What I read this month

With a wife who’s a teacher and a grade-school kid, it was a little crazy in the ol’ Jespersen household this month, so I didn’t get as much read as I would’ve hoped. Then again, there’s a solid argument to be made that I never do.

Here’s the low-down on how September went:

Read
Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration – Bryan Caplan and Zack Weinersmith
Aloha From Hell – Richard Kadrey

Started and stopped:
Have Sword, Will Travel – Garth Nix & Sean Williams

Reading:
How to Write a Novel – Nathan Bransford
Making Comics – Lynda Barr
The Hunted – Elmore Leonard

I was so impressed by Open Borders that I wrote up this post summarizing and recommending it. That’ll almost definitely be going on the list of my best read books of the year. For those who haven’t done a deep dive on my site, here’s last year’s list.

Have Sword, Will Travel was the second Garth Nix book I’ve tried reading in three months, and both times I’ve given up part way through and moved on. My understanding is that he’s an immensely popular writer, and I’ve liked the premise of both stories, but with multiple moments in each book of getting bumped out of the story by various means, it seems his style just isn’t for me. Lesson learned.

I haven’t read any Elmore Leonard in probably a few years, but The Hunted is reminding me that he can do no wrong. His stuff is so engaging and he somehow manages to paint complete characters and settings and action with minimal description to keep everything hustling along.
So, so good.

And to wrap this up, I’m letting my Proud Scandinavian flag fly again: Coming up in what little I know of next month’s books, I have the freshly published new translation of Beowulf waiting for me, and I’m looking forward to that more than I would’ve expected.