This was a somewhat weird reading month for me, I picked up several rather random books in addition to a couple that I have been on my must-read list. No regrets, though, I enjoyed everything I read and it’s good to occasionally stray from one’s default mode. Here’s what I managed to finish:

1. We Are the Weather by Jonathan Safran Foer. This is a very personal meditation on the climate crisis and the need for individual action, in particular regarding what we eat. If you keep yourself informed on the topic, there will be very little new here. I already believe the crisis is real, I know that we need to drastically reduce our meat (and other animal products) intake – I wanted a more in depth and practical look at that, which I didn’t get. It does make some good points, especially about personal responsibility, but if you have time for one climate crisis book only, go for The Uninhabitable Earth.

2. Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir. GtN was my most anticipated read of the month, I had been looking forward to this since Tor promised ‘lesbian necromancers in space’. It turned out to be less epic and less space-y (and maybe a bit less lesbian, although it definitely has queer characters) than I expected and it takes a while for the book to really get going. That said, it is fun and unique, even if it is more horror-leaning fun than I thought it would be and almost a closed room mystery instead of a space adventure. If you are looking for something rather dark and badass with lots of banter and cool female characters, it’s still a good one to check out. And the sequel sounds even more like my thing.

3. How to do Nothing by Jenny Odell. Do not read this if you expect a self-help book: How to do Nothing is a thoughtful and intelligent/intellectual look at the attention economy and how to resist it. Odell is not some fundamentalist who wants us all to live in the woods with no technology, she advocates a life that pays attention to our surroundings (nature in particular) and is anchored in time and space. I recommend reading this in tandem with Jia Tolentino’s Trick Mirror that looks at some similar themes from a different angle.

4. Whose Story is This? by Rebecca Solnit. I am exactly the type of woman you would expect to read and like Solnit. For some reason, I have not always clicked with her entirely, but I did very much enjoy this book, especially the first half or two thirds. I think I prefer it when she addresses very current affairs, her more general musings (as for example in The Field Guide to Getting Lost) tend to leave me rather cold. If you want an intelligent, feminist, progressive look at the issues we face today – with a focus on the US – you could do much worse than this.

5. The Hatred of Poetry by Ben Lerner. Lerner’s book was all over the more poetic part of Bookstagram a year or two ago, but it passed me by. I saw it at Brussels Waterstones last week and decided to give it a go – encouraged by the fact that it is a slim volume. I’m very glad I did, it’s an eloquent and insightful examination of poetry; it’s also witty in a very high-brow way. The book clearly has a limited target group, there is no point to pick it up if you don’t like to think about art and writing in a conceptual way, but if you do, this is a pleasure to read.

6. The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick. Despite my undying love for Science Fiction, there are still huge holes in my classic SF education. One of them has been PKD-shaped (if you prefer ‘Dick-shaped’, feel free to use this term instead) and I’m very happy that I finally managed to get to The Man in the High Castle. I’m sure you know the premise – the Axis powers have won WWII and the world has been divided between Germany and Japan. Against this background, Dick examines power dynamics, cultural hierarchies, individual struggles and the potential for good and evil that exists everywhere, at all times. Atwood and Orwell will probably always remain my favourite writers of dystopias, but this is absolutely a worthy addition to the canon. It is also less weird than most of PKD’s oeuvre.

7. The Clans of the Alphane Moon by Philip K. Dick. Talking about the weirder end of PKD’s spectrum, I also read The Clans of the Alphane Moon last month (on Kindle, therefore not pictured). It is difficult to describe, suffice it to say it involves clans of mentally ill people who have formed their own society on an isolated moon. As is usually the case, PKD’s imagination is off the scale, I just wish he had paid more attention to character development and narrative logic as well. If The Man in the High Castle is something I would recommend to everyone interested in the genre, The Clans of the Alphane Moon is for Dick-connoisseurs only.

8. Žižek’s Jokes by Slavoj Žižek. I very much enjoyed this collection of jokes from Žižek’s work (found entirely by accident in a Brussels bookshop): he loves to illustrate his points on Hegel and on philosophical ideas in general with anecdotes, which I find rather delightful by default. Someone called this ‘intellectual dad humour’ and I agree – most of the jokes are not that good, quite a few are embarrassing and a majority not acceptable in polite conversation (there are jokes about Jews, Gypsies, god, etc). It helps if you are at least somewhat familiar with the Soviet/Communist context and Žižek’s work, to avoid succumbing to indignation.

What did you read in October? And what’s on your TBR? Mine is ridiculously long, as always, but I’m very excited to get to it.