What I'm Reading This Fall (Besides My Group Chat)

If you've been here any amount of time, you already know I'm a voracious reader. I spent the early part of my career in publishing, and I truly believe there's no right or wrong way to read a book (I mean, who made you the Mayor of Books™?!).

I've said before that "sweata weatha" is my Super Bowl, and that's partly because fall is the best season for newly released books. Here's what I'm excited about: the new Chloe Benjamin, Under Story, out this month (I was an early evangelist for The Immortalists back when I worked at Penguin Random House). The new Ariel Lawhon, The Pirate Queen, comes out today, and I recommend her last one, The Frozen River, to just about everyone I know. And if you've read Station Eleven, or watched the show, Emily St. John Mandel has a new one too: Exit Party, which picks up with a character from her earlier novel after she gets out of prison.

We also get a new novel from John Green, Hollywood, Ending — his first adult novel in almost ten years — and Big Little Truths, the long-awaited follow-up to Big Little Lies, which finds those same five women a decade later, kids now in high school, secrets still secrets. Heart of Glass is another one I shelved recently, and I'm currently listening to The Calamity Club, Kathryn Stockett's first novel since The Help, which is just a joy.

I used to think a good fall reading list needed a theme. But Nora Ephron said it better than I could, years ago: "Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape; it's a way to make contact with reality after a day of making things up, and it's a way of making contact with someone else's imagination after a day that's all too real. Reading is grist. Reading is bliss."