I read 11 books in September (87 in total this year) and these added another 3,697 pages (for 23,037 in total). A big part of the month was spent completing John Marsden's Tomorrow When the War Began series in a fictional future when Australia is invaded by another power and a group of teenagers effectively find themselves acting as a resistance unit whilst trying to survive in a familiar but now occupied landscape. The books gripped me and I tore through them very quickly, finishing the remaining five books in the series early in the month. I enjoyed them, as they didn't pull punches. Characters died, struggled and relationships developed in a complicated landscape. The consequences of actions were shown, and characters developed. The brutality of an occupational regime is shown. I recommend this series; don't be put off that it's nominally in the young adult category.
I was looking at what to read next, when I realised that Marsden had written a sequel to the series, so I dived straight back in. The sequel is a short trilogy, collectively referred to as The Ellie Chronicles, set six months after the end of the war when an uncomfortable peace has been agreed, with part of Australia remaining occupied. The protagonist, Ellie, is dealing with a return to normality with her parents, combined with a degree of fame as the group's exploits in the war have been celebrated. However, this isn't just a return to mundanity; Ellie's parents are struggling to keep their farm going and she is struggling to readjust to normality. Tensions are high in the border region, with informal action & reprisals taking place on both sides of the border. I enjoyed this again; it serves the same kind of purpose as Dune Messiah, showing the aftermath and impact of the actions taken previously and how the protagonists deal with it. There's a downward spiral from pressures, but it does end on a realistic high note that needed hard choices to meet.
I then read The Dog Stars by Peter Heller. This tells the tale of a pilot who has survived a viral apocalypse in the USA. He lives at an airfield with his dog and a survivalist, using his Cessna to fly and get supplies. The book has recently been filmed by Ridley Scott, and has been criticised quite heavily. However, when I saw it with my eldest, we both enjoyed it. The cinematography was lush, and it was very much a 'show not tell' story. We both felt connected to the characters when we watched it. Bizarrely, most of the criticism I saw was saying that 'The Walking Dead' had already done this. However, we felt it was good, and I immediately downloaded my copy of the book from the virtual 'to read' pile on my Kindle and set to it. The story in the novel is less cinematic, but the bones of it remain quite clearly in the film version. The only thing that irked me about the book was that the author has opted not to use speech marks, which took a couple of chapters to adapt to. Overall, I recommend both the book and the film version; they're both subtly different so it has its own feel.
The final novel I read was Cixin Liu's The Three Body Problem, which was a return to Elle Cordova's Book Club for me. I'd skipped several months because I'd read the books that were the picks reasonably recently or because that re-reading the novel was likely to trigger a re-read of a series that I didn't want to read again right now. The Three Body Problem is another of the books that's been in my too-read pile for a while; I think that my friend Tom recommended it to me. I found it had an interestingly different style (I suspect from the translation and differences in language structure) and I welcomed that the translator had added footnotes that explained context. I didn't love it, but I liked it enough that I have the next book queued up to read in October.
I only read one non-fiction book this month, The Nazi Mind by Laurence Rees. This is an analysis of how the Nazi's thought and developed their philosophy of control, using techniques of othering people though creating and 'them vs us' situation and more. It was chilling, especially when you can see elements of it being used by the current US administration and the UK right wing. But know your enemy, yes?
Overall, a busy month for reading, and I'm pretty confident that I will get into three figures for books read this year again.
3 October 2026