It’s been a while since I wrote a wrap up – I’ll normally keep track of all the books I read in a particular month in a draft post and then just finalize the post a day or two before it’s published, but this month I decided pretty spontaneously to write a wrap up and I’m lazy so I wanted just to talk about a few of my highlight reads of October instead of every single book. October was overall an incredible reading month, mostly because I got to pick up a bunch of books I’d been looking forward to all year and had been saving for either my Halloween reads or for my vacation, which was also during this month. So. Great reading month!
October Highlights
October just started off really well when I decided to pick up The Dangers of Smoking in Bed: Stories by Mariana Enríquez, translated by Megan McDowell, which unsurprisingly blew me away. I love Mariana Enríquez’ creepy stories, something about them just really work for me. I am a big fan of horror and the way she writes makes me physically uncomfortable, which apparently is something I enjoy.
It’s been a while, I know! I’ve been on vacation and now I’m finally back and on the mood to blog again. Not gonna lie, the past few months I’ve been a bit on a blogging slump, but after a couple weeks off, I feel excited to be writing again. I read so much in the meantime and worked on getting my TBR to a manageable amount (I’m below 100 books now! I have NO idea when my TBR last was so short).
For today I thought I’d recommend 3 books for some of my favorite tropes in horror/thriller books which fit the spooky October season. I love reading scary books and gorier thrillers around Halloween, and some tropes just really work for me.
Without further ado, here are my top 3 recommendations for each trope:
A House As a Main Character
The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende is an incredible family drama epic filled with magic if you are into generational stories. I loved its lyrical writing and the incredible, jumping-off-the-page characters. It’s one of my favorite books of all time.
The Haunting Of Hill House by Shirley Jackson is an absolute classic read for this time of year and for good reason. It’s witty, spooky, and so wonderfully written. This is more of a psychologically intense novel than a proper horror, and an incredible read. I would also recommend We Have Always Lived in a Castle, but I think this one is a better fit for this trope.
Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones is a perfect read if you love this particular trope but you don’t like anything spooky at. All. This delightful and very popular book made me laugh out loud so often I actually had to stop listening to it in public transport.
Okay I am sneaking another recommendation because this is my FAVORITE trope ever and I can’t just limit myself to three: The Yellow Paper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is such a wonderful and very quick read about a wife staying in her new house and slowly going mad. SO GOOD.
I haven’t been doing a lot of wrap ups lately, which means I am missing out on talking about a lot of my recent reads and I wanted to highlight a bit some of the books I’ve read that are both really short and also written by women in translation. There is still SO MUCH time for Women In Translation Month but I simply cannot wait until next August to talk about these!
From September 15 to October 15 it’s celebrated in the US the Hispanic Heritage Month, and in the bookish community we also have the Latinx Book Bingo – I decided this year to mix both and read only Latin American books by Spanish-speaking authors, and only works in translation. I failed very quickly because I immediately proceeded to forget I was supposed to read only Spanish-speaking authors and ended up adding Brazilian books to my list, so I guess it’s now a Latin American Month.
Here is what I read this month!
Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin, translated by Megan McDowell and Ruth Sepp
Samantha Schweblin made it to my auto-buy list this year! I loved Little Eyes a few weeks ago and really enjoyed Fever Dream now as well. This is a short, intense and – well – feverish novel that feels surreal to read and very entrancing.
If you have a good memory (certainly better than mine, I had to check my archives), you’ll remember that last year I posted a TBR for my Honeymoon-Turned-Staycation-Because-Oh-Well. A year and a half later, my husband and I are finally going to our honeymoon!
I am taking two hardcovers and my e-reader, so that I am very flexible and just pick up whatever I’m in the mood for, and all three choices below are books I have been saving because I think they’ll be 5-star reads and for some reason I was waiting for the right time to pick them up. I guess now it’s as good as it gets!
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez, translation by Edith Grossman
I’ve had this book on my TBR for the longest time, and it makes no sense because I loved One Hundred Years of Solitude, and since my husband also has it on his TBR, we will take it to our trip and read it one after another. This is one of the two physical books I am taking with me.
Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney
I’ve seen someone describe this as romance but make it literary fiction and I thought SOLD. I recently read and loved Conversations with Friends, so I thought this would be a perfect addition. This is the second hardcover I’m taking and will probably be the book I start with.
The Last Words of Madeleine Anderson by Helen Kitson
Ok so I have a huge soft spot for books about writers – especially mysteries and thrillers. This is about a writer who published an incredible book and then never published another book. Her self esteem is kind of low and she is quite lonely, until the day she meets a man who is a huge fan of hers but maybe he’s not all he seems?? Sounds like a fun read!
If I am in the mood I might pick up a few more thrillers, and some I have in mind are:
The Broken Girls by Simone St. James
Apples Never Fall by Liane Moriarty
My Heart Is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones
Really looking forward to picking up all of these books!
Also: I am always looking for more thriller recommendations (I go through so many every year, especially on vacation), so if you have any, leave a comment on this post or on this tweet:
Naty's Bookshelf 