Spell the Month in Books ~ September 2026

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.

September: (Mostly) Dystopian Literature

As we are still choosing our own topics, I had a look where I could find one with three Es. Not so easy. I must say, I did cheat a little, but only just a little, as you will see.

I think dystopian novels (or "disturbian" as my husband likes to call them) are great. They show our society in a different way. What kind of fears are there, how do we imagine the world would look like if some of them came true. Or something else happened that made us give up the ways we live now.

Here are my books:

SEPTEMBER

S

Fforde, Jasper "Shades of Grey. The Road to High Saffron" - 2009

A dystopian novel about a future where colour perception rules the world. 

E

Levithan, David "Every Day" - 2012

Maybe it's dystopian but it's not a different world, at least not for most of the characters.

This is about someone who we know can't exist, either, but the idea is just too captivating not to follow it. 

P
Camus, Albert "The Plague" (F: La Peste) - 1947

North Africa, a French town in Algeria, sometime in the 1940s. The rats come first, then the plague follows. This is a description of how a whole town comes to terms with such a death sentence. I read this before Covid but Camus explained the situation precisely.

T

Wells, H. G. "The Time Machine" - 1895

Quite a story, even if the movie took quite a few liberties … but what else is new?

E

Emcke, Carolin "Echoes of Violence: Letters from a War Reporter" (GE: Von den Kriegen. Briefe an Freunde) - 2004

Not a dystopian novel. I wish it were. The author is a journalist, covering mainly war areas and she has written e-mails to her friend every time she returned from one of her journeys. Here, she published them. She visited Afghanistan, Colombia, Iraq, Kosovo, Lebanon, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Romania and the USA (before and after September 11th), and reports about her meetings with affected people. 

M

Bradbury, Ray "The Martian Chronicles" - 1950
"The Martian Chronicles", a highly interesting novel about the human invasion on another planet. A dystopian novel that couldn't envisage anything better. Or worse.

B
Stroyar, J.N. "Becoming Them" (The Children's War #3) - 2017
As a German, having to live with the consequences of one of the most terrible wars ever, I have always asked myself what would have happened if the Nazis had won the war.
This is the final book of the trilogy that describes how it could have been, we see how everything gets together in the end, how the long and arduous underground work finally leads to the end of the Nazi party. But not without many, many difficulties first. This third book is just as fascinating, exciting and thrilling as the first two. I hope many people will be able to read it.

E

Steinbeck, John "East of Eden" - 1952
The author talks about problems as old as mankind, he retells the story of Cain and Abel, only here they are called Caleb and Aaron (the father is still Adam, though), and they live in his native California. Could be a dystopian novel.

R
McCarthy, Cormac "The Road" - 2006
There are mainly only two people in this book, a father and his son. Most of the world has been eliminated, we don't know exactly why but it doesn't matter. What's important is the way people react. Nothing grows anymore, so people have to eat what's still available. How would you react in such a situation? That's the big question and we see all sorts of different people acting in all sorts of different ways.

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Happy Reading!

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