I decided to do the Recommended Reading List as intended, releasing it the month after I did the reading. I got behind earlier in the year, so the place where I store the recommended reads has turned into a towering mass of fiction. I’m going to catch up on those, but first, I’ll put up October’s list. That way I won’t be permanently behind, and I will have fresher memories of what I read.
So…that said…
This month I had a weird experience with a novel. In keeping with my policy of not bad-mouthing other authors, I’m not telling you who wrote this book or what it’s title is.
After a noon Aces game, my friends left immediately. They had different plans. I was ravenous and wanted to eat at one of the nearby restaurants, but I had left my book at home. So I decided to order an ebook on my iPhone, so that I didn’t have to input any information. I went for the book I was reading at home…but it wouldn’t be available on the Apple store until January. (The authors were published with Amazon’s Thomas & Mercer.) So the authors lost a sale. Instead, I read the openings of a few novels, found one that hit my sweet spot, and read to the end of the sample.
I liked it enough to order the hardcover, which arrived the next day. The book was an historical, literary, and slow-moving, without a lot of tension. I move books like that to bedtime reading so I actually get my sleep. I moved it, and found I kept forgetting who the characters were and the thread of the very thin plot. The writing was good, the author is well known (to historical readers) and the topic was interesting. But damned if I didn’t have to work at caring.
And then the author wrote past her ending. As in 50 pages past her ending. Sometimes she would stuff plot that should have been in the main part of the book in narrative; sometimes she just skipped stuff. I finally finished the book, and forgot to move it to my already-read pile, where I decide if I’ll recommend, save, or give the book away. It took two days to remember that I had even read it, and then only because I was moving a different book to the bedside table. By then, I had mostly forgotten the book. Which, if you’re wondering, moved it to the giveaway pile.
Strange experience, which I’ve had with a lot of traditionally published books of late. If you’re going to trad pub, you should get some editing help. From her afterward, she had written the book by committee (this group of writer friends, that group of writer friends), and didn’t even list her trad pub editor, who (had it been me) would have told her that some of this stuff had to go.
I wonder what the book would have been like if she hadn’t written by committee. There were pieces of a good novel here; they just didn’t gel. And…yeah…this means I’m not buying her other books. I can be half-bored by someone whose work I like better.
I ended up reading a lot of other things in October, many of which I liked better. And because I’m taking a theatre history class at UNLV, I also read some ancient plays (I mean ancient…as in Greek, Roman & Sanskrit plays), none of which I feel like recommending. What I do want to recommend is below.
October, 2025
George, Elizabeth, 
A Slowly Dying Cause, Penguin Publishing Group, 2025. I read this right after the Mick Herron, below. George is not the wordsmith that Herron is, but her characters live and breathe on the page, so much so that the sections depicting a journal from the victim were occasionally tough to read because he was loathsome. Not in a he murders children and puppies way, but just the kind of person no one would want to be around. (Which is why he is the victim.)
Those sections are necessary, though, because of the resolution of the crime. There’s a brilliant moment in the read where I doubted my own perceptions. Just like our protagonists did. George is a storytelling craftsman, whose character mysteries are delightful. The book is large and slow-moving and I didn’t mind one bit.
Goo, Maurene, “Like Before,” Up All Night: 13 Stories Between Sunset & Sunrise, edited by Laura Silverman, Algonquin Young Readers, 2021. A well done realistic story about friendship. It is a heartbreaker, but it also made me think. I’d never read Maurene Goo before, but I will look up her other work because of this story.
Herron, Mick, Clown Town, Soho Crime, 2025. I always hesitate before I read one of Mick Herron’s marvelous Slough House novels, just like I hesitate before I read something by Stephen King. Both Herron and King are incredible masters of their craft, and they do things with language in the service of a story that I consider to be absolutely magical. If I’m working with other writers, I don’t read either author because comparing young writers to Herron or King is just unfair.
So I binge-read Clown Town in between my workload on other projects. My excuse was that I had to finish it before I looked at some of the manuscripts from writers I’m working with, but the truth is, once I start one of Herron’s books, I can’t put it down.
This one, named for the Chuck E. Cheese equivalent in London, purports to be about a missing book—one that showed up on a video, one that didn’t exist. Such books are old spy tradecraft: make up a title and a fake book and hide real information in it. But this is just the beginning of a twisted adventure which results in something that absolutely broke my heart. I’m saying no more because I don’t dare. To say more would be to spoil everything.
This book also broke my brain. He writes mayhem better than any other writer I’ve ever seen, and in this case, he wrote a sequence with maybe a dozen characters, kept it straight, and did something so wonderfully perfect in the form follows function way that I’ve never seen it done. If you’re a careful reader, you’ll know what I mean. It’s related to the heartbreak.
The only part that didn’t quite have the right effect on me, and that’s because I’m a longtime editor and I also know that Herron will play with language, was something he wasn’t quite hiding. His language was perfect and not at all cautious. I caught it all the same—and still didn’t believe it, even though I should have. The man can be utterly ruthless—in a good way.
Nijkamp, Marieke, “Con Nights, Parallel Hearts,” Up All Night: 13 Stories Between Sunset & Sunrise, edited by Laura Silverman, Algonquin Young Readers, 2021. A wonderful wonderful story about friendship, fandom, and the importance of fiction. Nijkamp starts with a time-honored fan tradition—staying up all night to see something, buy something, or be the first in line to something—and takes it into territory that I found completely unexpected. Well done.
O’Connell, Mikey, “John Wells Might Have The Cure TV Is Looking For,” The Hollywood Reporter, August 6, 2025. A great interview with John Wells who, over 40 years, has written or produced more TV than I’ve probably watched. (Okay, not true. But it feels true.) This interview shows what it’s like to be a long-term storyteller in a medium that doesn’t encourage longevity. Worth the read.
Roxborough, Scott, “I’ve Just Had Diabolical Good Luck,” The Hollywood Reporter, August 13, 2025. A fantastic interview with Gary Oldman about his career and, ironically considering the Mick Herron comments above, his experience playing the disgusting but brilliant Jackson Lamb in Slow Horses. Lots of good quotes here, particularly for writers. The one discussing David Bowie is great, but too long to excerpt, so I’ll just share this one:
…the work itself comes from the life experience. I’m not playing the piano or a violin. The instrument is me. You draw on your life experience.
Writers, like actors, do the same. We are the instrument and we have to put ourselves out there. So thought I’d add that here.
Silverman, Laura, “Creature Capture,” Up All Night: 13 Stories Between Sunset & Sunrise, edited by Laura Silverman, Algonquin Young Readers, 2021. A well done and amusing st
ory about trying to find a creature for a game. As in Pokemon played live (there’s a tournament here every year, where people wander around with their phones staring at, what to me, isn’t there.) Silverman manages to convince us of the importance of the game and the creature, and how an experience like this can change lives…in a good say.
Silverman, Laura, editor, Up All Night: 13 Stories Between Sunset & Sunrise, Algonquin Young Readers, 2021. I picked up this book because this year, I binged everything written by one of the authors in the book. (You’ll probably notice who when I get the other lists up.) I didn’t like her entry here; she was trying too hard to be tricky. But the story was still a good read.
Every story in the book is a good read. None are duds, although one pissed me off. It killed off a main character for no reason at all, except maybe if he lived this would have been the start to a novel. A few tried too hard to be tricky and a few weren’t to my taste. I didn’t finish one when it became clear that one of the younger kids in the story was going to die. I’ve pointed out the ones I liked throughout this list.
The book itself is really worth your time. Lots of good reading here that will…keep you up all night. (You knew I had to do that, right?)
Zappia, Francesca, “The Ghost of Goon Creek,” Up All Night: 13 Stories Between Sunset & Sunrise, edited by Laura Silverman, Algonquin Young Readers, 2021. This story has so similarities with Silverman’s tale—teens, outside, trying to do something, find something. But it’s different enough to hold me in the beginning and then it became my favorite story in the book. Worth the read, and maybe the price of the book.