Almost October? Close enough.

I finished reading my last challenge book for September tonight, so I figured why not do my monthly update now? This was most certainly not motivated by the fact that I had no review ready and it was either this or skip posting this week. Nope, that wasn't it. Just really eager for this update.

I won't mince words...September was not a good month for challenge books. I Love You, Beth Cooper? Did not age well. I knew going into it that I probably wouldn't love it...but Jesus H. Christ. I should have looked harder for another book that fit the bill because yeesh. It wasn't great.

In a pretty entertaining twist, Joel never reads my blog, but he decided to read the last challenge update post. It's like he has a sixth sense for when I'm casting aspersions upon his reading preferences. Sorcery! Anyway, he read it and was like "I recommended that? Can I change my recommendation?" I would like to say he changed it to something better, but...he changed it to Your Money or Your Life which...look. I get it, I guess? But it's really hard for me to take a book seriously when it talks about breaking down your hourly wage and uses $10 an hour as the example, but then turns around and shares anecdotes about people who own multiple houses and shit like that. Don't pretend this advice will work for anyone and act like low income people can bootstrap themselves into financial independence when all your advice is clearly only intended for people with a lot of disposable income.

Anyway, as I predicted, Becoming Eve was the palate cleanser I needed. Abby's story is so compelling, heartbreaking but also inspiring, that I couldn't put it down. Coming from a high demand religion (read: cult) myself, I was grinding my teeth reading about all the ways she was forced to suppress herself by her family's religious practices, and I'm so glad that she was able to finally find a way to be herself. Abby is incredible.

Now, let's talk October. I should have thought ahead and put holds on books, because...everything is on hold? What the hell? I've got holds in now, and a couple books should be available soon, so these are the challenges I'm going with this month:

#21: Read a queer retelling of a classic of the canon, fairytale, folklore, or myth 

For this I'm going with Darling by K. Ancrum. I love Peter Pan and have read all kinds of fractured fairytale versions, retellings, etc, so I'm interested to get into this spin on it!

#23: Read a book by a disabled author

I had a couple options I was still trying to decide between, but I've settled on The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang. Basically, a woman obsessed with math comes up with algorithms for everything and decides to apply her love of logic to dating. What starts out as a very straightforward plan, of course, does not go as expected. We'll see what happens!

Bonus! For #20: Read an award-winning book from the year you were born, I chose Maus: A Survivor's Tale, and after looking into getting it from the library I decided to buy it. I should get it soon, so I'm going to try to read it in October also.