I’ve been wanting to get this all written out and set in stone, & the day has finally come!! It’s officially Fall, & I’m cosied up in my freshly decorated room to share the many books on my Autumn ’21 TBR…
~tbf, life never goes to plan, so it’s likely that i’ll be reading some of these latter books in december. essentially, this is a tbr for the remainder of the year. (with the omission of the few books i know i’ll be reading in dec—if that makes sense haha)~
September
It’s almost over, but still. I’m working very hard on finishing three chunky reads that have been ongoing for quite some time: Les Mis, The Complete Sherlock Holmes, & KL: A History of the Concentration Camps. Unfortunately, it seems that I will not be able to finish these, as desired, by the end of the month, but I’m v satisfied w/the progress I’ve made in Les Mis. Fingers crossed these get finished a lot quicker than what seems possible atm.
I’ll be aiming for my annual read of An Old-Fashioned Girl this month & am hoping to revisit We Are Witnesses. I’d like to read An Irish Country Doctor as well!
Again, all of these reads are likely to spill over into the first week of October, but that’s alright.
October
It’s been almost two years since I last read HP, and as October feels like the perfect time to do so, I plan to head back to Hogwarts! I’ll be checking these out of the library, so fingers crossed I’m not hugely delayed at any point. If that does happen, I’ll likely be getting a “head start” on books/series I planned to read in November.
I started my reread of Emma back in summer, and then set it aside to read through the Stalking Jack the Ripper series, so I’m hoping to finish it early in the month! Missing Mr. Knightley a lot extra rn, especially since I kept sporadically picking the book up in July-early Aug.
I haven’t completed my annual reread of The Silmarillion yet, so I hope to be picking this up the last couple of weeks in the month!
On that note, I’d like to finally read J.R.R. Tolkien, A Biography by Humphrey Carpenter. I thought I’d get around to this last year, but I opted for Michael White’s bio instead.
I’m honestly not sure if I’ll read The Tenant of Wildfell Hall in Oct or Nov, but either is fine! This was a classic I had in my 2021 reading goals, and I finally thrifted a copy this summer, so I’m super stoked to get cosied up with another Brontë read in Autumn—for the third year in a row!
November
The Anne books. Are these not perfect for Autumn?! Oh, how I am so so immensely excited to return to Avonlea and be reunited with Anne Shirley’s romantic whimsy. I also dearly miss beloved Gilbert, so I can’t wait. Oh, and Jem and Walter :.( <333 I cannot WAIT.
As I thoroughly enjoyed The Starless Sea back in July, I knew I wanted to pick up The Night Circus soon. (thoughts still coming!) Audrey reliably informed me that it’s a great Autumnal read, so I plan to enter that magical world this month! Much anticipation.
By this point, I shall be done with The Silmarillion, and since I haven’t done my annual read of LOTR, Autumn is prime time for it! I’m excited to revisit this in the cosy time of year once more—it’s been a couple of years since I read it in A/W, & I am eager to do so again. Fingers crossed it at least matches my reread from last year—that was my favourite one to date. I literally think about it all the time.
lots of thoughts about this last one
Apparently, I am down horrendous, because I’m scheduling all of my favourites—which generally wreck me, in all the right ways—for this month. I also haven’t finished up my reread of Narnia. The Last Battle awaits me. I couldn’t bring myself to finish it up back when we were in Pismo, and it didn’t feel right to visit it in August, so I decided I would wait til November. This is going to be an interesting experience for me as I exclusively read Narnia during summer. Though all of the books make me teary-eyed at some point or another, TLB always has me weeping from at least a hundred pages from the end, so… there’s that.
It’s so weird to think that I’ll be reading it during Autumn. It’s genuinely very very strange to even contemplate. It feels so wrong & backwards :’) I’ve touched on it a bit before, but I have a complex w/some of my favourite books in that I can only read them during certain times or under certain circumstances. Particularly, Narnia & LOTR—I’ve got this super sentimental & tangible experience w/them, & a lot of that is tied to how/when I choose to revisit these stories. This is going to be odd for me, and I wonder how much that will affect my emotional experience with a book that shatters me more and more as the years go by.
Again, in the Tolkien vein: I’ve had J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century, a literary criticism by the great Tom Shippey, on my bookcase since summer ’20, and I keep thinking I’ll read it but still haven’t had the time. I mentioned it in last year’s Autumn reading list, for example :’) Hopefully, I can actually read that this year.
Other Fall-Related Book Compilations
Autumn ’21 TBR, done
I am not going to be surprised if there’s spillage into December for these reads! :’) What with school, work, & general life happenings, it’s quite likely, but that’s okay!! It’s a reminder to you & I that reading shouldn’t be something we put pressure on! It’s a hobby we enjoy, & it should stay that way.
Anyway, what’s on your tbr for the next couple of months? Are you a mood reader or a tbr-maker? I am primarily a mood reader, but I’ve definitely both! It just happens that my tbrs generally match my moods–anticipated or current, if that makes sense. :’) Lmk what you’d like to read in the remainder of this year, and if you have any reads that affect you like Narnia & LOTR affect me. ^^^ (; I would love to know I’m not alone in being super particular about such things.