September Reading Wrap-Up

Posted October 1, 2026 by Nicky in General / 15 Comments

A photo of brown crunchy fallen leaves

September saw the temperatures here finally cooling down, and the world going a bit greener again… just in time for autumn to hit as the leaves start browning. I do enjoy autumn, though!

September in general:

It was a busy month for work once more, but hopefully that’s drawing to a close now… but other than that, it’s been a pretty quiet month with a lot of mood reading. Some energy has been spent on getting my ebike spruced up so I can ride again, after a year where I kept off it for fear of re-injuring my wrist (which is pretty much healed now unless I really try to hurt it).

I’ve been doing a lot of crochet, and have added two entire “shelves” to my bookcase blanket since the last update photo:

Photo of my mosaic overlay crochet blanket. It looks like a bookshelf, with six shelves so far. On the lowest shelf is a cat sat on a book, while most of the other shelves are covered in books. There's an ikebana on the fourth shelf, and another cat sat in the midst of the books on the top shelf.

I’m pretty happy about the way it’s coming out. I have one more “shelf” to do, and then provided it’s the length I wanted (which I think it should be), I’ll be working on the border. That’s quite a hefty task, with some fiddly bits, but it encloses all the raw ends, so there’s almost no weaving in of ends to be done.

Gaming-wise, the big headline of the month is Dressmaker, which is really cute, has a fun story, and involves a lot of design work on pretty dresses. There are some weird requests, but for the most part I’ve just been able to create some really fun things, and there’s a reasonable degree of realism to the game. Definitely recommended. Other than that, it’s been a fairly quiet month for gaming, but I did finish A Building Full of Cats 2 and pick up Flats Full of Cats, both of which are the usual Devcats “hidden cats” fun (and Flats Full of Cats has a bunch of free levels).

Finally, my group did see the end of M12S in Final Fantasy XIV, and knocked out our ten clears for the achievement too.

A screenshot from Final Fantasy XIV showing "AAC Heavyweight Tier (Savage) Complete!" above a fiery arena, with destruction in the background. Eight characters stand looking at it: a dragoon, a white mage, a viper, a warrior, a scholar, a paladin and a summoner.

That means a break from raiding for a while, though we intend to revisit M8S (from the previous set of raids) if possible, since not everyone got the mount from that before we switched to the new raids.

Reading stats:

StoryGraph reading stats for September 2026: 23 books, 5,953 pages, average rating of 3.22. My top rated reads included The Daughter of Time (Josephine Tey), The Welsh Language (Janet Evans) and Worst Man (Brandt & Stein). The number of pages I read per day was pretty variable, with one really big peak on the 20th. More reading stats for September 2026: I read 82% fiction, 18% non-fiction, and 70% of my books were under 300 pages long, with 30% between 300 and 500 pages. I read 52% in print and 48% in digital editions, and my top genres were mystery (11), crime (7), LGBTQIA+ (5), romance (5) and historical (3).

Total books read: 23
Total pages read: 
Rereads: 0
ARCs: 1
Series finished/up to date: 2
Books owned pre-2026: 3
Books owned from 2026: 10
Borrowed books: 11

Fiction: 18
Non-fiction: 4
Poetry: 1
Comics, manga, manhwa, etc: 3

I read a little more this month, and it’s probably fair to say it’s got a lot to do with just reading by whim. Getting the game Dressmaker definitely led to me reading a bit less than I might’ve, but it was still a solid month.

Progress on reading goals:

Overall total books: 239/300 (14 books ahead)
Overall pages read: 57,638/75,000 (1,337 pages ahead)
Books read from backlog: 35/50 (2 books behind)
Books owned since 2026 and not yet started: 37/40

I haven’t made great headway against the overflow of books I permitted myself for my birthday… but you know what, that’s okay. Clearly it’s not the season of my life to focus on that. I would like to avoid having a net gain in number of unread books for the year as a whole, so I’ll work out what’s to be done there. Overall, though, lowering my goals and relaxing my limits has made things feel better all round, so I don’t regret it… even if I cherish secret hopes of somehow hitting my original 400-book goal anyway.

Blogging stats:

Screenshot of my blog stats showing growing visitor counts through the month, with a dip between September 8th and September 16th.

Views: 11.2k (down)
Visitors: 10.2k (down)
Likes: 396 (down)
Comments: 377 (down)
Reviews: 25
Other posts: 24

A quiet month, overall, but it started picking up toward the end. Maybe everyone’s settling back into the routine after summer holidays…?

Most viewed posts:

My own favourite posts:

Stuff I loved from elsewhere:

It felt like it was a pretty quiet month on my blog, with views, visitors and comment numbers all down… I wonder if the back-to-school season was keeping people too busy, compared to the lazy days of summer? Or maybe everyone’s been snatching last-minute holidays!

Regardless, I think it’s been a pretty good month.

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15 responses to “September Reading Wrap-Up”

  3. Tammy

    Your blanket is looking fabulous! And congrats on a good reading month, even with a new game to distract you. Thanks for the shout outs

    Reply
  6. Olivia

    That crocheted piece is incredible! I love it. What size is it?

    Looks like you’re doing really well with your reading goals. I really like some of the sections that you have in your monthly wrap-up. I may need to employ some of these next month.
    Olivia recently posted…Weekly Reading Update 10-3-2026My Profile

    Reply
    • Nicky

      Right now if I’m sat down and wrap up in it, it comes up to my chest, and it’s wide enough to wrap around me fully. I used a book for scale in a previous photo; each “shelf” is a bit less tall than a hardback book.

      I’m glad you enjoyed the post! I tried to come up with an interesting format.

      Reply

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