Novellas in November 2026 Link-Up (#NovNov26)
For the SEVENTH year in a row, Cathy of 746 Books and I are co-hosting Novellas in November as a month-long blogging and social media challenge. A novella technically contains 20,000 to 40,000 words, but to keep things simple we define it as any work under 200 pages. Thanks for joining us in celebrating the art of the short book (nonfiction, too).
This post will be pinned to the top of my site through the first week of December for you to add in your links.
You can view all the previous posts here:
Click below to add your link!
Suspicion by Seichō Matsumoto (#NovNov26)
An ultra-rare foray into the crime section of the library for me, borrowed because I had filled a reservation for it and the length convinced me it was worth a try.
Journalist Moichi Akitani becomes fixated on the case of Kumako Onizuka, a former Tokyo escort suspected to have murdered her older husband, Fukutarō Shirakawa, to claim his 3-million-yen life insurance policy. When Shirakawa’s car drove straight into the water at a port, he was trapped and died, while Onizuka survived. Under questioning, she swore that her husband was driving, whereas the consensus seems to be that she was lying and drove him off the pier – but had planted a spanner (wrench) in the car so that she could break the windscreen and escape. With his newspaper articles, Akitani perhaps unwittingly helps to perpetuate sexist assumptions about Onizuka and condition readers to expect a conviction.
Over four years and several defence lawyers, the case gets drawn out so much that the initial furore dies down. But for Akitani, the fascination remains. There are two details that people get hung up on: the spanner, and Shirakawa’s right shoe, which was found in the car, quite beaten up. As public opinion begins to turn, Akitani is paralysed by the realization that if Onizuka goes free, she might have her gangster acquaintances come after him.
Although I found this somewhat dull until the revelations of the final chapter and the twist ending, it’s an interesting study of obsession, preconceptions and the femme fatale stereotype. Written in the 1980s, it has an atmosphere that hearkens back to the era of classic crime by the likes of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. All in all, a pleasant entertainment that could easily be polished off in an afternoon.
Suspicion by Seichō Matsumoto (1982; 2025)
[Translated from Japanese by Jesse Kirkwood]
(Public library)
[98 pages]
R.I.P. Catch-Up (Part III): Donoghue, Dunmore, Hahn, Thummler
I’m behind on all the things. In the first of several catch-up posts, I’ll take a quick look back at the other spooky reads I picked up last month. This is my third post for Readers Imbibing Peril, after one on scary story collections and another on two East Anglian horror novels.
Kissing the Witch by Emma Donoghue (1997)
This is a terrific set of retellings of European fairytales, some I recognized (Cinderella, Rapunzel, Hansel and Gretel, The Little Mermaid) and some I didn’t. Each of the 13 stories is a first-person testimonial, and they all run into each other in a satisfying way because there are no speech marks and at the end the narrator of one asks a question that sparks a character to tell the next one, and so on. Many of them have cautionary elements (“In the days when wishing was having, I got what I wished and then I wished I hadn’t”) so there is sometimes an air of regret, but elsewhere there is defiance of convention. Maids lord their power over princesses and witches manipulate feuding spouses. As the title suggests, there is a queer slant to many to these familiar narratives. Witches aren’t evil hags to be shunned but alluring sexual creatures, making for some cheeky twist endings. This was a random choice from Donoghue’s back catalogue but might actually be one of my favourites from her oeuvre. (Secondhand – Awesomebooks.com with voucher) 
The Greatcoat by Helen Dunmore (2012)
{SPOILERS IN THIS ONE}
I’m always surprised by how much Dunmore published, especially in a life cut short by cancer; her bibliography is full of titles I’ve never heard of. So this commissioned horror novella was an unexpected discovery. Isabel is a newlywed in 1952 Yorkshire. Her husband, Philip Carey, is a doctor who’s often away on emergency house calls. Until she fulfils everyone’s expectations by falling pregnant, she will have little to occupy herself beyond cooking and cleaning, with the landlady always stomping about overhead. It’s a bitter winter and one day she pulls an old RAF greatcoat from the back of a wardrobe to put over the bedclothes. The garment seems to summon the soldier who once wore it at a local airfield, Alec, and as he starts to visit more frequently, Isabel channels the memories of the woman who carried on an affair with him. The ghost lover is nothing novel, but possession by the past experiences of another person who’s still alive was a new one on me. I wasn’t sure Dunmore always demarcated the real and the imaginary effectively; then again, that’s part of the point of horror. Anyway, a quick and easy read, and what happened to Isabel’s parents during the war is a good way of pointing up the everyday trauma that many were living with in that decade. (Little Free Library) 
The Time of the Witch by Mary Downing Hahn (1982)
This might be the first book I ever got signed at an author event, aged 10. I don’t specifically recall reading it as a child, but I think it must be a reread for me. (Some of Hahn’s other titles listed inside the book ring a bell, anyway.) Laura and her little brother Jason come from the Washington, D.C. area to stay with Aunt Grace in West Virginia for the summer while their parents finalize their divorce. When Laura learns that there is a nearby witch, an old woman named Maude who goes around with a crow on her shoulder, she decides to ask for a spell to bring her parents back together. But, as happens with these sorts of stories, her request has unforeseen consequences and she soon wants to take it all back. This was so very ’80s, the names and descriptions of the locals are stereotypical “hick” fodder, and it’s a pretty predictable message to accept what you cannot control and trust that adults know what they’re doing. I’m sure I found it suspenseful as a kid, but I doubt this one has stood the test of time. (Gift – purchased new by my mother at a Bowie Library event in 1994)
Sheets & Lights by Brenna Thummler (2018; 2023)
I finished off this teen graphic novel trilogy (the middle book is Delicates) by rereading parts of the first volume that I missed out on when my NetGalley download expired, and finding the third book I never got to. Middle schooler Marjorie Glatt works in her family’s laundromat in small-town Pennsylvania. Since her mother died, it’s just been her, her little brother, and their absent-minded father. When she starts seeing the ghost of a little boy named Wendell – and ghosts in this world are literally just sheets with eye-holes – he makes her life more complicated but also acts as a bridge to another dimension she’s been denying. With his mischief, he also helps her to resist the buyout offer of awful Mr. Saubertuck, who keeps threatening to turn the laundromat into a yoga retreat center.
In the other two volumes, Marjorie makes friends with Eliza, a ghost photographer, and they help Wendell investigate his own untimely death. Whereas Eliza is bullied and feels like an outcast, Marjorie makes some friends among the popular girls and tries to bring her two friend circles together, with mixed results. I like the pastel, kitsch 1980s-90s vibe of these comics, though Thummler can’t really draw noses, at least not on white people. I would recommend the series for younger teens. (Public library)
Any stand-out creepy reading for you this year?
My Year in Novellas (#NovNov26)
Throughout the year, I hoard novellas on a dedicated shelf in my bedroom, and make note of them on Edelweiss and at the library. I always have an eye towards November.
But I read novellas other times of year, too. Fifty-three of them between early December 2025 and now, according to my Goodreads shelves (the last few years it was 44–46).
I often choose to review books of novella length for blog challenges, as well as for paid reviews for BookBrowse, Foreword and Shelf Awareness. I’ve undertaken one trilogy of novellas (The Summerhouse Trilogy by Alice Thomas Ellis) and the first two novellas in a seasonal quartet (Different Seasons by Stephen King). These are all reasons for a slightly higher figure this year.
My favourites included Mrs. Bridge, I Who Have Never Known Men, which I’ll be rereading soon for book club and will review at that time, Strange Weather in Tokyo, Mitz and The Employees. I’m looking forward to reading more by H. Kawakami and Ravn soon.
Onwards to a fresh stack of novellas from my shelves and library stash!
What were some of your recent favourite novellas?
Novellas in November (#NovNov26) Is Here!
Welcome to Novellas in November! The link-up is open (see my pinned post) and I’ll keep adding more link parties as needed. If you leave a pingback on any of my posts, I’ll add them to the link-up myself, if you haven’t already.
At the start of the month, we’re inviting you to tell us about any novellas you’ve read since last November. Cathy and I will both post “My Year in Novellas” round-ups tomorrow.
Don’t forget to get hold of the buddy read, Sympathy Tower Tokyo by Rie Qudan, to read and review sometime this month.
Keep in touch via Bluesky (@bookishbeck.bsky.social / @cathybrown746.bsky.social) and Instagram (@bookishbeck / @cathy_746books) and feel free to use the terrific feature images Cathy has made plus our new hashtag, #NovNov26.
East Anglian Horror for #RIPXXI: Sara Bayat and Natasha Pulley
My first Readers Imbibing Peril post featured three short story collections. I have more spooky reads to catch up on tomorrow, but today I’m featuring two 2026 works of East Anglian horror with fetching purple and black covers that I read during October. (This might seem like a niche subgenre, but I can actually think of several other books I’ve read that fit into the same tradition; if not all set in Norfolk/Suffolk, they still evoke fenland settings: The Woman in Black by Susan Hill, The Hotel by Daisy Johnson, and Wakenhyrst by Michelle Paver.) Both:
Hesket: A Norfolk Haunting by Sara Bayat
I bought this after I saw Bayat speak at Marlborough Literature Festival last month. Eight linked chapters, bookended by a prologue and epilogue, colour in a picture of a Norfolk village plagued by strange events when a housing development disturbs the ground. Each character has a source of isolation: Isla and her husband have drifted apart since their daughter died; Nell lives in a retirement home and has lost her dearest friend; Emir doesn’t fit in with the other allotment gardeners due to his ethnic background – even though he was raised in England; and Arthur has extreme social anxiety and an unhealthy attachment to a woman old enough to be his mother.
Bayat is careful to share out the sympathy, including to a tree surgeon involved in cutting down the woods for the construction project and the well-meaning vicar who sometimes oversteps her duties and at the same time fails her family. Loss links her characters, from the participants at the séance local journalist Rio reports on to Finn and his single dad. The discovery of bones and the appearance of a ghost are reminders of medieval atrocities. Nine women were executed as witches here, and the injustice lingers. Alice Spry was drowned in the River Wensum, her body never recovered. She lives on in the name of Spry Woods – and perhaps another form.
My shipping notice featured what must be a previous title, “In Old Hesket Woods,” which feels more appropriate to the subdued folktale vibe. This novel shows promise and I’ll certainly follow Bayat’s career, but something about it was a little too … quiet? provincial? to stick with me. Certain chapters, particularly the first, are strong stand-alones, but some of the rest are thin. Those with ties to Norwich may be keenest to read this. (New purchase – Awesomebooks.com with voucher)
The Salt King by Natasha Pulley
Jesuit priest Avelyn Brocken is recalled from the Vatican to Hreodwater in East Anglia to investigate miracles said to have taken place at the salt mine. His hometown is like its own country, with an ancient language and customs. Legends of the Salt King and the “salt light” emanating from the mine characterise it as a benevolent place, as several recent healings would seem to support. Miracles have been reported at other salt mines from Jordan to Russia, too. But then a Hreodwater visitor is turned into a pillar of salt. As researchers at the Dead Sea have also found, proximity to the salt destroys all electronic devices and potentially threatens human health in a way similar to radiation.
Pulley’s eighth novel blurs the lines between good and evil when it comes to ‘gods,’ ‘witches’ and ‘angels’. Supernatural events might be the physical incarnation of belief or the punishments of a capricious deity. There is quite complicated world-building around Hreodwater, which I’m not used to because I don’t read, for example, hard SF. The inclusion of other salt mine locations, even when they’re not developed into full side plots, might serve as further evidence of what’s going on but also dilutes the central story. Overall, then, the novel felt much longer than it needed to be at over 450 pages.
This was my first experience with Pulley, and I found her style to be similar to T. Kingfisher’s – hip, shrewd fantasy-meets-horror in which sarcasm and queerness (a flirtation between Avelyn and the abbey caretaker, Jericho) reign – but Pulley is less grating. There’s a jokey faux-academic tone to the footnotes, and I loved the sense of humour:
“Avelyn broke. ‘Ssh yourself. What kind of sociopath eats a peach during Mass anyway?’”
“Fabian, I mean this in the most brotherly possible way, but f*ck off before I shove you in the f*cking fen.”
“Where do I find new jeans in Hreodwater? … what would you put on the delivery instructions? Proceed past imaginary castle, mind the angry knights, try not to turn to salt for no reason”
While Pulley doesn’t always gets it right about belief – she admits in the Acknowledgements that she isn’t religious at all so had to interview a lot of people to try to understand faith – it’s heartening that she makes the attempt, and the clash of organised religion and folk religion here, as realised in the troubled character of Avelyn, is intriguing. I’d try another of this author’s (shorter) works; any recommendations for me? (Public library)
My most striking bit of Halloween-relevant reading this year came from an unexpected place: the chapter “Spirits and Demons” in the memoir Ordinary Light by Tracy K. Smith. Her very religious mother was wary about her children celebrating Halloween, though she was happy to provide autumnal snacks and games for her daughter’s kindergarten classroom. When it came to trick-or-treating, though, she subverted the holiday’s tropes by dressing Tracy in a ghost costume disconcertingly reminiscent of a KKK outfit – a reminder that the true horrors are out there in the real world.
Are you doing anything for Halloween? Read anything spooky lately?
Booker Prize Shortlist Reads by Kennard and Perry & A Prediction
I’ve now read all but one of the novels on the Booker Prize shortlist (is it any surprise that it’s the longest one, The Disappearers by Marlon James, that I’ve been too daunted to attempt?). Luke Kennard and Rebecca Perry are both poets, which tends to indicate that particular care will be taken over the prose. Apart from that and having unnamed first-person narrators, I see no similarities between the two books, which are wildly different in tone. I have a preference, and I bet it’s not what you expect. Both: Public library
Black Bag by Luke Kennard
This was uproarious entertainment from the meta first line onward: “If you met anyone as whiny, as disobliging and egocentric as the average narrator of a novel in real life you’d find them unbearable.” An out-of-work actor in his late thirties who survives from one murder mystery dinner theatre gig to the next sees an ad for an unusual job. All he has to do is sit silently at the back of a university lecture hall each week, wearing a black leather bag with eyeholes. The professor is repeating a famous psychology experiment about attitudes changing through repeated exposure. For the narrator, being black bag is about freedom from his identity and inhibitions; maybe, also, finding solidarity. For his friend Claudio, who streams footage of himself gaming for a living, it’s a potential investment opportunity. For Justine, a married academic the narrator meets on campus, it’s a chance for kinky anonymous sex. I laughed out loud at the narrator’s habits of imagining his life in a 19th-century Swedish village and voicing his parents’ dog’s thoughts, and at so many random lines:
Is it not the case that for most of my life I have felt like I have just put a large crisp in my mouth during what turns out to be a quiet and pivotal scene in a play?
In the kingdom of dumb f*cks the guy with the English major is king.
Think of the moment, following the 2008 subprime crisis, when cupcakes proliferated like a cancer.
Ridiculous the plot may be, but it’s as hilarious as the novel is at the sentence level. For all that, it is still a cogent critique of modern masculinity, hypercapitalism and artificial intelligence (the scene where he and Justine go to see an AI-produced film, The Orb of Homuncules, is side-splitting). My criticism would be, as I’ve heard from various others, that the novel is overlong and slightly aimless in the second half; it could easily lose the 80 pages covering Claudio’s temporary absence. Still, when’s the last time a Booker nominee was this much pure fun?
May We Feed the King by Rebecca Perry
An unnamed curator arrives at a historic palace to stage its rooms with scenes of historical accuracy, tenderly rendered in the sort of detail only the most attentive visitors will register. Among other things, she’s an aficionado of high-quality, lifelike (expensive) fake food. She throws herself into the work as a way of distracting herself from the emptiness of her personal life since her partner left. We figure this out by reading between the lines, because she’s quite cagey: “At this point, certain things had happened in my life. I was ready to immerse myself.” She also finds herself unexpectedly drawn to the archivist, referred to by they/them pronouns. Her sections are in one- to two-page fragments, titled in a way that can obfuscate or signal an interpretation, such as “Peeking through a Crack in the Curtain and Seeing Another Curtain.” My favourite passage came from “All Work Is Holy”:
The rule is this: it must appear as if the person or people have just left the room. The viewer must feel as if the air is alive with their energy, that they only just missed them, that they will be back in any moment. If this isn’t the case, the scene is no more than an arrangement of objects. The scene is dead.
Indeed, the French phrase for “still life” is nature morte or dead nature. To try to bring history back to life, Perry devotes all but the first 55 and last 26 pages to a recreation of an unwilling medieval king’s court. He’s only on the throne because his two brothers died. There are rumours of infidelity concerning both him and his wife, and talk of removing him for incompetence. Soon they will all pass from life into legend.
I loved the late scene when the curator is introducing the exhibit to visitors and hears their ideas about how we know what happened in history – this is like a transcript of absolutely the best uni lecture or event Q&A ever. What gets preserved and passed down, and why? To what extent is there meaning in physical artefacts? These questions are compelling, yet I only really engaged with the contemporary storyline, while the historical pastiche felt like sub-Hilary Mantel, occasionally evocative but often edging towards pretension. 
I’d already read:
The End of Everything by M. John Harrison: A “dull, watery postapocalyptic slog [that] sheds no real light on the past, present, or future”. 
The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout: About “a likeable Everyman with the same …secrets and struggles we all have.” It’s “the most engaged Strout has been with the present day, and the most specific she’s gotten about political outrages.” 
John of John by Douglas Stuart: One of my books of the year. “Cal seeks to reconcile his sexuality and artistic goals with his family’s expectations and his devout upbringing. The characters’ power plays and acts of desperation are heartrending, but mischief and love of colour and crafts lend lightness.” 
Here’s my thinking…
Masculinity is a/the theme in four of this year’s shortlisted novels (from the Kennard: “men are mostly frightened and crazy and very easily misled”) – and in last year’s winner, Flesh by David Szalay, too.
I’ve felt sure that The Disappearers or John of John would win: previous winners whose works normalize homosexuality. I would want the latter to win for its beauty and emotional power, but I think the former more likely as the judges (including Raymond Antrobus, who is British Jamaican) may have an eye on the whiteness of recent winners.
Elizabeth Strout may be doomed to be a Booker bridesmaid. I don’t think this is her best book, but I wouldn’t mind if it won.
I would actually be delighted if the Prize went to the wildcard, Black Bag. But I can’t see that happening. The same goes for the Harrison (please oh please).
Let’s say, though, that the judges want something completely different. Then perhaps May We Feed the King is it. Mary Beard (chair) and Patricia Lockwood, in particular, came across as huge fans during the shortlist announcement event.
I’m torn, so I’ll just go with the novel I loved the most: John of John by Douglas Stuart.
What’s your prediction for the winner?
Autumn Reads, I: Maxine Clair and Kate Mosse
Our clocks went back on Sunday; combine that with the significant wind and rain we’ve had around Storm Austen and it has felt more wintry than autumnal recently – though today is a lovely mild day. This is the season for which it’s hardest for me to find appropriate reads (excepting R.I.P. spookiness), but I did read one book specifically about autumn and another that I’m including because of the title of its first chapter and its use of a school as a setting. The orange/leaf covers fit the bill, too.
Rattlebone by Maxine Clair (1994)
I found out about this after its 2023 reissue (by Daunt Books in the UK). Because the chapters are like linked short stories, I started reading it in September, but I’m still only two-thirds of the way through. Right from the first line, I got strong Tayari Jones vibes (particularly her latest, Kin):
We heard it from our friends, who got it from their near-eyewitness grandmothers and their must-be-psychic neighbour ladies, that when she was our same age, our teacher, Miss October Brown, watched her father fire through his rage right on into her mother’s heart.
In this opening chapter, “October Brown,” Irene Wilson and her friends start to awaken to the mores and secrets of adults. “Intuition is the guardian of childhood; it was keen in us, and we were right.” I always love the use of the first-person plural, however brief. Subsequent stories see the children resisting a Catholic missionary’s efforts and forming friendships across boundaries of class and respectability. We get glimpses of the wider Rattlebone, Kansas Black community, too. October Brown is considered a seductress, and dismissed from one of her boarding house situations because of rumours (as voiced by her landlady in “The Roomers”). I’d recommend this to fans of Jones, as above, and Alice Munro. (Secondhand – Better World Books with a voucher)
Autumn: The Story of a Season by Kate Mosse (2026)
I truly admire Mosse as a literary champion heavily involved with the Society of Authors and the Women’s Prizes in the UK. As I felt with the only other Mosse book I’ve read (An Extra Pair of Hands; Granny Rosie is still going!), though, this was pleasant but insubstantial. It may be because both are nonfiction works and she devotes her true energy to her expansive historical fiction.
I’d read Michael Morpurgo’s Spring and Val McDermid’s Winter (the best of the bunch) and wanted to continue with the series; even though all the entries have been somewhat lacklustre, I enjoy reading with the seasons and seeing what others cherish about each one. The challenge with such a book is to create something that is specific to one’s own experience but also can evoke universal feelings in others.
Mosse doesn’t keep to a strict diary format but does proceed from early September through the end of November in 2025, reporting every few days or so on the weather and happenings in her household and community. The cold nights drawing in, admiring local trees (“Trees, if conditions are right, outlast us. They are the true custodians of a house and garden, not the humans who come and go”), going for long country walks, having sloe gin and apple snow, thrilling to spooky stories: all good. But there’s also a little bit too much, even in such a short book, about Chichester and its West Sussex surroundings. This may be inevitable given that Mosse has lived there her whole life, but it was hard for me to summon much interest in local rituals related to Bonfire Night and the War Memorial. She has attempted to create a “marriage of landscape and memory and history,” an account of “the roots of my becoming a writer,” and perhaps for fans of her fiction she will have succeeded.
For a professed nature lover, though, there were a couple of howling errors here: monarch butterflies are incredibly rare UK migrants, so I doubt she saw them on her buddleia; and “a few ospreys are wading”? Hardly. She probably means oystercatchers. (She also misquotes Edith Wharton describing the appeal of ghost stories as “the thrill of the shudder”; the original quotation says “the fun.”) Samantha Rock’s linocuts are lovely, though. (Public library)
Love Your Library: October 2026
My thanks, as always, go to Eleanor for posting about her recent library borrowing and reading.
I’ve been catching up with most of the rest of the Booker Prize shortlist and reading lots of other delicious new releases thanks to the library. For Novellas in November and Nonfiction November, I’m also getting together a small stack of novellas and short nonfiction to supplement all the options from my own shelves.
My library use over the last month:
READ
- Hail Mary by Funmi Fetto
- Autumn by Kate Mosse
- Sheets by Brenna Thummler (a reread)
SKIMMED
- The Green Roasting Tin by Rukmini Iyer
- The Good Terrorist by Doris Lessing
CURRENTLY READING
- The Strangers by Naomi Alderman
- Stop All the Clocks: Poems of Love and Loss by W.H. Auden
- The Leveret by Anna Goldreich
- Black Bag by Luke Kennard
- Exit Party by Emily St. John Mandel
- May We Feed the King by Rebecca Perry
- The Salt King by Natasha Pulley
- The Original by Nell Stevens
- The Queen’s Gambit by Walter S. Tevis
- Lights by Brenna Thummler
- The Housekeeper by Rose Tremain
CHECKED OUT, TO BE READ
- Every Last Fish by Rose George
- Eat the Planet Well: How to Fix Our Toxic Food System – One Meal at a Time by Dave Goulson
- Hollywood, Ending by John Green
- Neurodivergent, by Nature by Joe Harkness
- End the Struggle and Dance with Life: How to Build Yourself Up when the World Gets You Down by Susan Jeffers
- Paradises Lost by Ursula Le Guin
- Suspicion by Seichō Matsumoto
- Godfather Death by Sally Nicholls
- Green Crime by Julia Shaw
- When the Forest Breathes: Renewal and Resilience in the Natural World by Suzanne Simard
- Elizabeth and Her German Garden by Elizabeth Von Arnim
- The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West
- If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: The Case against Superintelligent AI by Eliezer Yudkowsky
ON HOLD, TO BE COLLECTED
- Dodge City by Patrick deWitt
- I Found Myself … The Last Dreams by Naguib Mahfouz
IN THE RESERVATION QUEUE
- The Good Russian: In Search of a Nation’s Soul by Jana Bakunina
- The Man Who Read Books by Rachid Benzine
- Honour & Other People’s Children by Helen Garner
- The Mushroom Tapes by Helen Garner et al.
- Stations by Louise Kennedy
- End Times Fascism: And the Fight for the Living World by Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor
- Taipei Story by R.F. Kuang
- Are You with Me Now? by Hanif Kureishi
- Solace in Winter by Mary Lawson
- Look What the Cat Dragged In by Jason Rekulak
- Dead and Alive by Zadie Smith
- A Very British Christmas by Rob Temple
- O Now! by Niall Williams
RETURNED UNFINISHED
- The Most of Nora Ephron – I read a few pieces, but it turns out rereading her two essay collections was enough for now.
- Everest by Ashani Lewis
- Confessions of a Mask by Yukio Mishima – I didn’t have the heart for a tragic queer story at this time.
- How to Be Hopeful by Caitlin Moran – I read the first 16 pages or so. I used to find her Times columns amusing and read her first couple of books, but this felt limp.
- Night, Neon and Other Stories of Suspense by Joyce Carol Oates
RETURNED UNREAD
- Hag: Forgotten Folktales Retold by Daisy Johnson et al. – I lost interest; I think I’m a bit burnt out on short stories after Short Story September!
- Fiesta: A Journey through Festivity by Daniel Stables – Again, a loss of immediate interest, plus I needed to make space on my card.
What have you been reading or reviewing from the library recently?
Share a link to your own post in the comments. Feel free to use the above image. The hashtag is #LoveYourLibrary.
#NovNov26 Possibility Piles and Other November Reading Plans
Not much more than two weeks now before Novellas in November (#NovNov26) begins! Cathy and I are getting geared up and making plans for what we’re going to read. I have a couple of novellas out from the library, but mostly I’ve gathered potential reads from my own shelves. I’ll start with our buddy read, Rie Qudan’s Sympathy Tower Tokyo, of course. Some of these (Gordon, Hynes, Leavitt, Messud, Porter) contain more than one novella. This year some newer acquisitions – by Brooks, Garner, Jaeggy, Laski, Tuttle and Westcott – are calling my name.
I also have a huge number of novella-length works on my e-readers; the covers below represent a selection:
I’m hoping to coincide with several of November’s other challenges, too.
German Literature Month, hosted by Caroline and Tony: Ageing is novella-length and would count towards week 3 (nonfiction); I think I have a Rilke volume on my Kindle, so I may try to coincide with week 4 (commemorating the 100th anniversary of his death), too. I have some longer German novels as well (Sebald and Seethaler).
German / Misc. / Nonfiction
Margaret Atwood Reading Month, hosted by Marcie. I plan to read selections from the essay collection Burning Questions and the ENORMOUS selected poetry volume Paper Boat, which was part of my birthday book haul. I’ll also read her daughter Jess Gibson’s short story collection, The Good Eye (perhaps comparing it to one of Atwood’s collections).
Nonfiction in November, co-hosted by Liz: Controversially, we include short nonfiction under the #NovNov umbrella, and I have a nice little stack saved up (see above). I also have plenty of longer nonfiction on the go: a mixture of review books to catch up on, books from the library (such as this past year’s Wainwright Prize nominees), and stuff from my shelves that I’ve always meant to read.
Sci-Fi Month: Not a genre I typically read, and I don’t have any novella-length options at the moment, but I do have the first science fiction outing by a theologian (!) whose work I keep up with: The Last Voyage by Brian D. McLaren.
Spy any favourites or a particularly appealing title in my piles?
The link-up is now open for you to share your planning posts! Keep in touch via Bluesky (@bookishbeck.bsky.social / @cathybrown746.bsky.social) and Instagram (@bookishbeck / @cathy_746books) and use the feature images Cathy made plus hashtag #NovNov26.
Have any novellas lined up to read next month?
Bookish Beck = Rebecca Foster. American transplant to England. Freelance proofreader and book reviewer.
