And so summer’s dusk passes into autumn’s evening. September felt like an especially eventful month that took its time yet also seemed to pass so swiftly (the usual complaint). It just feels so stark how warm and lush it still was during those first couple of weeks, where I could still sit outside in the sun and read while recovering from surgery (they took my wisdom teeth), and now it’s back to sweaters and long pants. I don’t miss being uncomfortably hot, though. I don’t really know how it happened, but I ended up getting quite a few books last month. I just happened upon too many, I suppose. It doesn’t feel like I was especially indulgent, but when I look back I can’t deny it.
Let’s see what I picked up.
New Books
This first pair is fairly straightforward. For a while now, I’ve been meaning to finish collecting the three art books for the Star Wars sequel trilogy after receiving The Art of Star Wars: The Force Awakens a number of years ago. For whatever reason, and it hardly seems I need one sometimes, the idea that I ought to finally pick up the latter two was gnawing at me in early September and I had some cashback available on my credit card, so I gave in to the impulse and picked them up. I believe one of them was a little discounted too. Either way, I’m happy to finally have this little collection sorted.
The Lodger by Marie Belloc Lowndes was a rather impulsive thrift store purchase. I don’t normally read very many thrillers, but I have enough of a history with this book that I felt compelled to pick it up. Back in university, I was enrolled in a film course on the auteur theory, and the director picked for the semester I took was Alfred Hitchcock. For those who don’t know, Hitchcock’s first ever film was an adaptation of this novel (released only 14 years after the book was published in 1913). I found myself nostalgic for my university days, as that was one of my favourite classes, so I picked it up.
The Once and Future King by T. H. White is a book that’s sat in the back of my mind as a classic work of literature I ought to read sooner or later. Somehow, I evaded purchasing it in the more unrestrained days of book buying in my youth, when I would pick up any old book on such grounds and let it languish for ages on my shelf. I still do this from time to time, but certainly not as much as I used to. I’d seen some posts talking about this book recently and shortly beforehand rewatched Disney’s The Sword in the Stone. So, it seems circumstances conditioned me towards picking it up, and the universe provided me with an inexpensive secondhand copy.
Ultra 85 by Logic is a novel that caught my eye at one of my favourite local bookstores, leading it to be featured in the “Novel Discoveries” section in one of these posts back in January 2025. As I said back then, it’s the cover that made it stand out most to me at the time, though the retro sci-fi plot synopsis had me interested too. What got me to actually pick this up is that a number of copies ended up at a local Dollar Tree, as happens sometimes with book stock, so I got it for less than $2. Great stuff ends up in places like this all the time, so I’m still hopeful I’ll enjoy this book, and I’m pleased to have a copy brand new for such a discount.
A Noble Quest by Joshua Barkman is the newest self-published book by the author/illustrator of the webcomic False Knees. This book collects the store he posted over the course of November last year as part of his “Kneesvember” webcomic event, where he posts pages of a story for every day of the month. I didn’t actually read the posts as they came out last year, as at that point I just knew I’d be picking up his book, so I’m excited to give this one a look finally.
Mestra by Madeline Miller is a preorder I’ve been anticipating for a couple of months now. It’s a newly released short story by Miller, published as a single hardcover the same as Galatea was previously. This was an easy, automatic purchase, as I’ve loved everything Miller writes so far.
Novel Discoveries
Now this is a little awkward, because I think maybe for the first time ever I haven’t added a single new book to my to-read list on Goodreads that I hadn’t already heard of before. I don’t want to leave this section blank, however, so I’m going to highlight how I inexplicably decided I need to read Black Beauty by Anna Sewell sometime. I suppose the reason is that I got it in my head that I ought to read novels about relationships between human and companion animals because it’s something I want to play with in the book I’m ostensibly writing. Turns out this book might not quite be what I thought it was, but learning more about what this novel is actually about has me really wanting to read it anyway.
Until next time, thank you for reading!
