September 2022 Reading

September was a stressful month, which is reflected in my reading.  I finished eight books and seven of them were fiction.

Nonfiction first, with a caveat.  I did not read every word of Building Internet Firewalls by Elizabeth Zwicky, Simon Cooper, and Brent Chapman (the second edition).  I have no interest in actually building firewalls.  I read it because I’m married to that third author and he and I are considering writing a book on incident response; that means I get to read a whole bunch of technical stuff to get a feel for the style, learn information I need to know, and consider organizational systems for the kind of book he has in mind.  Nevertheless, I think I read enough of the book in detail that I am counting the whole thing.  Fortunately, Elizabeth and Simon and Brent are witty as well as knowledgeable, so I mostly enjoyed the gazillion pages on a topic I am not intrinsically interested in.

 

On to fiction.  This was the month when I finished reading Don Quijote in Spanish.  This counts, even though I also read it in English earlier this year.  It is truly a great book, funny and poignant and surprising and complex.  Two thumbs up.

 

I recently discovered that there were T. Kingfisher books out there that I had not read.  I bought them.  And now I have read Minor Mage.  It is hilarious and wonderful.  What’s not to like about a young mage with an armadillo familiar?

 

Everything else was by Ann Cleeves.  The newest Vera novel, The Rising Tide, just came out and it is awesome.  The books are worth it just for the depth of characterization.  Of course the mystery is good, but this and the other books are worth re-reading for the novel.  I’m working my way through some of her older books in the Inspector Ramsey series and this month polished off Murder in My Backyard, A Lesson in Dying, Killjoy, and The Healers.  They are not as developed as the later novels, but still have what I like about Cleeves’s work.  Would recommend.

 

Month total:  8

Fall total:       8

Year to date total:     76