What we're reading: writers and readers on the books they enjoyed in September

"I am really excited by Namanlagh, the first poetry collection in 10 years from the great Tom Paulin. A tone-perfect meditation on illness and recovery, partnership and writing, violence and historical neglect, it is an absolute cracker. There are subtle nods to Derek Mahon and Seamus Heaney, and many of the poems are filled with a sense of late style and unfinished business."

"Political memoirs are usually terrible, often screeds of self-justification and revenge, but Nicola Sturgeon's Frankly rewrites the rules. She's a proper writer, for a start, and knows how to consort with self-doubt, ambivalence, regret, love and kindness, openness to change, and many of the things that actually make people. I look forward to what she writes next. I found a new writer new to me, though beloved of Norwegians for years. He is the late Dag Solstad."

"He is having a crisis and the novel charts it in an illuminating, unfussy way, creating something beautiful. I want to offer more freshly baked goods to my friends. Soon, I'm going to run a coffee morning from a kitchen table covered with homemade croissants, tattie scones, sourdough bread and mad cakes. I'm hoping to be helped in this quest by Helen Goh's Baking and the Meaning of Life."

Namanlagh marks Tom Paulin's return to poetry after ten years with tone-perfect meditations on illness, recovery, partnership, violence, and historical neglect, echoing Derek Mahon and Seamus Heaney and carrying a late-style sense of unfinished business. Nicola Sturgeon's Frankly breaks conventional political-memoir patterns by avoiding self-justification and displaying self-doubt, ambivalence, regret, love, kindness, and openness to change. Dag Solstad's Shyness and Dignity follows a long-serving literature teacher through a sudden crisis triggered by a broken umbrella, rendered in an illuminating, unfussy manner. Helen Goh's Baking and the Meaning of Life fuels plans for communal baking, while Climate Capitalism documents capitalist successes in the transition to renewables.

Read at www.theguardian.com