#WhatILearntFromBooks-September

Autumn is well and truly upon us-there is a nip in the air and Halloween stuff starting to appear in the shops, leaves turning on the tree in our garden, and most tellingly, our cats are actually coming inside the house and deigning to spend time in our company!

So, how was this month for you?

Did you read what you wanted to?

Was there a book coming out that you were super excited about? Drop me a line and let me know!

I tried to read as many books published by Salt this month, interspersed with a lot of horror and fantasy, and here are some of my takeaways from my month in books-

• The town of Hensley in ‘Beneath’ by Kristi DeMeester is likely named after George Went Hensley,often erroneously credited with introducing the cult of snake worship into Pentecostal teaching-however, he was instrumental in spreading the practice throughout the Southeast before dying of…you guessed it, a snakebite!!
• In order to qualify as treasure, a found item must be dated at least 300 years old, and contain at least 10% of precious metal by weight as told in ‘Mudlarking’ by Lara Maiklem
• Black vultures can regurgitate their stomach contents at will and use it as a weapon, a fact discovered by Miriam Black, Chuck Wendig’s protagonist in ‘Thunderbird’
• The lead character in the Cassidy Blake series by Victoria Schwab, has been sorted into Gryffindor House, as discovered in ‘City Of Ghosts’
• Neeta Oza‘s mini bibles of self care really made an impact in a month where time was stretched, and strectched again-there is always time for self care!
• In Henrietta Heald’s celebration of women in engineering, I found that there was actually an Act Of Parliament passed to put women back into the kitchen after World War 1! In ‘Magnificent Women and Their Revolutionary Machines’, the celebration of 100 years of women in engineering showed me a whole new side of women in science! And also how important it is to continue the work started by Katharine and Rachel Parsons with Caroline Haslett.

I also vastly  underestimated just how hard starting a new job, and a new profession would be so I am genuinely amazed that I read anything at all in September-hence the late publishing of this blogpost-and am sure there were other things I learnt…

The Indie Books Love Fest will roll on into November, the aimed for #Saltember didn’t quite happen but it will make a reappearance soon!
AND #Spooktober continus apace with lots of gruesome and spooky reads on their way to your inbox….

Roll on autumn, that season of pumpkin spice and Halloween!