Fall is here! My favorite time of the year. The only season where the cool breeze is brushing against your face because you are covered in head toe with your favorite sweater, a hot cup of coffee in one hand (a pumpkin spice late perhaps), long skinny jeans, and your favorite cozy shoes. I was going to say ugg boots, but it’s hard to know if they are still in style.
As innocent as that sounds, there will also be lots of scares around you. Houses decorated in spiderwebs, strobe lights, fake skeletons (I hope), sounds of screams from terror, and the bitch with the nerve to come up at you, unexpectively, and scare the shit out of you.
This is the only season that brings out joy in the darkness. On that note, here is my list of must reads to make you feel cozy, scared to your ugg boots, and remind you that the beginning festivities are here for us to enjoy.
Read more: My Fall 2022 Book Recommendations
Coming to us October 18th.
Usually, I don’t like to recommend books that have not been released yet, but John Irving is releasing his first book in seven years. I’ve read his work, and he is genius on the pen.
In Aspen, Colorado, in 1941, Rachel Brewster is a slalom skier at the National Downhill and Slalom Championships. Little Ray, as she is called, finishes nowhere near the podium, but she manages to get pregnant. Back home, in New England, Little Ray becomes a ski instructor.
Her son, Adam, grows up in a family that defies conventions and evades questions concerning the eventful past. Years later, looking for answers, Adam will go to Aspen. In the Hotel Jerome, where he was conceived, Adam will meet some ghosts; in The Last Chairlift, they aren’t the first or the last ghosts he sees.
Yes, I know this book has been highly anticipated, reviewed, and recommended, but this is that one book that deserves the hype! Fall is about healing during the testing times of the summer, and this is the perfect book for that.
Due to the popularity of this book, it was SO HARD to get this book when it came out on release day. But it’s safe to say, a book review is coming soon.
A heartbreaking and hilarious memoir by iCarly and Sam & Cat star Jennette McCurdy about her struggles as a former child actor—including eating disorders, addiction, and a complicated relationship with her overbearing mother—and how she retook control of her life.
Jennette McCurdy was six years old when she had her first acting audition. Her mother’s dream was for her only daughter to become a star, and Jennette would do anything to make her mother happy. So she went along with what Mom called “calorie restriction,” eating little and weighing herself five times a day. She endured extensive at-home makeovers while Mom chided, “Your eyelashes are invisible, okay? You think Dakota Fanning doesn’t tint hers?” She was even showered by Mom until age sixteen while sharing her diaries, email, and all her income.
I’ve recommended this book like a thousands times, but it deserves it.
This is one of my favorite books, 5 stars, and I come back to this book time after time.
Meet the Cooke family: Mother and Dad, Lowell, Rosemary and her unusual sister Fern. Rosemary begins her story in the middle. She has her reasons. “Until Fern’s expulsion…,” Rosemary says, “she was my twin, my funhouse mirror, my whirlwind other half and I loved her.” As a child, Rosemary never stopped talking. Then, something happened, and Rosemary wrapped herself in silence.
In We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, Karen Joy Fowler weaves her most accomplished work to date—a tale of loving but fallible people whose well-intentioned actions lead to heartbreaking consequences.
For those who want to read a YA Fantasy novel, anything by Rainbow Rowell is the best.
Simon Snow is the worst chosen one who’s ever been chosen.
That’s what his roommate, Baz, says. And Baz might be evil and a vampire and a complete git, but he’s probably right.
Half the time, Simon can’t even make his wand work, and the other half, he sets something on fire. His mentor’s avoiding him, his girlfriend broke up with him, and there’s a magic-eating monster running around wearing Simon’s face. Baz would be having a field day with all this, if he were here—it’s their last year at the Watford School of Magicks, and Simon’s infuriating nemesis didn’t even bother to show up.
Carry On is a ghost story, a love story, a mystery and a melodrama. It has just as much kissing and talking as you’d expect from a Rainbow Rowell story—but far, far more monsters.
For those who want a classic, eerie, short and sweet book, this one is the best.
Makes you think on so many levels. The best mind fuck for the fall.
The Stranger is a 1942 novella by French author Albert Camus. Its theme and outlook are often cited as examples of Camus’ philosophy, absurdism, coupled with existentialism; though Camus personally rejected the latter label.
Through the story of an ordinary man unwittingly drawn into a senseless murder on an Algerian beach, Camus explored what he termed “the nakedness of man faced with the absurd.” First published in English in 1946; now in a new translation by Matthew Ward.
Reading Litty 