October Reading Roundup
Some of the books I read and enjoyed last month
Some quick housekeeping. I’ve turned comments back on for everybody. I was experimenting with comments on only for paid subscribers, but then everyone just started texting me their comments, so comments back on!
I’ve been writing this newsletter for one year, and I’m reassessing my relationship with Substack, its metrics and my attempt to monetize this space. More to come next week, but TL;DR: comments are back on.
Now, let’s get into what I read this month!
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From Here to the Great Unknown
by Lisa Marie Presley & Riley Keough
This is Lisa Marie’s memoir, co-written by her daughter Riley Keough. If you listen on audio like I did, it’s narrated by Julia Roberts (listen to the audiobook). Apparently Lisa Marie had been working on this for years and in 2022 asked her daughter to help her finish it. Lisa Marie died a month later and Riley finished it and filled in the gaps.
I really liked this book, even though it is way more about Elvis than I anticipated. The book became interesting for me when Lisa Marie got married and had kids. There is a whole part of the book about her marriage to Michael Jackson. But the book is mostly about her kids and how much she loved being a mother.
If you’re a celebrity memoir lover like I am, add this one to your list. I will say there’s a tragedy at the end that I didn’t expect and it is a very heavy part of the book. Then right after that, Lisa Marie dies, which Riley writes about from her perspective. I cried through the last 45 minutes of the book. I would also research how Lisa Marie died because it is not spelled out in the book and depending on your fat politics, it is an important (and sad) thing to know.
What Goes with What: 100 Recipes, 20 Charts, Endless Possibilities
by Julia Turshen
This is an odd intro for a cookbook recommendation, so bear with me.
If you read Virginia Sole-Smith or listen to her Burnt Toast podcast, then you likely know about the recent conversation around cooking, and not wanting to do it anymore. After reading through the comments on Virginia’s post, I’m realizing a lot of us feel this way: burned out.
The pandemic broke me in terms of cooking, shopping, meal planning, etc. Until (!) I found Julia Turshen’s cooking classes. If you were reading me on Joy the Baker back then, you may remember how often I wrote about these classes and how much I loved them. This new cookbook is a result of those classes. This cookbook is exactly what I want, which is someone I trust, who has realistic expectations of what a home cook can do, telling me what goes with what. If you’re burned out with cooking and everything that goes along with it, I daresay this cookbook will turn it around.
by Grady Hendrix
I wanted to read a spooky-lite book for Halloween and this scratched the itch. Set in the late ‘80s, two high school best friends experience one of them getting possessed by a demon and the other one trying desperately to get her friend un-possessed.
It’s a fun read and a quintessential Grady Hendrix novel in that it’s supernatural, funny, has well developed characters and has minor blips of racism. But is it racism if he’s such a beloved author? Surely it’s not racism because there would be search results when I type in “Grady Hendrix racist,” which I did and found nothing, which has to mean I’m missing something about his writing style and some important, high-level social commentary he’s making, which leads me again to the question, is it racism?
by Samantha Allen
Much to the chagrin of my friend Nicole, I did not love this book. This is one of Nicole’s favorite books. So much so that she has a shelf-talker recommending it at her friend’s Minneapolis bookstore, Tropes & Trifles, and she keeps copies at her house to send to folks.
The book is about a fictional version of The Bachelor called The Catch and the season is down to its final four contestants. The show flys them all out to a remote island in the Pacific Northwest and …. there’s a bigfoot? Who wants to cuddle? This is never explained.
Up until the bigfoot shows up, the book is great. Oh, and I’m not spoiling anything. There’s literally a bigfoot on the cover. It’s just - the bigfoot doesn’t make sense. Why is it there? What does it want? I have no idea what the theme of this book is, or what this book is actually about. But! Fun read nonetheless.
Nicole, I look forward to your rebuttal in my comments lol.
by Liz Moore
Set at a summer camp in the Adirondack Mountains in 1975, a kid goes missing, and surprise, she is the little sister of the kid who went missing 14 years ago (and was never found).
I loved this book. And then I loved it all over again when I saw Liz Moore speak at the Southern Festival of Books last weekend. She described how this book is about class; nature and who has a right to nature and land; and the history of the Adirondack Mountains.
It’s a propulsive read with short chapters that toggle between characters and timelines, which I enjoy. I read books like this so fast. If you loved Long Bright River, I think you will like this book, too. Rachel at Parnassus says it’s a great audiobook, FYI.
Coming up next month: Entitlement by Rumaan Alam, which, I’m sorry to say, I’m 100 pages in and I’m bored as hell.
ICYMI: Here’s what I read last month:
