Birthstone Book Covers: September 2025

Wow, it’s really late in the month again. Not quite as late as last September, though it’s pretty close.

Leslie @ Books Are the New Black created a fun monthly post called Birthstone Book Covers. Each month, she features book covers that are either the same color of that month’s birthstone or include the color in the title.

September has one birthstone – Sapphire. It’s a blue birthstone month!

Rules:

📚 Mention the creator (Leslie @ Books Are The New Black) and link back to her so she can check out your post.
📚 Pick 5+ book covers that match the current month’s Birthstone.
📚 HAVE FUN!
📚 Nominate people if you want!

A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England by Brandon Sanderson
Dark Moon, Shallow Sea by David R. Slayton
The False Prince by Jennifer A. Nielsen
The Dreadful Tale of Prosper Redding by Alexandra Bracken
The Bronze Key by Holly Black & Cassandra Clare

What are your favorite books with blue book covers? If you participated in Birthstone Books, which books did you choose this September?

Thanks for reading, and I hope you have the most amazing day/night!

See ya ~Mar

Top Ten Tuesday: Books I Wish Had Less Pages

Hey everybody! Happy Tuesday!

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly post currently hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. It celebrates lovely lists, wonderful books and the bookish community. This week’s topic is Books I Wish Had More/Less [Insert Your Concept Here] In Them (for example: more/less romance, more/less world building, less info dumping, more/fewer pages, more character development, fewer characters, fewer descriptions, more suspense, etc.).

The variation that I ended up going with Books I Wish Had Less Pages. Also, to a lesser degree, but books with less descriptions and stuff too, because super long SFF books in particular have this problem (for me). I could only think of eight books this time, though, so that’s how long my list is.

A Game of Thrones: Real talk, I actually finished this one. But I didn’t finish its sequel, A Clash of Kings, because I was still burned out with how bloated this book was for me, particularly regarding descriptions. And then the series just continues to be too big and long for me, so I ultimately decided it wasn’t worth it.

The Way of Kings: This is another book I was recommended because it (like GOT) was apparently one of the greatest fantasy books, and fantasy series, ever. And… it was too slow for me. It also has way too many pages – over 1000 and it’s only book one!

House of Earth and Blood: This is actually one I’m almost positive I’ll read. Eventually. It’s just so long. I’m finding it a bit intimidating. But there’s something about Maas’ writing style, I’m always able to power through it for some reason.

The Eye of the World: They say never say never, but I’m pretty sure I’m never gonna read any of the Wheel of Time. It’s just waayyy too long.

The Shadow of What Was Lost: This was yet another book that I DNF-ed because I 1) Got bored, and 2) The length intimidated me.

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell: I’m actually kind of interested in this one still. But it’s 860 pages, and I’ve heard it’s a bit bloated and boring.

The Blade Itself: I’ve actually almost picked this one up a couple times – I do have a degree of interest in reading it. But I’ve been burned by fantasy books roughly the same length – 550 pages or so – so I’m, once again, nervous about committing to it.

A Court of Wings and Ruin: I didn’t completely hate this book, but I didn’t love it either. I did finish it though. I think this is where the ACOTAR series started to get overwritten and excessive, however, which is why I added it to this list.