lately with lila september 2024 | autumn in the air

Hello again, dear friends, I hope you are all well! We’ve finally made it to the spoopiest month of the year: October! That’s right, friends, it’s time to bring out the skeletons and jack-o-lanterns cause it’s officially the most wonderful time of the year! But before we do that, let’s take one last look at what September brought…

september’s moodboard

what i’m currently reading

🌊A Dark and Drowning Tide by Allison Saft I started reading this in September to fulfill some Orilium prompts plus an Autumnathon prompt and made it a little under halfway through the audiobook. I’m happy to say that so far I’m really enjoying it! I love the fact that it’s a dark fantasy focusing on scholars, as I feel like we don’t often see fantasy focused on scholars. I also love the slow burn academic rivals-to-lovers romance that’s only just getting started at the point I’m currently at. Plus the mystery mixed with the fantasy plot is absolutely to die for!

what i’m considering reading

Honestly, I was gonna take part in fun readathon or two this month, but decided that since I’m already behind on completing books for my own readathon I just want to focus on that instead. I’m still working through September’s Autumnathon prompts, so completing those will be my main focus on top of reading two more books to complete the October Autumnathon prompts. The first book I’ll be comleting will be A Dark and Drowning Tide by Allison Saft, which is for September’s “read a dark academia” prompt. Then, for September’s “read a mystery” prompt, I’ll be trying to finish up The Reapearance of Rachel Price by Holly Jackson. For October’s “read a witchy book,” I’d like to hopefully get to Heartless Hunter by Kristin Ciccarelli, and for the “read a spooky or spoopy book” October prompt I’m thinnking I’ll go with Lair of Dreams by Libba Bray.

what i watched

I finally made singnificant progress in Season 1 of Chilling Adventures of Sabrina after taking literal years to slowly meander my way through the season! I watched episodes 5 – 10—and I still love it!! This series is so much campy, spoopy, witchy fun and I can’t get enough of it!!! I know Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is made by the same production team as Riverdale, which went totally off the rails, but I actually think the team did a great job with this first season and I’m hoping the following seasons won’t get too absurd. But, that said, I think part of the fun of this series is that it has a bit more wiggle room in the “absurdity” department, seeing as it is a paranormal fantasy series, so maybe I’m worrying over nothing 😅 Regardless, I’m really satisfied with these episodes of Season 1, and I can’t wait to see where the series goes.

I also watched School Spirits Season 1 episodes 2 – 6 as well, and I continue to really enjoy the series. I watched the first one and a half episodes this past spring, but wanted to save the rest of the series for autumn since it’s a paranormal mystery series. That turned out to be a good idea, because watching this series turned out to very much fit the theme of “autumnal back-to-school” watches. I’ve talked before about how I went into School Spirits mistakenly thinking it was a comedy (heads up: it’s not a comedy, it’s a murder mystery paranormal series), but even once I realized my mistake, I was still surprised at how well-developed and emotional this series was. The actors and directors did such a great job bringing out the emotions and internal arcs of the characters and I found myself getting really invested in each of them. All in all, I’ve become very invested in this series and I can’t wait to find out how the season ends!

In addition, I also continued Amazon Prime’s miniseries adaptation of Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Daisy Jones & The Six and watched epsidoes 3 – 6 and it was everything I could’ve hoped for! Surprisingly, although I usually am a fan of longer-running series, I actually really admire the decision to make Daisy Jones & The Six a miniseries. It felt like each character and every storyline was given exactly enough time to really be fully understood. Riley Keough and Sam Claflin and the rest of the cast did oustanding jobs in their respective roles (but I might be biased about Keough as I fancasted her as Daisy YEARS before there was even news of a show, so it was nice to see my fancast dreams come true). I also felt like the costuming and music felt very authentic, and some of the songs even got stuck in my head. Everything about the series just left me extremely satisfied and excited to see how upcoming adaptations of Reid’s other historical fiction works compare, seeing as this adaptation has set the bar so high!

what i listened to

what i bookmarked

Willow suggested some movies to watch when turning 30 (and as a fellow ’94 baby it made me feel seen and comforted) and also shared her autumn 2024 moodboard, bucket list, and TBR

Jennifer gave us 100 post ideas for book bloggers and bookstagrammers and also paired books with recent Emmy winners

Caro walked us through her Autumnathon 2024 TBR (yay!)

Rae recommended books that remind her of songs off of Sabrina Carpenter’s Short n’ Sweet, as well as weird books for weird women (Video)

Rosina surveyed people about their favorite and least favorite genres to listen to on audiobook

Delaney highlighted YA books set in college

Jordan attemted convincing you to read Love Off The Record through sharing her annotations

Marie shared the cover and preorder link for her debut novel

Maria talked over the value of standalone novels and highlighted charming rom coms to brighten your back-to-school season

Lou gave her thoughts on getting back into Twilight

Tasya reviewed the popular fanfic Manacled by SenLinYu and walked us through books featuring haunted movies

The reader at Bookishcore recommended some autumnal reads and gave us a Morgan Matson reading guide

Anna investigated the question “how different is academic writing to nonfiction and creative writing?“

Elaine showed off 35 book blog post ideas to embrace autumn

Megan spotlighted 13 perfect books to add to your spooky TBR

Lisa questioned bribing your child to read

Lucia took a look at the topic of trigger warnings from the persective of an author in the process of being traditionally published

Lou explored the subject of her favorite book settings

Ellyn invited us to explore her bookish pinterest boards

Aelyn gave tips on how to create a personalized and meaningful book rating system and also looked into whether or not The Lord of the Rings is worth reading in 2024

Jacquie suggested ways to celebrate Hobbit Day

Beth Olivia showed off six bullet journal spreads to help with blogging

Veronica paired autumnal songs with books

Baee shared tips to help rediscover the joy of reading

Imyril announced the upcoming Spooktastic Reads event

Sumedha documented a weekend of reading

Caro went over ten series she needs to finish

Olivia talked about why we love the found family trope in fantasy

Bree Dawn highlighted songs for the girls who can’t wait to feel like themselves again

Rosina explained ways she’s shrinking her TBR

Sela gave us a spoilery guide to Victoria from The Twilight Saga

Line told us about her ten favorite books from ten series

Megan listed horror books with pink covers

Tegan showed off spooky horror reads for spooky season

Alicia highlighted her favorite books by Latine authors that she’s read this year

Nicole advised us on what to do for Banned Books Week

Calli recommended seven classic films to welcome autumn with

My fellow book bloggers Marie and Nicole talked their respective self-publishing journies

Literary Hub posted several amazing articles this past August and September, including:

• “Isabella Hammad’s (Incomplete) Essential List of Books About Palestine“
• “Intifada: On Being an Arabic Literature Professor in a Time of Genocide“
• “What Red Dead Redemption II Reveals About Our Myths of the American West“

Reactor Magazine also had some interesting September pieces:

• “Coming to Terms With Climate Fiction“
• “Eighteen Authors, Two Big Questions: What Is the Best Thing Happening in SFF Right Now, and What Do We Need More Of?“
• “In Praise of Things Being Just Plain Good“

what i did in septeber 2024

First up in Setember, I went to see one of my best friends compete in roller derby. It was so much fun to watch her having a good time and to figure out all about how roller derby works, plus I also made a new friend at the event! I’m really glad I went, despite not being a super “sporty” person myself—going even motivated me to want to try out some kind of sport (which will probably end up being a belly dance class)!

Towards the end of the month, another one of my good friends and I went to the H Street Festival, which was a great time! The H Street Festival is a big, local Washington, D.C. festival that occurs all up and down H St. in the city. There were local vendors and food from around the world and lots of live music and dancing in the street. It was so much fun and I had a really good time!

I also was chosen by my choir director to have a solo in our upcoming concert. It was so lovely that she had me in mind for the parts, it made me feel so valued, capable, and trusted. I love the sections she chose for me to sing and I’m having so much fun practicing and can’t wait to perform in the concert!

Lastly, at the end of the month my college contacted me to let me know that I’ve (finally) completed my associate’s degree in science and am also one credit away from completing my associates degree in social science! This means I can graduate this upcoming spring and continue on to transfer to university to complete my bachelor’s degree in physical and cultural anthropology in fall of 2024. I was absolutely ecstatic to learn this!! It feels like it’s been such a long ride, but finally my hard work is paying off and I’m making significant progress! I’m also so excited that I can finally move forward in my university career and start to take courses that are specialized for my major and minor!!

what i’m looking forward to in october 2024

October is my favorite of the autumn months, so hopefully it’ll end up being a good month! Of course there’s Halloween to look forward to, but beyond that I don’t have too much planned out yet. I do have my choir concert at the end of the month, which I’m anticipating, and my friend and I may get together to attend a Profs and Pints lecture on the history of Halloween, which is a fun prospect! Aside from those events, I’m thinking it’ll mostly be a quiet and cozy month of enjoying autumn settling in.

spill the beans, friends!

How was your September 2024? Did you read, watch, listen to, and/or do anything memorable? What are you looking forward to in October 2024? Anything exciting on your TBR for the upcoming month?