An Open Book: October 2025

Carolyn Astfalk hosts the Open Book linkup: Share what you're reading and get recommendations from other readers.

Welcome to the October 2025 edition of An Open Book, hosted both at My Scribbler's Heart AND Catholicmom.com.

An Open Book is all about what my family is reading this month, from the adults down to the little kids.

Share what you're reading by linking up your blog post below.

Simply write about what you're reading. You can make it personal or, as I do, extend it to the whole family. Your post can be as simple as a few lines about the book or as in-depth as a 700-word review. That's entirely up to you. You can even forego writing all together and record a video or simply post cover photos.

No blog? No problem. Please share what you're reading in the comments.

Here are the books my family and I have read this month:

Library Lovebirds by Catholic Mom contributing writer Katie Fitzgerald provided a nice break from reading longer works. This collection of library-centered sweet romances is charming. What impressed me most is how the author helped me to identify with and care about the characters in so few words. 

If you like well-written Hallmark-esque sweet romances set in quaint towns with cozy feels, you’ll probably enjoy Crystal Walton’s latest series, Love in Willow Creek. The Corner Bookshop is the second book in the series. Maddy Ellis, who’s struggling to keep her little bookshop in business, makes a bet with stranger Nate O’Connor that she can make him fall in love with smalltown life. Nate’s reason for being in town is destined to put him and Maddy at odds, but it all works out in the end. 

I recently read Worwood Abbey by Christina Baehr, which my younger daughter read this summer. This historical fantasy set in England was a very smooth, pleasant read. Edith, the pastor’s daughter, travels with her family to the estate they’ve inherited. There she finds cousins she didn’t know, a somewhat mysterious neighbor, and secret creatures she’s never encountered. It’s a lively, entertaining story, and I see why it seems to be a very popular independently published series. 

I picked up a copy of The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway at a used bookshop this summer. I enjoyed reading it a couple of times in high school. My adult son picked it up and quickly read this short novel. An old man, Santiago, after many days asea without catching a fish, battles a large marlin for three days. From my son’s review: “Hemingway's simplistic and terse yet descriptive language surprised me in this book.” He called the writing vivid and easy-to-read. 

We had the opportunity to visit the Manassas battlefield during our summer vacation. I hadn’t previously known that it was the site of not one but two Civil War battles. Return to Bull Run: The Campaign and Battle of Second Manassas by John J. Hennessy details the battle won my Generals Robert E. Lee, James Longstreet, and Stonewall Jackson. This was a five-star book for my son with some of the best battle descriptions he’s read and well-done battle maps. His assessment: “Hennessy ultimately ties the campaign together by showing how Lee engineered a strategically genius campaign and coordinated mostly sound tactics with his generals while Pope mired himself in Union politics, prejudice against his subordinates, and his own glory-seeking arrogance.” 

The Life of Billy Yank: The Common Soldier of the Union by Bell Irvin Wiley provides insight into the daily life of the average Union infantrymen in the American Civil War. While my son found parts of the book tedious or ambiguous, he described it as a good resource for re-enactors and historical novelists. “In detailing the daily routines, habits, and practices of Billy the Yank,” he wrote in his review, “I think the book will help me understand letters and references in my future research of other Civil War battles and figures.” 

My son listened to The Innocence of Father Brown by G.K. Chesterton, the first collection of Father Brown stories, narrated by Stephen Scalon. He enjoyed these stories very much and recommends these mysteries to the whole family.  

My son also effectively used Knock ‘em Dead Job Interview: How to Turn Job Interviews into Job Offers by Martin Yate in preparation for his first post-college job interview. While he felt the author’s advice was sometimes tailored to sales jobs and older job seekers, he found the suggested strategies helpful. However, he thinks the book needs an update to reflect changes in technology, how applicants communicate with potential employers, and how interviews are initiated and conducted. 

For a short time, my daughters were reading The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien simultaneously, sharing the same book. My 14-year-old sped ahead, and her older sister is still enjoying the last book in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I suspect everyone is familiar with the plotline, but in this book, Sam and Frodo continue their journey to destroy the One Ring in the fires of Mordor. 

My youngest daughter’s favorite genre is historical fiction, and she enjoyed Prisoner B-3087 by Alan Gratz. While this novel set during the Holocaust is written for young adults, she thinks adults would enjoy it too. She appreciated that this was significantly different from other World War II novels she’d read in that it’s set mainly in concentration camps as the protagonist, a Jewish boy from Poland, is shuffled from place to place. 

This is the same daughter’s Confirmation year, and one of the saints she’s been considering for her patron is the sister of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, Léonie Martin. Léonie Martin: A Difficult Life by Marie Baudouin-Croix also fulfills a biography reading requirement for her English Language Arts class. If you’ve read about the Lisieux family, this daughter was the most troublesome, characterized as “emotionally disturbed,” yet she eventually was accepted into religious life and was declared a Servant of God, the first step toward canonization, by Pope Francis. 

White Fang by Jack London has been a favorite of all my children who have read it. My daughter read an abridged version of the adventure classic several years ago, but she enjoyed the original more. Set in the Far North, a lone wolf pup is adopted by a Native American and named White Fang. He’s later sold to a dog fighter and endures much before his eventual domestication. 

It’s been a minute since a Star Wars book appeared in An Open Book, but my youngest son thoroughly enjoyed the novelization of the second (or 5th, depending on how you count them) Star Wars movie, Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones by R.A. Salvatore. Anakin Skywalker, apprentice to Jedi Master Obi Wan Kenobi, falls in (forbidden) love with Naboo Senator Padme Amidala as the Dark Side grows more powerful and dangerous. My son noted details that were not included in the movie and additional scenes in the beginning as well. 

Since my children have all attended the same parish grade school and pulled books from the same middle school library, they are often reading books one or more siblings have read prior to them. Two books made a re-appearance this month: Restart by Gordon Korman (which I included in this space in April of 2022) and The Tiger Rising by Kate DiCamillo (which appeared in November of 2024). 

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Copyright 2025 Carolyn Astfalk
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