What to Read This October

As we slide into sweater weather, stock your shelves with coffee-table tomes to peruse and page-turners worth hibernating for.

Photography

Fresh photography collections explore glamour, fame, and quiet moments. —Madison Reid

Nadine Ijewere’s debut monograph, Our Own Selves (Prestel), showcases editorial shoots and more personal portraits from Jamaica and Lagos, featuring Ijewere’s signature jewel-toned color palettes and striking, often androgynous models: a celebration of beauty in its full sweep.

Though Slim Aarons described his photos as “attractive people doing attractive things in attractive places,” Slim Aarons: Style, out from Abrams, demonstrates that capturing this winsome jetset was an art.

In Paul, an intimate, decades-long portrait project, photojournalist Harry Benson records the evolution of Paul McCartney (at right) from the “cute Beatle” to a venerated solo musician and an earnest family man. McCartney’s charisma is evident whether he’s focused at the piano or in a moment of repose. 

Fiction

A crop of immersive novels—set in churches, deserts, and outer space—delves into the weirdness of being human. —Keziah Weir

The Morning Star

A Melancholia-esque star appears, ominously, in this dark novel fit for fans and the Karl Ove Knausgaard–curious alike. (Translated by Martin Aitken; Penguin Press)

Go Home, Ricky!

Debut novelist Gene Kwak’s wrestling-centric satire unspools issues of race and masculinity (toxic and otherwise). (Overlook Press)

Cloud Cuckoo Land

Anthony Doerr’s first novel since All the Light We Cannot See is packed with lush details and a gripping narrative, spanning from 15th-century Constantinople to a new home-planet-seeking spaceship, tied together by a lost Diogenes text. (Scribner)

Crossroads

Come for the Twitter fire starter that is Jonathan Franzen, stay for the funny, sad, unputdownable tapestry of a pastor and his family in the midst of myriad crises—of conscience, religion, and otherwise. (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

The Book of Form and Emptiness

Zen studies, environmental catastrophe, and mental health are intertwined in Ruth Ozeki’s story of a teen boy who hears voices, his hoarder mother, and a mysterious young performer. (Viking)

I Love You but I’ve Chosen Darkness

Claire Vaye Watkins, whose father was a member of the Manson Family, has written a beguiling, biting exploration of motherhood (and personhood) that weaves in rich biographical details and is set in the desert heat of her California and Nevada hometowns. (Riverhead)

Bewilderment

Richard Powers turns his gaze to the stars in this devastating follow-up to his Pulitzer Prize–winning The Overstory, as an astrobiologist mourns his wife’s recent death while raising his brilliant, troubled son. (W.W. Norton)

Nonfiction

In these new books, three stars put their lives on paper. —K.W.

Robinson’s third laugh-out-loud essay collection is the first from her new imprint, Tiny Reparations, which she says will highlight “women, [people of color], and folks from the LGBTQIA+ community” in a wide range of books, from thrillers to romance to comedy. “We are more than trauma,” she says, “and I plan to be one of many imprints to show that.”

Inspired by Treasures of the Italian Table by Burton Anderson, and the work of Nigel Slater, Nigella Lawson, M.F.K. Fisher, Joseph Mitchell, and S.J. Perelman, Tucci details his epicurean life in this memoir with recipes from Gallery Books—not least a French delicacy shared with Meryl Streep. Her reaction: “It does have a bit of the barnyard about it.” His: “It looks like a fucking horse cock.” If Tucci’s life were a single dish, he tells V.F., “I know it would be pasta!”

“It was clear I liked telling stories,” writes Michaela Coel in her affecting first book, out from Holt, which includes the text of her 2018 MacTaggart Lecture plus a new intro and epilogue, and discusses challenging racism in the film industry and the assault that would inspire I May Destroy You. “Some say our industry is a microcosm of the world,” she writes. “It’s a delicate dance, isn’t it; the world reflecting us, we, in turn, the world.”

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