September Reading Wrap-Up

Posted October 1, 2026 by Nicky in General / 0 Comments

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:

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.

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:

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:

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:

Top Ten Tuesday: British Library Crime Classics (59 views)
Top Ten Tuesday: Welsh Books (46 views)
Book Blogger Hop: Overlooked Book (36 views)
Top Ten Tuesday: Fall 2026 TBR (36 views)
Top Ten Tuesday: Authors I’ve Met (31 views)

My own favourite posts:

Stuff I loved from elsewhere:

From Books, Bones & Buffy: SHE’S A DOLL by Barbara Truelove, by Tammy
From Books, Bones & Buffy: KISS SLAY REPLAY by Rachel Harrison, by Tammy
From Becky’s Book Blog: Kiss Slay Replay by Rachel Harrison – ARC Review! by Becky
From Foxes and Fairy Tales: ARC Review: Strange Cases, by Louise
From Books, Bones & Buffy: NEWBOURNE PARK by Jennifer Thorne, by Tammy
From Reactor: Finding Your Recipe for Literary Comfort Food, by Molly Templeton
From Becky’s Book Blog: Bodies of Magic by Freya Marske – ARC Review! by Becky
From The Guardian: The New Dark Ages by James Marriott review, by Anthony Cummins
From The Bibliosanctum: Book Review: The Court of Venus by Bel Banta, by Mogsy

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.