What I Read And What I Thought
October 2025 content consumption, but just the books
Greetings, hi hi, hello, welcome to Crone Life, my weekly account of coming to terms with my transition from midlife to actual old age. Now I’m 65, the aging part of it seems to be going even faster. I need to deal with scary things like retirement income, estate planning, Medicare, joint replacements and the ever-recurring need for more physical therapy.
Books are always a great distraction. In a regular month, I might read between four and six books. Somehow, and I have no idea how, this October I read eleven. Usually I add things I watched and things I bought to my monthly recount, but this one is exclusively about what I read.
The Dry Season, Melissa Febas. I have a lot of thoughts and feelings around this book. At first I didn’t want to read it because I thought it was some kind of “eat pray love” shit.1 But guess what, it’s not! It’s about overcoming your last and deepest addiction in order to be the artist you know you can be without other stuff getting in the way. The short version is, in her mid-30s, after an exhausting, life-destroying relationship, she decides to stop having affairs and be celibate for like, a month. And then three months. And then a year. And maybe longer than that, I don’t really remember. She refers a lot to her youth as a junkie and a drunk, but she is focussed on conquering her need to seek love and approval through seduction. She wants to give that up so she can focus on her writing. And she does and it works and she learned a lot. I have thoughts and feelings because I see something of myself in this narrative, although I was in my 20s when I decided to give up relationships and focus on my pure poetic self.2 But after reading her memoir, I saw what I was trying to get to, or at, with my own such desires. And now, as a crone, I can presumably put some of that insight to work.
What Feasts At Night, T. Kingfisher. Another in her series about “sworn soldiers”—people born as women who give up womanhood to have male privileges, but who are not, I think, “trans” in our usual meaning of the word, but a third sex—they have their own pronouns in their native language, etc., although honestly there aren’t a lot more details, or somehow I missed them. I read the first one, and this is the third, so maybe the deeper explanations are in the second volume. Which I am probably not going to read because I find this series charming but also kind of dull.3
Hazardous Spirits, Anbara Salam. I really hated this book and I don’t know why, exactly. I think because it’s hyped as a Gothic suspense story and it’s not. Both the protagonist and her husband have deep, dark secrets buried in their pasts that are frequently referenced but never elucidated and that gets boring after a while. Everything, no matter how exotic or potentially thrilling, became superficial. Plus there’s no conclusion, or at least no satisfying one. I think this sums up the reasons behind my desire to throw it across the room and stomp on it once I’d finished.4
The Book of Lost Hours, Hayley Gelfuso. I have a notebook where I keep a list of books I read each month. When I was going down the list, I realized I had no idea what this one was and had to look it up. It’s a time travel novel with Nazis, bureaucrats and overweening American superiority toward the rest of the world. Also a mother and daughter who live in a timeless dimension and end up being almost the same age, and magical books that tell life stories but can also be edited after the fact. And a great, time-spanning love affair. It’s a bit of a jumble really. It’s not terrible, give it a try.
The Incandescent, Emily Tesh. This author wrote another book I really liked, Some Desperate Glory, which I did write up for Crone Life.5 I liked this one a lot, too, but it was far less well realized than Some Desperate Glory.6 Though her earlier book was a space opera, this is a scholomance type narrative where our protagonist graduates from magic school and becomes a demonologist, returning to teach at her alma mater. Much backstory eventually comes to light, but not in a particularly well-paced way. Also if you think about it, none of it makes sense, so I fault the world-building as well as the pacing. It holds the germ of something that could have been much better, though, so I look forward to her next publication.
The Dragon Waiting, John M. Ford. Fantasy based on an alternative Europe, kind of like those Guy Gavriel Kay books I like so much. I liked this one a lot too, but since the geography and the names are the same as in the real world, and I’m somewhat fuzzy on the chronology of medieval Europe, I had a hard time parsing which changes were propelling the narrative.
Clown Town, Mick Herron. Latest book in the Slough House/Slow Horses series. My overall impression is that Herron needs a break from these, or it’s time to wind it all up. Also maybe he is too aware of how a book might be adapted for TV. I also think maybe I missed an installation because they refer to stuff that I don’t remember from any of the earlier books. Maybe it’s just me, this is the ninth one, after all. Here’s a good review on r/SlowHorses.
Replaceable You, Mary Roach. All about getting new body parts. There are skin grafts, there are prosthetics, there are heart transplants, all wrapped up in the usual Mary Roach jokey-in-tone but well-reported science journalism. I wanted to read it because of my shoulder replacement surgery, but alas the chapter on joint replacement only mentioned hips. I don’t advise reading this if you are contemplating any of these procedures, however. You might learn more than you want to know.
The Summer War, Naomi Novik. Short, fan-ficc-y novella, felt like she left a lot out. A lot of telling more than showing. I do like her smart girl characters though.
When Among Crows, Veronica Roth. One of those fantasy novellas where the hero regrets the bad things he’s done and wants to atone. His motives are supposed to be a mystery, but it’s not hard to figure out. Plenty of pain porn, plenty of references to Eastern European folklore if you like rusalkas, zmoras, cryptic Polish sayings, etc.
The Gods of New York, Jonathan Mahler. Non-fiction about Edward Koch’s final term as Mayor of New York. Traces the origins and rise of figures like Al Sharpton, Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani. Author is an NYT journalist so it’s 500 pages, all deeply sourced. I read it because I was living in Manhattan during those years and I was amazed by how much I didn’t remember. I came away with a deeper understanding of Giuliani and Trump, for sure. I don’t know how interesting it would be to a reader who didn’t have skin in the game, so to speak.
Here’s a new thing—ratings!
Top 3 (in order): The Dry Season, The Dragon Waiting, The Gods of New York
Bottom 3 (in order): Summer War, While Among Crows, Hazardous Spirits
Veronica’s Corner
As the days get shorter and the nights get longer, Veronica spends a lot of time curled up on our bed. She still likes to go outside though, leading to more ticks requiring removal. She loves being stroked, having her ears scratched and her chin rubbed, but no matter how patient I am, she does NOT want to be cuddled. This makes me sad.
Maybe I’ll do a Part II about other cultural consumption, or maybe I’ll just leave everyone hanging. Thanks for reading!
I have never read E, P, L, who knows, I might love it, but probably not as I seldom love bestsellers, I reassure myself.
Not that it lasted very long … I would declare to myself “I will be celibate for a year! And focus on writing!” and in a couple of months …
It’s not that they’re bad or anything, but I am not the audience. Maybe it’s the definite YA tinge.
But I didn’t because it was a library book!
Not that I am ever going to figure out when so I can link you to it.
I keep meaning to read her first published work, a duology of fantasy novellas, Silver in the Wood and The Drowned Country).
I loooooove your 'what I read' reviews! Thank you so much for sharing these. Adding many to my TBR list. YOU are the reason I reconsidered my whole sale rejection of fantasy, and was pleasantly surprised by Leigh Bardugo! Well the first few books, anyway. Also you must read so fast the pages are a blur! hahahahhaa.
For Miss V, have you used the liquid stuff you apply between her shoulders and rub into the skin? Good for repelling (or is it killing?) fleas and ticks.