Ceri Louise Reads

I slightly feel like I’m cheating as I’m posting TBRs each month but not wrap ups, so no one knows how well I’m actually doing with my TBRs… I am working on catching up all the previous months’ wrap ups, so you will get to see them eventually, and when I get properly into a routine with writing blog posts they will come at the end of each month and will refer back to the relevant TBR too!

But for now, let’s get on with what I’m hoping to read in September. Again I seem to have gone overly ambitious but a lot of that is to allow for mood reading, so I have choices not definites. I think for me this actually works better than a fixed shorter list!

One of my big aims for this year was to reduce the number of books I own. I’ve had mixed success so far. I have definitely unhauled a lot of books since the move, but I’ve lost track of how many I’ve acquired, and there were actually a lot more in storage than I’d realised. While I would NEVER say I have too many books, my husband would certainly claim ‘not enough space’ as an issue. Especially as he doesn’t like clutter and I have a lot of hobbies…

All of this to say, that for Series September this year instead of trying to finish series I am counter-intuitively starting some new ones. I realised that I had several series on my shelf where I owned multiple books but hadn’t read any of them. So I’ve decided to try a few out, and if I don’t like them, the whole series can go, thereby clearing some shelf space! The selection includes a couple that I think I probably will like and a couple of rereads to see if I still like them, plus a couple of bonus ones I’ll explain at the end. So without further ado, here’s the list!

1) Poison Study by Maria V Snyder – book 1 has been on my TBR for ages, I got it in a charity shop quite a few years ago. Books 2 and 3 my friend gave me recently when she was having a clear out. I think it’s YA fantasy, I’m not really sure what it’s about.

2) The Extraordinary and Unusual Adventures of Horatio Lee by Catherine Webb – the same friend gave me all four books in this series a couple of years ago in a previous clear out. The idea was, if I liked them I would have them all… can you see how I got into this situation yet?! I think these are older middle grade or younger young adult, and Victorian fantasy/mystery with kind of steam punk vibes?

3) Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs – I got the first three books quite cheap in a charity shop around the time the film came out, and then didn’t read them because of the hype… this I think is another YA fantasy, maybe more towards the horror end of the spectrum (are we noticing a theme yet?) so depending on the spooky/scary levels this will be hit or miss for me.

4) Kommandant’s Girl by Pam Jenoff – yay a different genre! This is the first of a historical companion duology set in Poland in WW2, featuring spies and romance. I’m intrigued by this one, and it will probably be a nice change from all the YA fantasy.

5) Pagan’s Crusade by Catherine Jinks – this is YA historical fiction set in medieval Europe following a young squire. As the subject matter is the Crusades I’m interested to see how it is handled. It really could be terrible…

6) Dissolution by C J Sansom – this is one of my Dad’s favourite book series, and he’s read them all twice and now given them all to me. These are detective novels set in Tudor times and I’ve heard good things (from people other than my dad too!) I have read one of these in French ages ago but I couldn’t tell you which as the titles are not direct translations…

7) Cinder by Marissa Meyer – to be fair, I’m pretty sure I’m going to enjoy this series as I liked the Renegades by Marissa Meyer and I’m a sucker for a fairytale retelling. This is mainly on the list in case I hate everything else and need something to cheer me up…

8) Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams – the first of the rereads, this is a series I would like to finish this year but I remember this first book being very confusing so I definitely need to reread it before reading book two.

9) Redwall by Brian Jacques – the other reread. I was amazed at how many books I owned of this series when they came out of storage. I loved these books as a teenager, but I can’t remember which ones I read at the time. This is a test to see if they hold up to my memory, and if so I will read the whole series. If not: unhaul to regain lots of shelf space!

Bonus books!

Bonus book 1: Dead in Devon by Stephanie Austen – for some strange and unknown reason my dad does not feel the need to read series in order and gave me book 6 of this series after he had read it. I, on the other hand, get an itchy brain at the idea of starting with book 6 of a series, so I’m borrowing book 1 from the library to see if the rest of the series is worth it. It’s a murder mystery, if you hadn’t got that from the title.

Bonus book 2: City of Ghosts by Victoria Schwab – the aforementioned friend gave me books 2 & 3 of this series because we thought she had already given me book 1. As it has not appeared in the unpacking, we don’t know what happened to book 1 but BorrowBox came to the rescue! I have actually already finished this one and I liked it enough to carry on the series. Spooky middle grade + cool european cities

Bonus Book 3: The Dragon Republic by R F Kuang – this one is actually the second book in the series, rest assured I did read the first one last year! This is so I can continue the series while book 1 is still relatively fresh in my mind, and with this TBR being quite YA heavy, some epic fantasy might be needed to balance it out.

So that’s my options for September reading. What are you planning to pick up?