#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?
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 at the top of my site so you can add in your planning posts and book lists during the remainder of October, and reviews starting on 1 November.
Click below to add your link!
It Comes Round Once a Year / It Comes for Us All
I turned 43 on Wednesday the 14th – I share a birthday with some illustrious folk, including Dwight D. Eisenhower, Katherine Mansfield, Winnie the Pooh, and Susan of A life in books.
I passed a pleasant, low-key day: a roofer was here in the morning to finish replacing our bathroom roof; I took a long walk out to the edge of the countryside; I read from a few books I was enjoying, including a couple birthday-appropriate ones; we went out to dinner at our favourite restaurant, which serves seasonal English tapas; there were some tipples; and back at home I opened my gifts (books plus a book token to buy more, a gin Advent calendar, vermouth, and chocolate marzipan) and had a slice of the chocolate caramel cheesecake my husband made for me from Hummingbird Bakery’s Cake Days cookbook.
I planned to put up an album on Facebook the next day with a wry quote from Nora Ephron’s I Feel Bad about My Neck (“According to my dermatologist, the neck starts to go at forty-three, and that’s that”) and the Munch’s-Scream emoji. I was mildly vexed with my husband for taking a photo of me that shows the silver coming in at my hairline and wasn’t sure if I’d include that one. I had it all planned out, clever me.
Then I woke up to a message from my dad saying my sweet cousin Dawn had died some hours ago – the middle of the night our time, but 8:30 p.m. their time, so still my birthday. I can’t pretend we were close: she was part of my dad’s Georgia clan but relocated to Oklahoma 30 years ago, and I don’t think I’d seen her in the flesh in nearly 35 years. We kept in touch at a Christmas card sort of level over the years.
I can’t say it was a huge shock, either: she came home on hospice, bedbound with incurable lung disease, in late September. But we’d done a video chat with her earlier in the month and she seemed so well and optimistic that we – even my sister, a hospice nurse who’s seen this play out many times – thought we were looking at months, not days. Then she got pneumonia again, on top of her existing issues, and it was just too much for her body to take. She was 54.
This instantly put things into perspective for me. I’m so glad we reconnected, though we should have done more, and sooner. It was beautiful to see photos of her with her mother and brothers, who visited her for several days and left not knowing it was two days before the end. Right to her last she was thinking of others and making connections; she even wrote me birthday wishes, which made her loss seem all the more surreal.
Now, on each birthday, I’ll remember my cousin and the family she left behind. It feels right, something to be philosophical about rather than resent. A reminder that life is fragile and bittersweet, and something I must always strive to be grateful for.
From my current earworm, Denison Witmer’s “Confessions”:
“Nothing seems as random as the gift of life, and I hope I’m not wasting mine.”
Get Ready for Novellas in November! (#NovNov26)
Novellas: “all killer, no filler”
~Joe Hill
Hard to believe it’s nearly that time again. 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 celebrating the art of the short book (we include nonfiction, too). A novella technically contains 20,000 to 40,000 words, but to keep things simple we define it as any work under 200 pages.
This year’s buddy read is a 2024 novella translated from the Japanese last year:
Sympathy Tower Tokyo by Rie Qudan [translated by Jesse Kirkwood] is the author’s fourth novel and won the Akutagawa Prize. An architect named Sara Machina is assigned to design a city skyscraper meant to house criminals in comfort. While trying to navigate a middle way between compassion and recrimination – complicated by her own past victimhood – she converses with an AI chatbot. This engaging exploration of language, creativity and conformity comes with high praise from writers ranging from Helen Phillips to Bryan Washington. (134 pages)
Please join us in reading this any time between now and the end of November!
You might like to start off the month with a My Year in Novellas retrospective looking at any novellas you have read since last year’s NovNov and finish with a New to My TBR list based on what short books others have tempted you with.
It’s always a busy month in the blogging world with Nonfiction November, German Literature Month, Margaret Atwood Reading Month and SciFi Month. Why not search your shelves and/or local library for novellas that could count towards multiple challenges?
From 19 October a link-up post will be pinned at the top of my site so you can add your planning posts and book lists. 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.
#ShortStorySeptember, Meet #RIPXXI: Fremlin, M.R. James & Navarro
I can hardly believe it’s October; I still have a bunch of short stories to finish and review! I’m taking the opportunity to start on Readers Imbibing Peril with these three collections that crank up the suspense with their scenes of the unexplained.
Don’t Go to Sleep in the Dark by Celia Fremlin (1970)
(Faber reprint: 2024)
I wasn’t wild about Fremlin’s Uncle Paul, but these 13 stories were terrific. Nightmares sometimes become reality as children and women of a certain age face up to threats, whether concrete or imaginary. The twist endings can reassure or unsettle, but in either case they call into question the tenor of what’s gone before. Only three tales are in the first person, with the other 10 in an authoritative third person. The need to protect children is a recurring impulse, ageing is a frequent cause of angst, and there are a couple of instances of frightening bird imagery (a nod to du Maurier?). There are also tweaks of horror story tropes – the haunted house in “The Hated House” and “The Locked Room.” Visual and auditory clues ramp up the tension. I’ll highlight a couple of favourites: “The Quiet Game,” in which a mother’s mental illness has dangerous implications for her twins; and “The Baby-Sitter,” about a little girl who’s afraid of The Hen with Great Big Eyes and her child-minder, who’s lived out her own horrors as a European refugee. This one is a fine example of how Fremlin mixes the everyday with suggestions of the supernatural. (Little Free Library) 
Ghost Stories of an Antiquary: A Graphic Collection of Short Stories by M.R. James, Volume I (2016)
(Adapted by Leah Moore and John Reppion)
(I reviewed Volume II in 2017.) Though all retold by the same duo, these four stories are each illustrated by a different artist. So although the setup and voice tends to be samey – a dignified man investigating strange happenings at a country house – the art style varies significantly While I didn’t care for the approach in the first two (“Canon Alberic’s Scrap-Book” – Marvel; “Lost Hearts” – Pixar), the others, “The Mezzotint” and “The Ash-tree,” made up for it. I liked the monochrome palette, gentlemen detecting vibe, and Wildean mark of a morphing image of the former. In the latter, a Gothic setting and a history of suppressing witchcraft pave the way for unnatural spectacles. James’s classic ghost stories have been hugely influential on the likes of Susan Hill. (I also wondered if Stephen King borrowed the girl in the bath from “Lost Hearts” for The Shining.) Still, my conclusion about the second volume stands for the whole project: the “problem with using the graphic form for … tales that center around nameless horror is that depicting [what is feared] saps it of its power.” 
With thanks to SelfMadeHero for the free copy of The Compendium (Volumes I and II) for review.
Blood Is Dripping onto the Courtyard by Elvira Navarro (2025; 2026)
[Translated from the Spanish by Christina MacSweeney]
My introduction to Navarro, a Spanish author, reminded me most of Agustina Bazterrica’s 19 Claws and a Black Bird. These nine stories are full of derelict buildings, outsider characters, and traces of the uncanny. Seven are in the third person and two in first. A nice touch: two stories are linked in that they feature Almudena, who is studying in Paris. “The Fear of the City” is, we realize, the story she wrote about femicide, as mentioned, fittingly, in “The City of Fear.” “Idiotic Love” is narrated by a trans woman with an anal fissure and conjures a seedy world of nightclubs and sex shops. This was the longest story and not a pleasant one. There were just three standouts for me. In “The Washing Machine,” which contains the title line, a couple’s appliance keeps filling with blood for no reason. “The Animal Collector” is a tough one for animal lovers because of all the injuries and deaths, but the idea of a highway maintenance man assembling a makeshift zoo for his roadside rescues is alluring. Eventually, he becomes overwhelmed and compassion turns into a burden. In “A Small Bunch of Violets,” Mari chooses a new ornament for her father’s grave during a heat wave, but the flowers keep being displaced. There were too many so-so stories, though.
With thanks to Two Lines Press and publicist Nicolette Praça for the proof copy for review.
#ShortStorySeptember Round-Up with Statistics
Thank you for joining in and making this second year of Short Story September such a success! In total, 25 bloggers contributed 80 posts, including planning posts and book lists plus reviews that together covered 38 individual stories and 60 whole collections (and a bonus biography of a short story writer).
If you want to take a look back at the link parties, they are here and here.
The authors covered more than once this year were Celia Fremlin and W. Somerset Maugham; the only book reviewed more than once (certain stories, at least) was Vampire Tales, a good lead into R.I.P.
As always, I bit off much more than I could chew and I’m still making my way through a number of collections and single stories. For my benefit, if no one else’s, the link party will stay open (and the opening post pinned on my site) through 6 October. I’ll come back and update the final statistics as well.
New to My TBR in #ShortStorySeptember
I’m still frantically trying to finish the multiple short story collections on my stack, but there’s always room for more on the TBR!
This month I discovered (and promptly ordered secondhand):
- Arranged Marriage by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (via Lisa of Hopewell’s Public Library of Life), a collection about the South Asian immigrant experience that I thought could be a good follow-up to Interpreter of Maladies
- Alice by Judith Hermann (via Brona of This Reading Life), linked short stories that would also count towards German Literature Month in November
It’s been a while since I’ve read anything of Tom Cox’s, but I loved the description in Jan’s review (at What I Think About When I Think About Reading) of his new collection, Curious Events Lately Occurring in This Neighbourhood, as “a sketch show” with “a certain skewed perception, a certain willingness to embrace the surreal.” I’m also always partial to flash fiction, too, which this is at least in part.
I came across Roald Dahl’s short stories for grown-ups through Cathy’s review of Kiss, Kiss at 746 Books and will borrow his collected stories from the university library for next year’s challenge.
I am really enjoying a different spooky collection of Celia Fremlin’s at the moment, so I will have to source By Horror Haunted (reviewed by Helen at She Reads Novels).
Diana’s review of multiple collections by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky at Thoughts on Papyrus piqued my interest and I managed to find one story, “Quadraturin,” with the full text online to read another time.
Both Nancy Elin and Rose featured a selection of short stories by W. Somerset Maugham; Rose even said she thinks his stories are better than his novels, so I know I’ve got to read some. I have the volume Creatures of Circumstance, and can access others from the public library.
Last month I earned a £70 voucher for doing a Teams call about my reading and book-buying habits with a UX researcher at Awesomebooks.com (she didn’t know what she was in for!) – my favourite place to buy secondhand books online – and spent it at the weekend. I have two new copies on the way as part of that big order, one of which is a collection of uncanny stories that I’ve had in my sights ever since I first heard about it: The Good Eye by Jess Gibson, Margaret Atwood’s daughter. I will plan to read it as part of Margaret Atwood Reading Month in November.
Have you discovered any new stories or collections this month?
Six Degrees of Separation: From H Is for Hawk to Notes from an Exhibition
It’s been several years since I last participated in Kate’s Six Degrees meme. I’m not sure why I fell out of the habit, after posting pretty faithfully from February 2020 until August 2023. This month I was drawn back by the individualized starting point: your book club’s current read. (See Kate’s opening post.)
So I start with Helen Macdonald’s H Is for Hawk, which I look forward to rereading for our next meeting in early October, and every link that follows is (or is connected to) a book we’ve read in book club.
#1 H Is for Hawk was a vanguard of a new trend in nature writing that came to dominate the Wainwright Prize list in the UK: blending a hard/sad personal story with a quest that involves travel and/or communion with the natural world. In the case of Macdonald (who now uses they/them pronouns), they work through grief for their father by taking up falconry and training a goshawk.
I went with some members of my book club to see the excellent film starring Claire Foy, followed by a Q&A with the author, earlier this year. Another early example of the misery memoir-meets-nature book vogue was The Outrun by Amy Liptrot (a Wainwright winner), which combines her struggle with alcoholism with her return to the Orkney Islands and her work for the RSPB surveying endangered corncrakes. Another link: I saw the film version with Saoirse Ronan, which probably surpassed the book, with a book club friend. We then tried to get the others interested in rereading it with us, but it only got a few votes.
#2 Liptrot lives in Hebden Bridge, Yorkshire, which is famous for its hippie artists and inclusivity (a Brighton of the North?). Among the other nearby residents (in the village of Mytholmroyd) is Benjamin Myers, whose experimental historical novel about Saint Cuthbert, Cuddy, we discussed in book club a year ago. I had skimmed it when it was first published, and enjoyed it in parts but thought it more pretentious than readable. It was not very well received by most members…
#3 …unlike the quirky and suspenseful Strange Sally Diamond by Liz Nugent, which we’d read the year before and was a hit with almost everyone. Cuddy is set in Northumberland, and I associate Sally with that county because I read it on holiday there.
#4 Sally Diamond has some autistic-like traits, in terms of her lack of understanding of social conventions. We questioned whether this was an attempt by the author to reproduce the effects of trauma. The same book club member brought this up in relation to Sybil Van Antwerp, the protagonist of the most recent Women’s Prize winner, The Correspondent by Virginia Evans, which was our September read. I’d picked up on the characterization of her young friend Harry Landy as autistic, but Sybil herself? That hadn’t occurred to me. It just goes to show how discussing books in a group turns up fresh ideas about them.
#5 We had also talked diagnoses with one of our previous reads, Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason, who scrupulously avoided naming her protagonist’s mental health condition, though it seemed pretty clear to us that it was meant to be bipolar. Another connection: we read that novel as part of our official Women’s Prize shadowing in 2022.
#6 The Correspondent, Sorrow and Bliss, and Patrick Gale’s Notes from an Exhibition, which shares the theme of mental illness, are all among our top 10 reads of all time, with a score of 18.5/20. We’ve read two Gale novels now and he’s a reliable author for us.
Welcome to Short Story September! (#ShortStorySeptember)
Join me in celebrating the art of the short story this month! Simply read one or more individual stories (or collections) and share your review by adding a blog post or social media post to the InLinkz party below. (Or paste a link in a comment and I can add it for you.)
You can find more information about the challenge here. This post will be pinned to the top of my blog, and at the end of the month I will post a recap of what everyone has reviewed.
Short Story September Is Coming Soon!
Every September I make a special effort to get to more of the short fiction on my shelves, e-readers, and library catalogue. Last year, Lisa of ANZ LitLovers launched Short Story September as a proper blogger challenge and I had great fun taking part. This year her health does not allow her to host*, so I’m stepping in; apologies for the last-minute announcement.
Lisa encouraged people to choose particular short stories that they would recommend. You may want to review individual stories – from anthologies or literary magazines, for instance – instead of or in addition to entire collections.
I’m going to keep it all quite simple so there’s more time for reading and less taken up by blog admin. My plan is as follows; feel free to join in with the prompts in bold, which always serve as handy ways to top and tail a challenge month:
- 24 August: Planning post for Short Story September – Photographs of my potential reads
- 1 September: Opening post with InLinkz link-up (pinned to my site throughout the month)
- 4 September: My Year in Short Stories – Looking back at the collections I’ve already read in 2026, with mini-reviews of some stand-outs.
~Reviews of various collections and individual stories through the month~
- 28 September: New to My TBR – Short stories and authors I’ve discovered through this year’s challenge
- 30 September: Round-up of your links, with statistics on the number of authors and books featured and any stories that were discussed multiple times
- 7 October: The link-up will stay open for another week to mop up any late entries, which I will also add in to the round-up post.
I hope you’ll join me in celebrating the art of the short story next month. The hashtag is #ShortStorySeptember and the badge is above. I’m on Bluesky (@bookishbeck.bsky.social) and Instagram (@bookishbeck) but likely to miss social media posts, so do also add your post to the InLinkz party and/or paste a link in a comment on the opening post.
*Please send Lisa all your warm get-well wishes!
Many thanks to Kim of Reading Matters for the use of her logo design.
Bookish Beck = Rebecca Foster. American transplant to England. Freelance proofreader and book reviewer.
