I considered a back-to-school theme for September’s what to read theme, but that stopped appealing when I thought how much no one wants to be handed more work to do at the beginning of the school year. Maybe I’ll do that next year. Instead, I’m going with a writing theme. Why? Because I am already gearing up for Nanowrimo. Backing it up, October will be novel planning month (either Nanoplamo or, as I’m calling it this year, Octnoplamo). Because of some project deadlines, that makes September editing month for me (just this year, but we’ll see). I am calling it Sepnoedmo and I am aware the acronym doesn’t quite work. It sounds right. And I am neck-deep in writing books so maybe you should be too.

These are some of my favorite books on the writing process and craft, for editing, planning, writing, and even getting your work out there. There are so many great books (and classics) I haven’t read yet.

• On Writing, Stephen King
• Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott
• Zen in the Art of Writing, Ray Bradbury
• Save the Cat! Writes a Novel, Jessica Brody
• Outlining Your Novel, K. M. Weiland
• The Business of Being a Writer, Jane Friedman

This list is low on craft books because I am finishing up the editing phase of my top-priority project and looking forward to trying to find an agent… and selling it. So it’s a lot of that. I have tabled Wonderbook (Jeff VanderMeer) and left A Swim in the Pond in the Rain (George Saunders) on the shelf. Just for this season; I’ll return to them. This list is more for taking what you’ve already written and getting it ready for submission and then navigating after that. Many of them were recommended in the appendix of The Business of Being a Writer.

• The First Five Pages, Noah Lukeman
• The Writers’ Guide to Queries, Pitches and Proposals, Moira Anderson Allen
• Save the Cat! Writes a YA Novel, Jessica Brody
• How to Write a Mystery, Mystery Writers of America, Lee Child
• Open Page, Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing
• Refuse to Be Done, Matt Bell
• Get Signed, Lucinda Halpern
• Before and After the Book Deal, Courtney Maum
• Formatting and Submitting Your Manuscript and Get a Literary Agent, Chuck Sambuchino
• The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published, Arielle Eckstut
• The Forest for the Trees, Betsy Lerner
• The Portable MFA in Creative Writing, NY Writers’ Workshop
• The Modern Library’s Writer’s Workshop

These are the titles that “everybody” is looking forward to being published in September:

• The Life Impossible, Matt Haig
• Here One Moment, Liane Moriarty
• The Hitchcock Hotel, Stephanie Wrobel
• The Booklover’s Library, Madeline Martin
• We’re Alone, Edwidge Danticat (short story collection)
• Quarterlife, Devika Rege
• Adam and Evie’s Matchmaking Tour, Nora Nguyen
• Creation Lake, Rachel Kushner
• Final Cut, Charles Burns (YA graphic novel)
• The Gates of Gaza, Amir Tibon (memoir)
• The Empusium, Olga Tokarczuk (Nobel prize translation)
• Intermezzo, Sally Rooney
• The Women Behind the Door, Roddy Doyle
• Colored Television, Danzy Senna
• Lovely One, Ketanji Brown Jackson (memoir)
• Somewhere Beyond the Sea (The House in the Cerulean Sea sequel), T. J. Klune
• Nexus, Yuval Noah Harari
• Entitlement, Rumaan Alam
• Playground, Richard Powers

These are the book I will be reading for book clubs this month:

• The Chocolate War, R. Cormier **
• A Magic Steeped in Poison, Judy I. Lin (DNF)
• North Woods, Daniel Mason ***
• The Sun and the Void, Gabriela Romero LaCruz (DNF)
• The Ministry of Time, Kaliane Bradley (*)

These are the books I will be attempting to squeeze in because of book events I am attending:

• Digger Volume 1, Ursula Vernon
• A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking, T. Kingfisher
• The Dutch House, Ann Patchett
• Bel Canto, Ann Patchett
• Tom Lake, Ann Patchett (*)

• Cat’s Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut
• The Marriage Portrait, Maggie O’Farrell
• Twelfth Night, William Shakespeare
• Twelfth Knight, Alexene Farol Follmuth
• Martyr!, Kaveh Akbar

Never mind. I’m going to include some back-to-school recommendations in the spirit of the season. Also because I am working on an edit of a Ninth Grade Language Arts curriculum I taught a few years back. (Someone else is using this curriculum this year.) These are my top recommendations for ninth grade English, then. Note: they are a little on the masculine side because I had all boys in my class. Also, I consider ninth graders to still be in the same developmental stage as seventh and eighth graders—plus I had some real reluctant readers—so these novels tend to be shorter and easier than what you might normally see in high school reading. If you want a stretch, head down to The Lord of the Rings or the Shakespeare.

• The Invisible Man, H. G. Wells
• The Hound of the Baskervilles, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
• A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
• March, John Lewis
• American Born Chinese, Gene Luen Yang
• Macbeth, William Shakespeare (Folger’s)
• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
• The Effects of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, Paul Zindel
• The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway
• Anne of Green Gables, L. M. Montgomery
• Bridge to Terabithia, Katherine Paterson
• Where the Red Fern Grows, Wilson Rawls
• When You Reach Me, Rebecca Stead
• The Giver, Lois Lowry
• The Princess Bride, William Goldman
• The Book Thief, Marcus Zusak
• The Maze Runner, James Dashner
• A Monster Calls, Patrick Ness
• The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman
• The Truth About Horses, Christy Cashman
• Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
• Lord of the Flies, William Golding
• Call of the Wild, Jack London
• Captains Courageous, Rudyard Kipling
• Red Badge of Courage, Stephen Crane
• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
• Old Yeller, Fred Gipson
• The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
• To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
• The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins
• Born a Crime, Trevor Noah
• The Hobbit, J. R. R. Tolkien
• The Lord of the Rings trilogy, J. R. R. Tolkien
• The Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis