Read this book for this year's #SpinsterSeptember and loved it (thanks for the recommendation @pear-jelly.bsky.social )

Stack of books: Occupation Journal by Jean Giono Ring the Hill by Tom Cox No One is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood Machines in the Head by Anna Kavan Maigret's Failure by Georges Simeon Look at Me by Anita Brookner Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay The Stone Door by Leonora Carrington

September reading. Favorites were Occupation Journal and Look at Me. #NYRBWomen25 #SpinsterSeptember

A stack of 4 books on a mantelpiece, a plate of mandarin, a porcelain dog, vases with flowers and an oxalis plant. The books are: Two Serious Ladies by Jane Bowles, A Green Equinox by Elizabeth Mavor, Restoration bu Ave Barrera and Business as Usual by Ann Stafford & Jane Oliver.

The books I read in September 📚 (not pictured: 🎧 Rural Hours by Harriet Baker) #booksky #spinsterseptember #womenintranslation

Two Serious Ladies was my fave #spinsterseptember read. It was unusual as it shows little to no interiority from the characters. Felt like watching a Lynch movie: eerie, unpredictable, full of dread, at times disturbing but pregnant with meaning. A stumbling & hypnotising f*** you to conventions.

Surprisingly, Agatha Christie & her miss Marple were knocked off their thrown this year and Lolly Willowes left the limelight. Some other titles you liked: Miss Buncle’s Book, Rhine Journey, Cranford, Miss Pettigrew Lives for A Day and Drive your Plow over the Bones of the Dead. #spinsterseptember

A huge thank you to those of you who participated, you made this month so fun & enriching. Some #spinsterseptember stats if you’re interested. Most read book was Excellent Women (2nd one was Hampton Cradnet). Pym was the most popular (followed by Brookner, Hanff, EH Young & Muriel Spark)

Two Serious Ladies by Jane Bowles, Business as Usual by Ann Stafford & Jane Oliver an A Green Equinox by Elizabeth Mavor

The three books I read for #spinsterseptember 🍏 #booksky

I only managed to read „Lolly Willowes“ for #spinsterseptember (AT LAST!), but the hashtag contains so many interesting titles, I‘m doing #spinsterautumn .

#spinsterseptember rec from @blithespirit4.bsky.social

This would qualify for #SpinsterSeptember too as both main characters are unmarried and Sylvia Slythe is definitely a sinister spinster

September reading [✓]
Favourite: Well, my least favourite, weirdly, was Austen, probably because she goes on to be so much better. I guess Warner gets the gong for a wonderful book that plays with the form of the novel.
Thanks to @pear-jelly.bsky.social for #SpinsterSeptember.

I started this due to Jacqui's review and I'm loving it so much. It reminds me of LM Montgomery's and Dorothy Whipple's writing, two favorite authors of mine. Happily sliding this one in on the last few days of #SpinsterSeptember.

Hush, Gabriel! by Veronica Parker Johns I wanted to add a second novel to my #SpinsterSeptember contribution, so went through my shelf of ‘would these make good British Library Women Writers suggestions?’, flicking thr…

My second and final book for #SpinsterSeptember is Hush, Gabriel! by Veronica Parker Johns - a murder mystery which started brilliantly but sadly rather derailed...

Just discovered the hashtag #SpinsterSeptember for books, and I think "The scent of water" by Elizabeth Goudge would fit very well in the category. I guess I'd like to reread it soon, it breathes calm and taking possession of an old house and a different life.

[Image Description: a graphic featuring a photo of Shawn, and the words Friday Reads: Some sucked, some weren’t for me, and some sucked me right in]

Friday Reads: Some sucked, some weren’t for me, and some sucked me right in

youtu.be/4BYjN-XR4gQ

#SpinsterSeptember
#Victober

Image of a paining by Jansson of the artist Tuukikki Pietla, her longtime companion. Bent over her artists table in a studio surrounded by art.

Really enjoyed Fair Play, Tove Jansson. “She began to anticipate a solitude of her own. She felt something close to exhilaration, of a kind that people can permit themselves when they are blessed with love.“ #SapphicSeptember
*technically* #SpinsterSeptember 📚💙

Read: Anita Brookner: Look At Me (1983).
Such a sharp, acidic, adult, wonderful book about people and relationships. Minimal plot but full of thoughts and ideas.
There will be more Brookner.
#SpinsterSeptember

[Image Description: a graphic featuring a photo of Shawn, and the words Nuanced spinsters and other fickle folk: A review of E.H. Young's 1922 novel, The Misses Mallett]

Nuanced spinsters and other fickle folk: A review of E.H. Young's 1922 novel, The Misses Mallett

#SpinsterSeptember

youtu.be/8oBWAfSCbHo

Front cover of Rumer Godden's novel IN THIS HOUSE OF BREDE, showing a stylistic weathervane atop a cross with angular sections criss-crossing the sky and the rooftops of the buildings visible at the bottom of the cover, all done in a water-color style.

I was recommending it to someone & that reminded me that I think Rumer Godden's IN THIS HOUSE OF BREDE (I never thought I'd fall in love with a book about a woman joining a contemplative abbey, but it was such a page turner for me-so good) would probably be a good suggestion for #spinsterseptember

Paperback of The Spring Begins on a yellow patterned background

A powerful read: I've called "The Spring Begins" by Katherine Dunning "brutal" here, and Simon Thomas calls it "amoral" in his Afterword! It's also lyrical, descriptive and a real page-turner! librofulltime.wordpress.com/2025/09/24/b... @britishlibrary.bsky.social #booksky #SpinsterSeptember 📚💙

A recommendation @pear-jelly.bsky.social. Perfectly controlled pacing: onward and inward journey, past infusing present, emergence of heroine's agency, quiet and subtle and powerful. #spinsterseptember

Read a couple of very good books for the 2 hashtags I'm following. For #SpinsterSeptember, 'Miss Buncle's Book' by D. E. Stevenson was an unalloyed delight. Funny, clever, and very sweet. Social comedy with a smidgen of romance. Stevenson is sharp-eyed but she is never cruel. I bought the sequel.

Front cover of TWO OLD WOMEN by Velma Wallis.

Back cover of TWO OLD WOMEN by Velma Wallis: FICTION/NATIVE AMERICAN STUDIES WINNER OF THE 1993 WESTERN STATES BOOK AWARD WINNER OF THE 1994 PACIFIC NORTHWEST BOOKSELLERS AWARD "A beautiful and moving book. Velma Walli's writing is as lean and muscular, as full of unexpected bounties, as the far north, and readers are sure to be delighted with Two Old Women." — Washington Post Based on an Athabascan Indian legend passed along for many generations from mothers to daughters of the upper Yukon River area in Alaska, this is the suspense-ful, shocking, ultimately inspirational tale of two old women abandoned by their tribe during a brutal winter famine. Though these two women have been known to complain more than contribute, they now must either survive on their own or die trying. In simple but vivid detail, Velma Wallis depicts a landscape and way of life that are at once merciless and starkly beautiful. In her old women, she has created two heroines of steely determination whose story of betrayal, friendship, community, and forgiveness will carve out a permanent place in readers imaginations. "Full of adventure, suspense, and obstacles overcome an octogenarian version of Thelma and Louise triumphant." —Kirkus Reviews "This story speaks straight to the heart with clarity, sweetness and wisdom."—Ursula K. Le Guin "Velma Wallis has given us a gift to cherish." — Alaska VELMA WALLIS is one of a family of thirteen children, all born in the vast fur-trapping country of Fort Yukon, Alaska, and raised with traditional Athabascan values. A writer and avid reader, she continues to live outside Fort Yukon with her daughter.

The two old women of the title are 75 and 80 respectively so you get both decades in one book. :)

#booksky
#SpinsterSeptember

A timely request:

Check out the hashtag #SpinsterSeptember for a lot of good recommendations!

#booksky

(My personal rec would be to read May Sarton, novels and journals both. Soooo good!)

“I wanted an end to shabbiness, to pretence, to anxiety, to dissembling.” #lookatme #spinsterseptember It’s been a while since I read the first two novels by Anita Brookner, “A Start in Life” and “Providence”, although I’m intending to gradually read my way throug…

For #spinsterseptember I return to the wonderful writing of #AnitaBrookner with her third novel, Look At Me - more here! kaggsysbookishramblings.wordpress.com/2025/09/22/i...

[Image Description: a graphic featuring a photo of Shawn, and the words Friday Reads: 'The world is full of wonder – pay attention']

Friday Reads: 'The world is full of wonder – pay attention'

youtu.be/hU9PLgad0ww

#ShortySeptember
#SpinsterSeptember

The New Dress by Virginia Woolf I’ve always had a tricky relationship with Virginia Woolf, having first read her when I was grieving the loss of a parent, which still makes it difficult to separate her from painful memories of th…

"...she had never married, and yet, judging from the mask-like indifference of her face, she had gone through twenty times more of passion and experience than those whose loves are trumpeted forth for all the world to hear." #SpinsterSeptember #BookSky 💙📚

jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2025/09/18/t...

Can a spinster be a 13-year-old abandoned child bride? If so, I guess Harimohan Jha's 'Kanyadan (translated as 'The Bride' by Lalit Kumar), might qualify for #SpinsterSeptember. A book that is perhaps more important (early and popular novel in a significant minority language in India) than good.

A copy of A Green Equinox by Elizabeth Mavor lies on a green velvet cushion. The cover shows a painting of nymphs and cupids.

An odd, little romp which careened from one surreal plot twist and complicated relationship, to another. Protests, pain, philosophy & the plague - all in this unusual love story. Reminscient of Muriel Spark, Iris Murdoch & Penelope Fitzgerald, but fell a little flat by comparison. #SpinsterSeptember

A paperback copy of Kathleen Winter's novel Undersonh is held next to a red dahlia. The cover has a bright red painted flower superimposed over a painting of green meadows.

My next read for #SpinsterSeptember, this novel about Dorothy Wordsworth is told partly through the eyes of a servant at Rydal Mount, and partly through the imagined words of her destroyed red diary. Beautiful nature writing and some interesting speculation on her later illness. An enjoyable read.