#5OnMyTBR is a bookish meme hosted by E. @ Local Bee Hunter’s Nook and you can learn more about it here or in the post announcing it. It occurs every Monday when we post about 5 books on our TBR. Thank you E. for the awesome graphic for these posts as well!

Hi everyone,

Another week of lockdown has gone by, and this week we had a public holiday weekend in Melbourne. Since I can’t leave the house still, I instead spent it making prosecco cupcakes and drinking cocktails by myself (well my partner was with me too so I wasn’t quite all alone!) I hope you all had a more interesting week than me! This week’s #5OnMyTBR theme is a Halloween freebie so I thought I’d just talk about some of the spooky/horror/vaguely Halloweeny books on my shelf right now.

Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica

Tender is the Flesh was my most anticipated book on my October TBR but then Australia Post lost my parcel and I’ve only just got them to give me confirmation that it’s lost so still haven’t got a copy of this yet…. Probably going to be at least another week or two until Attempt 2 arrives so spooky month will be long over, but I really want to read this book this year! It’s a translated novel about a world where a virus made animal meat poisonous to humans so production of human meat is legalised. Yeah it’s all about cannibals and sounds highly fucked up.

Burn Our Bodies Down by Rory Power

I really liked the creepy atmosphere and body horror in Power’s first novel, Wilder Girls, so of course I’m very excited to read her second novel which released earlier this year. Burn Our Bodies Down is about a girl who knows nothing about her past and returns to her mother’s hometown to try find out about it. But, obviously, things aren’t quite right in the hometown…

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

I haven’t read Susanna Clarke’s much loved and lengthy Jonathon Strange and Mr Norrell, but I was very intrigued by the sound of her second novel, Piranesi, which released last month. It’s a gothic, magical tale set in a house that’s actually a labyrinth and follows Piranesi as he explores the house. I don’t know much about this one as several reviewers have said it’s best to go on in knowing as little as possible! I love gothic books so fingers crossed this atmosphere is as wonderful as I’m hoping it will be.

The Silence of Bones by Jane Hur

Like Tender is the Flesh, this book is another which has had many shipping difficulties getting to me. I preordered The Silence of Bones back in March but it finally reached me this month and I couldn’t be more excited!! It’s a murder mystery novel set in 1800s Korea and promises a spooky and mysterious atmosphere that is perfect for Halloween!

Hurricane Season by Fernando Melchor

And ending on another translated novel, Hurricane Season was recently shortlisted for the International Man Booker prize. It’s about the murder of a witch in a small village in Mexico, and the investigation that follows after. I’ve been wanting to read this since I first got a copy, back at the start of the pandemic, but my literary fiction brain has really struggled concentrating throughout the pandemic, and I want to save this one for a time when I know I’ll enjoy it. Which will hopefully be SOON.

And those are five vaguely-Halloweeny books on my TBR right now! All of these are ones I’d love to read before the end of the year but given how much I’ve failed at reading my owned books this year, I am rather pessimistic about whether or not that will actually happen.