What We're Reading, Vol. 27 – October 2020

Signage for the Romainmôtier book festival in Switzerland, photographed by Olivia Gündüz-Willemin.

“October, crisp, misty, golden October, when the light is sweet and heavy.”

— Angela Carter, The Magic Toyshop

October! The most glorious time of year! At least for us autumn-loving lot here at The Attic on Eighth.

Warm cups of tea, spicy loaves of pumpkin bread, woolen blankets, and a stack of books. As the sun begins to set earlier and earlier, it’s the perfect time of year to cozy up with a much-anticipated read and get lost in the pages of an atmospheric book. Spooky or not, we’ve been doing just that this month, going everywhere from Oaxaca to Cornwall to Korea, reconnecting with ourselves and our imaginations.

Here’s what we’ve been reading this October…

Note: All the books in this piece can be found on The Attic on Eighth’s Bookshop.Org Page.

Zoë G. Burnett

Last year’s Sea Monsters by Chloe Aridjis has a poetic, almost lullaby-like narrative, and by that I mean Lullaby by The Cure. Set in Oaxaca, Mexico in the 1980s, the novel’s main character Luisa inhabits the world in and around Zipolite, translated as the Beach of the Dead, surrounded by stray dogs and an aimless atmosphere of post-earthquake languor. It’s a book in progress for me, however its murky prose and bleak imagery will no doubt intrigue Attic readers as we melt slowly into the colder, wetter months. 

Rachel Tay

Perhaps it is due to my impending move to the States, or perhaps it is merely a testament to the quality of literature in translation today, but I’ve started turning increasingly towards literature closer to home. More specifically, over the past month or so, as I make a gradual attempt to recover my attention span, I have found myself reading more and more translated fiction from Japan and Korea. Certainly, there could be something to be said for the distinctive starkness and brevity often characteristic of this region’s writing that keeps my doomscrolling-addled brain from being distracted from my reading. But there is, I think, also some odd comfort, if not affinity, to be found in the plain but surreal dailiness — the shadow of estrangement that lurks around the corner of what seems otherwise ordinary — of titles such as Mieko Kawakami’s Breasts and Eggs, Sayaka Murata’s Earthlings, and Frances Cha’s If I Had Your Face. 

In each of these books, the reality of existence as a woman within the unvarying regiments of late-capitalism couldn’t be more present or self-evident: Kawakami, for instance, brings us a pair of sisters unsettled by the bounds and expectations of their bodies; Cha writes of a litany of young women whose lives hinge on the dwindling capital of their beauty. Despite the fact that women are indeed becoming more educated than ever, and that birth rates are steadily declining in the various East Asian metropolises wherein these stories are set, the characters populating these novels, it seems, still cannot shake the dehumanising and misogynistic valuation of their reproductive labour. Consequently exhausting themselves in order to contort their lives into society’s normative scripts of femininity, there is among these women a tacit acknowledgement of the sheer ridiculousness and untenability of their situations — something that Murata makes plain in her novel. “Everyone believed in the Factory,” Murata’s narrator describes, “Everyone was brainwashed by the Factory and did as they were told. They all used their reproductive organs for the Factory and did their jobs for the sake of the Factory.” Inasmuch as an air of impassivity and lethargy abides in her words, this is indicative not simply of a sense of resignation — an acquiescence to the systemic issues bigger than one can conceive — but of an inarticulable though pervasive sense that “things … are just a little bit not okay.” Nothing is normal, not even the normative, when everyone is stretching themselves thin and nothing is sustainable. To finally encounter such a precise diagnosis of the afflictions of our strange times now has hence been something of a salve for me, however slight. 

Eliza Campbell

As the resident Attic horror fan I’ve been amping up my seasonal reads this past month and it’s been a great success. My favourites have been No Exit by Taylor Adams (recommended in my Actually Scary Books and Films for Halloween 2020 list) and The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. The first is a wintery thriller that takes place during a snowstorm at an isolated rest stop in the Rocky Mountains. It’s got brilliant pacing and just the right amount of twists and turns to keep you hooked until the last few pages. As far as Hill House is concerned, I’ve been wanting to read it since 2016 when I fell in love with We Have Always Lived in the Castle, which is one of my favourite books. I finally was motivated enough to read Hill House this last month and I absolutely loved it. A wonderfully creepy haunted house story that amps up the unreality and fear that the characters are feeling in a slow, simmering burn. Before the spooky season ends I’m going to try and truly freak myself out by re-reading Nick Cutter’s The Deep (not for the faint of heart) and The Devil All the Time by Donald Ray Pollock.

Vesna Curlic

I hadn’t really noticed that it’s already mid-October (!) and so I find myself deep into the spooky season with no spooky reads to speak of! Instead, I’ve been slowly getting through the 950-page beast that is The Eighth Life by Nino Haratischwili, in translation by Charlotte Collins and Ruth Martin. It’s a multi-generational saga, following seven Georgian women (and a secret, slightly magical hot chocolate recipe) through a century of Soviet history.  The writing and story are enchanting, with Slavic folkloric elements and a bit of magical realism sprinkled throughout. I’m only 200 or so pages into it, but I’m already thoroughly in love with this book. In reading it, I have that rare feeling that a book has been perfectly crafted just for me and placed in my life at exactly the right time. On a more seasonal note, I am about to start When No One is Watching by Alyssa Cole, a mystery-thriller about race and gentrification in Brooklyn. It is one of my most anticipated new releases this Fall and I’m hopeful that it’ll be a fresh take on one of my most-read genres.

Kara Thompson

I’m in the same boat as Vesna and hadn’t really noticed that we are already halfway through October! (Wasn’t it October 1st just like, yesterday?!) It also hasn’t helped that I just moved to a city where autumn is non-existent and we will instead have summer weather until December, at least. My deep dive of historical fiction and non-fiction have continued into October, though I would love to squeeze in a spooky read this month. I just started the 4th book in the Outlander series, Drums of Autumn, which is my go-to when needing an escape from our current reality. Goodbye 2020 and hello 18th-century problems! I also recently came across a biography of the Medieval Queen Eleanor, Eleanor of Aquitaine: A Life, by Alison Weir which I am very excited to start reading. Last October I read Shirely Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, which I absolutely could not put down, so I’m thinking that I’ll stick with Jackson again this year and pick up a copy of We Have Always Lived in the Castle. 

Annie Jo Baker

Even though I’m generally reading old school cosmic horror and weird fiction throughout the year, I actually haven’t been reading much of that this October. Or much at all. I’ve been deep in a reading rut, but starting Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir might just be getting me out of it. The world building is next-level—I was the kind of child who couldn’t understand how the land of Oz worked but I’ve completely accepted this hyper-religious, far future sci-fi universe of necromancers, comic books, and chivalry. All told in the same kind of beautiful, filthy writing a la Junot Díaz, David Foster Wallace, and Kayla Rae Whitaker. Also, a queer female main character and lots and lots of bones. #justnecromancerthings

Amy Richardson

I finished The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte this month, which although not technically a spooky read in the same way Jane Eyre (Charlotte B) and Wuthering Heights (Emily B) are, it definitely has an autumn feel to it. I’m now midway through a reread of Rebecca partly because of the new adaptation coming out at the end of the month, and partly because it has that thriller vibe. It is definitely a book about being haunted by an otherworldly presence and in this reread I am seeing the symbolism and foreshadowing more, maybe because I now know the plot and am not rapidly devouring it for that. I have brought back from my parents house a tome of Thomas Hardy’s short stories, The Withered Arm and Other Stories which should have a few scares in it. I read The Withered Arm years ago for an undergrad course on Victorian Literature and I remember it being particularly spooky. Can’t wait!

Photo by Olivia Gündüz-Willemin.

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† This post is not sponsored, however as an affiliate we may receive a small percentage from any purchase made through The Attic On Eighth's Bookshop page dedicated to this reading list at no additional cost to you. Thank you for your support!