This the better late than never edition.

I read 7 books this month.

I Owe You One by Sophie Kinsella–Fixie Farr can fix everyone’s life but her own. When she saves the laptop of a successful investment manager, he repays her with an IOU. Fixie decides to use it to help her loser high school crush get a job. As in all Sophie Kinsella books, nothing goes right but everything ends well. Just as cute and funny as all of Kinsella’s books.

Snap by Belinda Bauer–Jack has been in charge of his sisters ever since their mother disappeared when he was only eleven. Years later, a pregnant woman discovers a chilling note and a knife on her bed. The two stories are interwoven in interesting and satisfying ways.

How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell–Doing nothing is an act of social resistance that has economic and political consequences. Of course, Odell isn’t advocating doing literally nothing, but she’s suggesting that refusing to engage in things that sap your energy and time is a revolutionary act.

Lady in the Lake by Laura Lippman–In the mid-60s, a married woman abandons her cushy role as a wife and mother and takes up a job as a cub reporter for a Baltimore paper. In that job, she searches for the murderer of a young black woman.

Conversations with Friends by Caroline Rooney–Two college students in Dublin, Bobbi and Frances, navigate a world of irony while they work on relationships, including their own on-again-off-again romance. This is one of those rare books that doesn’t have much of a plot, but the writing and characterizations are so stunning that it doesn’t need anything else. It’s simply about what it means to put up with yourself in a world that expects so much from everyone and cares so little about what happens to us.

Writer’s Digest Guide to Magazine Article Writing by Kerrie Flanagan–If you want to publish in magazines, start with this book. Next time I teach a class about magazine writing, I’ll definitely use this.

Social Creature by Tara Isabella Burton–This is a very satisfying (and clever) homage to The Talented Mr. Ripley. Set in New York City in the age of social media, one woman pulls off the perfect transformation.

I can’t pick just one favorite for the month because I really liked all of these. I would say that Social Creature and Conversations with Friends are the two that have stuck with me the longest.

September is almost over, but there’s still plenty of time for reading!