Spell the Month in Books ~ October 2025

Reviews from the Stacks

I found this on one of the blogs I follow, Books are the New Black who found it at One Book More. It was originally created by Reviews from the Stacks, and the idea is to spell the month using the first letter of book titles.

October: Trick or Treat – Books that you feel strongly about, whether positively or negatively

Even if I don't like a book, I prefer to list books that I liked. There are always people who loved a book I loathed. So, have you read any of these and did you like them as much as I did?

OCTOBER

O

Obama, Barack "Of Thee I Sing" - 2010

This is one of the cutest picture books I have seen. Every page adds a new example of a person who is an ideal for as all. There is Martin Luther King jr., Albert Einstein, Abraham Lincoln, but also Helen Keller, Billie Holiday and many, many fabulous people who do their bit in order to make this world a better one.

Barack Obama wrote this for his daughters when they were little. It shows how much he loves not just his own children but people in general.

C

Frazier, Charles "Cold Mountain" - 1997

I have read this book several times. This is all about the American Civil War, about love, struggles in bad times, companionship. But it doesn't just show the life of people during the Civil War, it seems to be a never ending description of life. I think it is a great novel that will live on and be read for generations.

T

Rowlatt, Bee & Witwit, May "Talking About Jane Austen in Baghdad. The True Story of an Unlikely Friendship" - 2010

Two very different women form a friendship via e-mail, a young British journalist, mother of three little girls and a middle-aged Iraqi woman who is desperately trying to leave her country during the war. 

O

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" (RUS: Оди́н день Ива́на Дени́совича/Odin den' Ivana Denisovicha) - 1962/63

We always hear about the Gulag, the prisoners who sent to Siberia and have to work there etc. But we never really know what is going on there, what the work is like, how the prisoners are kept.

Unless we read about the one day in the life of Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, starting the instant he opens his eyes in the morning until he closes them again in the evening.

And once we read it, we understand why this writer was awared the Nobel Prize for Literature.

B

Mann, Thomas "Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family" (GE: Buddenbrooks) - 1901

This is definitely one of my most favourite books of all times.

The novel, an epic story, dates from 1901 and describes the life in a wealthy merchant family over several decades from the 1800s until the beginning of the twentieth century. The story is based on the author's own family who lived in Lübeck.

E

Buck, Pearl S. "East Wind: West Wind" - 1930

I love the way Pearl S. Buck can explain the life in China, life in China during her lifetime, of course, I am well aware that it has changed a lot again. She has a wonderful way of explaining the Chinese way, almost in parables.

R

Bryson, Bill "The Road to Little Dribbling: More Notes from a Small Island" - 2015

My favourite book by my favourite travel writer so far was "Notes from a Small Island", a book about the country we both love so much: Great Britain.

Then he did it again, he travelled around the island and wrote about the different kind of landscapes, people, funny encounters.

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Happy Reading!

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