September 2025 Reading

Finished another month of reading.  September contained eight books.

 

Audio first.  I finished off The Protector of the Small series by Tamora Pierce by listening to Lady Knight.  I think it was my least favorite in the series, but it was still good.  On the other hand, I listened to The Phantom Tollbooth by Norman Juster and it is as good as I remembered.  It’s so clever and funny.  I personally wish that it were a little more updated in terms of gender roles and such, but it’s a small complaint.

 

Then I read one graphic novel, Champion, by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Raymond Obstfeld, illustrated by Ed Laroche.  It tells the story of a kid who gets in trouble and has to do a report, in any medium, about Kareem without talking about his basketball career.  I loved it.  It was informative, inspiring, and fun.

 

Despite my clogged to-read shelf, some books jump the line.  One author who always rates this treatment is Rick Riordan, this time partnered with Mark Oshiro on The Court of the Dead.  Riordan and Oshiro write with humor and heart.  Their characters wrestle with safety, inclusion, justice, and more.  I could not love their work more.

 

I read two nonfiction books this month.  The first one requires something of a digression.  In high school, I discovered Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh.  I have not read it in a long time, so my experience might be different now, but at the time I thought it was a beautiful book.  It may be still.  However, between then and now, I have learned about the eugenics views of both her and her famous husband.  It is very hard to see the product of a mind that can believe that kind of nonsense as beautiful because it is necessarily so incomplete in its conception of the possibilities of beauty in the world.  Bring Me a Unicorn, which is Morrow Lindbergh’s book that I finished this month, is a collection of diary entries and letters from the period of her life leading up to her engagement to Charles Lindbergh, arguably the most famous man in his time.  What I saw in the book was certainly good writing, but also such an insulated life or privilege.  Of course, no life manages to run entirely without pain; the kidnapping and death of the Lindbergh baby was obviously tragic for the family.  I just wish that there had been a more open and accepting spirit in the writing.

 

The second nonfiction book was Mind the Gap by Matthias Henze.  It is a book about the period between the Old and New Testaments.  I am reading it for a class I’m taking through church.  It’s fascinating and well-written.  I also watched a talk the author gave, in which he said a colleague had told him that his book had two of the three most popular topics in it:  the historical Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls.  When Henze asked what the third one was, his friend said, “Elvis.”  Henze said he’d try to work that in to the next book.  If you like interesting history, this book is for you.

 

On to fiction.  My kid the librarian recommended Three Bags Full by Leonie Swann.  It’s a mystery in which a flock of sheep are the detectives.  I laughed out loud.  The mystery was good, too.  There is a sequel, which I will be reading sometime soon.

 

My book group is reading The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride.  What a great book.  It made me laugh and cry and feel all the things.  The prose is beautiful and the characters will break your heart.  Go read it.

 

September total:  8

Fall total to date:  8

2025 Year to date:  58.5