October books.

A mixed bag of reading this month, including a couple of books by favourite American authors. Both Anne Tyler and Elizabeth Strout write about the emotions and confusions of the everyday, the lives of 'unrecorded' people. Their characters are entirely credible, their actions, or inactions understood. Anne Tyler's Liam Pennywell is one such person, a blundering, inept sort of man who wanders into a clearly unsuitable relationship that had me saying, oh, no!

Elizabeth Stout's, 'Tell Me Everything' had me completely in it's thrall. It is a meandering story, dotted with characters that I have met before in her earlier novels. The ending is a beautiful heart breaker. It is a handsome hardback book, sent to me as a present from a friend. I told her that I was reading it slowly because I didn't want it to end and when I did get to the end I wanted to start all over again.

A book club choice up for discussion was "Monsters'. A very thin, disappointing read which I think must have stemmed from her studies as a student and was totally undiserving of the praise on it's cover..