Happy Halloween and RIP VIII Wrap Up

Happy Halloween, friends! I'm sitting here waiting for trick-or-treaters that will possibly never come (we've had years with literally zero activity) and Z and his dad are out wandering the neighborhood. Since Z's got braces this year, I'm going to steal all of his caramel candies!

Per Jenny's request, here is Z as Toad from Super Mario ...

I love this kid and his mushroom hat!

We had another fantastic RIP reading season. Z and I read two books together -- The Beasts of Clawstone Castle by Eva Ibbotson and The Witches by Roald Dahl.

I read lots of short stories, first in the Oxford Book of Victorian Ghost Stories and then in Under My Hat: Tales From the Cauldron which I'm reading tonight (a book of YA witch stories!).

I read one non-fiction book, The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher by Kate Summerscale, one graphic novel, Grimm, and listened to one audiobook, The Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury.

I read lots of novels too -- The End of Mr. Y by Scarlett Thomas, Greenwitch by Susan Cooper, Picture the Dead by Lisa Brown and Adele Griffin, The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova (a re-read and group read), Which Witch? by Eva Ibbotson, Coraline by Neil Gaiman (also a re-read), The Asylum by John Harwood, An Old Betrayal by Charles Finch (review and giveaway coming next week!) and The Watcher in the Shadows by Carlos Ruiz Zafón.

My favorites were The Night Circus, Which Witch?, An Old Betrayal and The Watcher in the Shadows. I'm also really liking Under My Hat -- the witch stories are not what I expected and are almost all fantastic.

I also participated in the Estella Society's monthly photo challenge, #estellagram. Here a couple of my favorites (and two that weren't for #estellagram but I just love them). All of the nature pics are from my own yard.

See you in November,
K and Z

p.s. We just got two sets of trick-or-treaters ... they were teenagers but whatever. They each got a handful of candy. Yay!