2025 September Reading Wrap Up

 

For September, I ready 6 books for a total of 2233 pages in which 2 were new to me authors 

1) Every Summer After by Carly Fortune:  304 pages   3 stars 

"“I fell in love with you when I was thirteen, and I never stopped. You’re it for me.” Sam closes his eyes for three long seconds, and when he opens them, they are glittering pools under a starry sky.”

2) The Book that Wouldn't Burn by Mark Lawrence:  559 pages   3 Stars

“All of us steal our lives. A little here, a little there. Some of it given, most of it taken. We wear ourselves like a coat of many patches, fraying at the edges, in constant repair. While we shore up one belief, we let go another. We are the stories we tell to ourselves. Nothing more.”

3) Neuromancer by William Gibson  304 pages   4 Stars

“His teeth sang in their individual sockets like tuning forks, each one pitch-perfect and clear as ethanol.”

4)  Bel Canto by Ann Patchett  318 pages   4 Stars

“If what a person wants is his life, he tends to be quiet about wanting anything else. Once the life begins to seem secure, one feels the freedom to complain.”

5)  Framed in Death by J.D. Robb  355 pages    5 Stars

“You can respect somebody without loving them, but if you don’t respect somebody you love, it’s never going to hold up.”

6)  Silver and Lead by Seanan McGuire 393  pages   4 stars

“Trauma moves in cycles. We pass it down, one to another, and there’s no time limit on how long that damage can endure.”

Reading Log as of September 13, 2025 - The Book That Wouldn't Burn

 

The Book That Wouldn’t Burn by Mark Lawrence (559) is a convoluted story that turned into a slog towards the third half of the book and the continued spiral turned me off. I didn’t care whether I finished it or not, but did just to find out what happened. Definitely won’t be reading the rest of the trilogy.  An alternative world where life sized bugs were the enemy and life kept recycling.  The centerpiece, a library, which was a maze and a portal to different world. A brother and sister are stuck in the world of books, an assistant and a soldier with a mechanism that took one in the world of the book.  Librarians and apprentices, the keeper of the books and many, many secrets.  Books that would turn one into a ghost, floating through the stories.  At the end I didn't know if any of the characters were real or ghosts. 3 stars

“The boy has lived his whole life trapped within a book-choked chamber older than empires and larger than cities.

The girl has been plucked from the outskirts of civilization to be trained as a librarian, studying the mysteries of the great library at the heart of her kingdom.

They were never supposed to meet. But in the library, they did.

Their stories spiral around each other, across worlds and time. This is a tale of truth and lies and hearts, and the blurring of one into another. A journey on which knowledge erodes certainty and on which, though the pen may be mightier than the sword, blood will be spilled and cities burned.”