October Preview

Hi everyone, we’re into October now, woohoo. It’s usually a very lovely month, but it’s starting to get dark much earlier, eh? And the mornings are chilly but the afternoons are golden.

Do you see part of a rainbow across the fields in the photo? I saw it while I was out walking our dog. I needed to get the full thing but only got part of it. It’s pretty outside these days. What’s not to like about October?

And it’s going to be a particularly bookish, fun month since I have some tickets mid-month to Wordfest — the book festival nearby in the city. I hope to see and hear talks by illustrator Jackie Morris (The Book of Birds), Tayari Jones (Kin), Jenny Jackson (The Shampoo Effect), Patrick deWitt (Dodge City), Larissa Pham (Discipline), Kurt Andersen (The Break Up), Anand Giridharadas (Man in the Mirror) and Rachel Eliza Griffiths (The Flower Bearers). On top of that, I’ll be visiting my sister and brother-in-law in the Bay Area for a weekend late in October and we’ll be seeing Barbara Kingsolver (Demon Copperhead) talk about her new novel Partita, yay. So I’m psyched up to hear authors and read books this month.

Now let’s discuss what’s new that’s releasing this month. There’s so much coming out that I need to pare it down. There’s new books by such well-known authors as: Michael Connelly, Stephen King (with Peter Straub), Louise Penny, Philippa Gregory, Bonne Garmus, Nathaniel Philbrick, Audrey Niffenegger, and Chad Harbach among others. I’m looking at those and several others that I’ve highlighted below.

First I should probably talk about Kingsolver’s Partita (out Oct. 6) which is on my fall list. The novel is about a woman, whose career was cut short as a promising concert pianist, and now lives on a farm in Tennessee with her husband … when she gets pulled back to her past after getting an unexpected phone call from a former boyfriend. Thereafter you see how her life unfolds in two timelines — her middle age and back in her twenties. It’s probably better not to know too much, so I will leave it there … and find out more when I read it.

Next is the novel Luna, Phoenix, Queen (out Oct. 13) by Julie Orringer about a married couple who teach at a midwestern university when the wife gets early-onset Alzheimer’s and the man later finds a manuscript of hers which describes an affair. Thereafter it becomes a tale of artistic and marital betrayal told by the various parties affected.

The novel has received many starred reviews and author Katie Kitamura calls it “a miracle of a book” while Andrew Sean Greer says “it will knock your socks off.” Also the husband in the novel becomes obsessed with a shelter dog that apparently plays a big role in the story. The dog is said to be a very memorable, so what are we waiting for? I have not read Orringer before, so I’m hoping she’ll be a good new-to-me author.

Also Imbolo Mbue’s novel Every Story Is a Love Story, which comes out Oct. 6, is also on my fall list. It’s about a widower, a Cameroonian immigrant in New Jersey, who unexpectedly hears from the woman motorist responsible for his wife’s death … which takes them into uncharted territory. Said to be a morally complex tale with compelling characters … author Charmaine Wilkerson calls it: “a book of heart-wrenching what-ifs that will keep you guessing and thinking about loss, forgiveness, family, and, yes, love.”

I have read Mbue’s other two novels and her debut Behold the Dreamers was a favorite of mine back in 2016, so I don’t want to miss this one. The author is from Cameroon and lives in New York City.

You might also like the novels: Whale Harbor by Mary Beth Keane (out Oct. 20) and Music Against the Night by Yiyun Li (out Oct. 13), both of which have received high praise. The first is a sweeping multigenerational saga that follows 11 brothers on different paths between Ireland, England, Montana, and New York.

And the latter follows two musicians as they study, travel, love, and chase their ambitions. About Yiyun Li’s novel, Ann Patchett has said: it “may well be the most perfectly constructed, moving, and beautiful novel I’ve ever read.” So wow those are big words. Apparently the novel is based on the the real lives of 18th-century composer John Field and his wife Adelaide and is the first part of an expected trilogy.

Switching gears, let’s check out new releases to watch this month. There’s some adaptations of literary works … and sometimes these can be good and other times not so much, so we will see. A seven-part TV series of Steinbeck’s classic East of Eden is now playing on Netflix (started Oct. 1). It follows characters of the Trask family from the post-Civil War era to the brink of World War I and stars Florence Pugh in the lead role as Cathy Ames.

Interestingly the series was adapted by Zoe Kazan whose grandfather Elia Kazan directed the 1955 adapted film of it. I hope to check it out sometime. The series was shot in New Zealand (standing in for the USA) so it should be gorgeous.

There’s also movie adaptations this month of Austen’s first novel Sense and Sensibility (out Oct. 16) and Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Klara and the Sun (out Oct. 23). You might remember the 1995 Ang Lee film of S & S with Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet as the Dashwood girls. This time they’re played by Daisy Edgar-Jones and Esmé Creed-Miles as the older sisters in the family who vie for suitors after their father’s passing.

It’s hard to say if this version will be up to snuff; we can only hope. But I’m more leery about the Klara and the Sun movie adaptation which looks a bit silly — judging from the trailer — compared to the 2021 book. I’m not sure I will see it since I’m fond of the Ishiguro novel, which is about an artificial friend who is chosen as a companion for a sick child. I could be wrong about the Taika Waititi film, but the novel Klara and the Sun had depth to it and wasn’t mainly comic and dopey like the movie trailer seems to suggest. When in doubt: read the book!

Aaron Sorkin’s film The Social Reckoning (out Oct. 9) looks more compelling. It follows the true story of how a young Facebook engineer teamed with a Wall Street Journal reporter to blow the whistle on the social network’s most guarded secrets. It’s going to be big I think with Jeremy Strong (Succession) playing Mark Zuckerberg, Jeremy Allen White (of Bear) as the reporter and Betty Gilpin as the whistleblower.

I typically won’t miss a Sorkin film. You probably remember his 2010 film The Social Network about the beginnings of Facebook … well this is sort of a sequel or a companion piece to that. And it was shot in Vancouver, Canada, which stands in for the tariff-wielding USA.

In short, I’m also looking to see the film Fatherland (out Oct. 23) with the great German actress Sandra Huller as well as the movie The Only Living Pickpocket in New York (out Oct. 23), starring the talented actor John Turturro. Fatherland is about the author Thomas Mann and a road trip he took across Germany with his daughter in 1949. It was his first time since returning to Germany since fleeing the Nazis in 1933 (though in real life the trip apparently was with his wife and not his daughter).

The latter film is about an aging pickpocket thief who steals and loses a device not knowing it belonged to a relative of a major crime family and thereafter has to use all his connections to try to limit the consequences for himself and family. Uh-oh. It should have plenty of a squirm-worthy tension to it.

Finally in music for October, there’s new album releases from Wynonna Judd, Robert Plant, John Legend, Sheryl Crow, Michael Kiwanuka, Mat Kearney, and Chantal Kreviazuk among others. I’ll pick Sheryl Crow’s thirteenth studio album Pick You Up (out Oct. 9) … with her single “Freedom Bus,” which features guest collaborator Jesse Welles. I remember back in 1997 a great rocking concert of Sheryl’s at the 9:30 Club in D.C. Man those were the days. If It Makes You Happy …

That’s all for now. What about you — which new releases are you looking forward to? Happy October.