september was quite the reading month! granted a few of my reads were short and fast, but i was also a lot better about prioritizing reading this month. below are my thoughts on what i read this month.

gather together in my name by maya angelou. i am slowly making my way through maya angelou’s autobiographical collection, and this month i read the second in her series. gather together in my name picks up where i know why the caged bird sings leaves off, with a 16-year-old angelou living in san francisco and trying to make it as a young mother whose life has suddenly changed. we travel around california – and even take a trip back to stamps, arkansas – as angelou tries to make a life for her and her young son. angelou goes through a number of jobs and relationships in the three or so years the book spans, and we learn about how each of those experiences informs her adult life. as always i got swept up in angelou’s beautiful writing and could not put this one down once i started. she will forever be one of my favorite writers. looking forward to part three, singin’ and swingin’ and gettin’ merry like christmas, soon! // 5 stars

dept of speculation by jenny offill. i have been hearing rave reviews of offill’s offbeat novel for a long time, but i was still not prepared for how much i would like it or how quickly i would speed through it. told in disjointed memories and thoughts, dept of speculation breaks down a relationship and shows all of its different facets. narrated by the wife in the relationship, we learn about what brought her and her husband together and the storms they weather over the course of their marriage. had i read this one on a weekend, i very easily could have finished it in one day // 4 stars

tribute by nora roberts. for this season’s semi-annual nora roberts escape from reality, i went with tribute. to get away from the world of los angeles and to reconnect with her long-dead grandmother, cilla mcgowan buys her grandmother’s farm in the shenandoah valley and sets about restoring it to its old beauty. she discovers things about her family along the way and has to deal with someone who doesn’t want particular secrets to come to light, and she learns more about who she is and what she wants. it’s a pretty standard roberts novel, and it kept me entertained on my recent trip to baltimore // 3 stars

reading with patrick by michelle kuo. this book really took me by surprise. when i heard that someone had written a book about their time teaching in helena – the small town in the delta where i grew up – i was instantly skeptical. as i heard more about the premise of the story, however, i was intrigued, and i am so glad i decided to read kuo’s story of her experience and her student, patrick. a learned a lot of things about helena, both good and bad, and it was nostalgic, eye-opening, uplifting, and heartbreaking all at once // 4 stars

currently reading: the shadow rising, book four in robert jordan’s wheel of time series. it’s taken me a long time to get back to reading this series, and i am looking forward to continuing with it and seeing where it goes. it’s been quite a while since i read a 900-page book, and it’s going to take me some time to refresh my memory. maybe next time i shouldn’t wait five years before i read the next book in the series…

have you read anything interesting recently?

xx