s a bit presumptuous on my part since I don’t actually know if I like this book at all yet. It’s not especially long, so I’m hoping I can squeeze it in with my Halloween reads for the month.

The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is a book I’m kind of surprised I didn’t own already. It’s just one of those books I’d always heard of and would’ve had enough interest in to randomly buy, especially years ago when I splurged even more on books than I do now. This copy is a little beaten up, as I found it at a thrift store, but I loved the vintage look of the cover too much not to pick it up.

This was pretty much the same deal with this “Illustrated Classics Edition” of The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells. It’s likely I’ll never even read through this book, as it’s an abridged version for children, but I just liked the art too much to pass it up. The price of only one or two dollars was also pretty enticing.

Novel Discoveries

I cannot actually recall where I learned about The Gathering Dark, editing by Tori Bovalino. It was probably from another blog’s WWW post, but I’m really not sure. Nevertheless, I really like the coveron this book, and an “anthology of folk horror” is a label that does a lot to pique my interest.

Shadow & Claw by Gene Wolfe is actually two books in one, I believe: The Shadow of the Torturer and The Claw of the Conciliator. What actually caught my interest was the former of the two, which somebody was talking about in a video I saw on the bookish side of TikTok. I can’t remember a whole lot of what they said about it, but it’s apparently a classic, if the “TOR Essentials” label means anything, and the cover has an aesthetic that appeals to me.

Godzilla: Rage Across Time by Ulises Fariñas et al. immediately appealed to me in the same way that Godzilla in Hell did a few years ago: it’s a ridiculous premise centred around Godzilla. I actually first learned of it from a screenshot of a few panels that depict the iconic behemoth about to square off against Zeus, so I have a feeling it’ll be good, dumb fun.

Terry Pratchett: A Life with Footnotes* by Rob Wilkins is a book I’m surprised I only just learned about, as it is the official biography of Pratchett, written by his friend and former personal assistant. I’m a big fan of Pratchett’s, if the mountain of Discworld reviews is any indicator, so I would love the opportunity to read this book sooner rather than later. This just came out, so I’ll probably look into finding a way to obtain a copy soon, though I can’t say I’ll end up reading it this year.

Closing Thoughts

I hope everybody enjoys the spooky season; it feels like October just crept right up on us. I guess that is pretty spooky, so I’ll allow it. Do you have any spooky reading plans for the month? I’d love to hear about them in the comments.

Until next time, thank you for reading.