October 2025 Reading

Another month has passed!  And I read eleven more books!

Audio first.  And a small rant.  If there is an audiobook for the first volume in a series, the rest of the series should also exist.  End of rant.  And on to the reason for the rant.  I listened to The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aiken, which I loved when I first read it as a kid.  I still love it.  It’s funny and clever and exciting.  And the next books in the series do not exist in audio format.

 

Perhaps, though, that is what brought The Willoughbys  by Lois Lowry to mind.  I listened to it, too.  It plays with all the conventions of “old-fashioned” children’s books to hilarious effect and is also a very satisfying story.  Two thumbs up.

 

In third or fourth grade, I learned the literal meaning of not judging a book by its cover.  Whichever year it was, there was a time for independent reading and the teacher (Mrs. Kelly or Mrs. Hill, depending on which year it was) set out books at the front of the classroom under the blackboard for us to choose from.  One had a very boring cover.  I picked it anyway and it turned out to be Gone-Away Lake by Elizabeth Enright.  I was absolutely hooked by this story of two kids on a summer adventure who discover a former summer community around a lake that has dried up.  They meet two older people who used to come there as a child and who have returned to live in the tumbledown community in their old age.  It’s charming and fun and full of gentle adventure.  I listened to it and to its sequel Return to Gone-Away and enjoyed both enormously again.

 

A while back, I backed a Kickstarter for Defiant:  The Story of Robert Smalls by Rob Edwards.  It’s a graphic novel biography and it is fabulous!  Please buy it and read it and spread the word about this inspiring story of a man who escaped being enslaved, swiped a Confederate ship, became a captain in the Union navy, and went on to serve in Congress.

 

Due to delays in production, my Kickstarter package got me two bonus graphic novels, which were also cool.  Girl with No Name based on a screenplay by Alex Ranarivelo is a Western and full of drama and revenge.  Modville by Jesse Negron and Joe Matsumoto is a dystopian story about trauma and is worth reading anyway.

 

In nonfiction, I polished off the very short book The Butterfly Trees by Lucia Shepardson.  It has been sitting on my shelf since the Year of Butterflies.  It’s an account from 1914 of the monarch butterfly migration.  Probably only of interest to enthusiasts.

 

My Year of Water reading brought me The Fourth Phase of Water by Gerald H. Pollack.  Much of the science is out of my ability to evaluate, but the book is provocative.  The more speculative ideas in it have an Out-On-A-Limb meter to describe how based in evidence they are, which I appreciated.  The central contention is that there is a phase of water between vapor and liquid called EZ water.  EZ water is more highly organized than bulk water with a structure similar to but not the same as ice.  This has various implications for how various processes work, including things like osmosis.  Pollack is a very readable scientist and explains complex stuff in nice small words.

 

Finally, I read a couple of novels.  I had a gift certificate burning a hole in my pocket, so to speak, so I bought Big Bad Wool by Leonie Swann, the sequel to Three Bags Full.  Much like the earlier book, this sheep detective novel was fun and funny and clever.  Highly recommend.

 

I also read Gilead by Marilynne Robinson.  It won a Pulitzer and I get why.  It is a beautifully written book and y’all should read it.

 

October total:  11

Fall 2025 total to date:  19

2025 total to date:  69.5