10 books you should read in October, including David Bowie's Moonage Daydream and William Shatner's Boldly Go

Prize-winning poet Maya Phillips is a critic at large for The New York Times; in that role, she most frequently covers theater. But in Nerd, a collection of thought-provoking and often personal essays, Phillips dives deep into thoughtful analysis of pop culture and fandom—Saturday morning cartoons, , shojo , and more. She is an inveterate and passionate fan, consuming broadly and gleefully, dropping references to and in the same breath. Her enthusiasm is contagious and her erudition illuminating, on topics including the difficulty of finding Black spaces in fantasy and sci-fi; self-discovery and identity-building in fan communities; and the superhero-boom-based evolution of convention culture. For most folks, Nerd will likely put some cool new-to-you titles on your radar.

Redheaded Damon Fields, nicknamed Demon Copperhead, hails from a dirt-poor holler in southwest Virginia, where adulthood comes awfully early for the poor kids. From the outset, it’s a hard-knock life for Demon: dead dad, addict teen mother, abusive stepdad, then foster-care homes that are at best uncaring and at worst abusive. He sets out to save himself by finding extended family, and later by excelling at high school football, but after an injury leads to pills, neither strategy works out the way he hopes. Folksy but never cheesy, Kingsolver’s lyrical prose brings to life an under-examined corner of the country in this coming-of-age tale. And if it rings a bell, your literary antennae are well-tuned: Kingsolver adapted much of the plot from Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield (even the cover nods to it).

If you’re a literature lover who also likes to laugh, pop this gem into your online cart right now (along with Baking With Kafka from 2017). Revenge Of The Librarians is a collection of single-page, color, usually multi-panel cartoons that take on all things literary-related, from first drafts and book fests to critics and font selection. (The London-based Gauld’s work appears weekly in The Guardian’s Books section, where these comics first ran.) With dry humor and his unmistakable drawing style, Gauld jokes about genre, Jane Austen openers, poetry police, a Samuel Beckett advent calendar (behind one of the doors: darkness), summer reading suggestions for conspiracy fans (including Across The World In Eighty Days), and plenty more. A true treat for readers.

He’s written a children’s book, reportage, essays, novellas, and a Booker Prize–winning novel, but short stories are ’ sweet spot. Liberation Day, his fifth collection, includes nine stories (five previously published in The New Yorker); the title story is a powerhouse, but they all pack mean emotional punches. A recurring theme (“Liberation Day,” “Ghoul,” “Elliott Spencer,” and to some degree “A Thing At Work”) is the exploitation of people in service of capitalism or private interests. Both deep sincerity and dark humor are on display throughout. “I guess one never realizes how little one wants to be kicked to death until one hears a crowd doing that exact same thing to someone nearby,” says the protagonist of “Ghoul” (the setting: a theme-park-like environment—classic Saunders). 

It’s the day of the annual Ghost Festival in central Taiwan’s rural Yongjing, when spirits return home from the land of the dead. Very much alive but also returning to Yongjing is Keith, who long ago fled his parents’ rigid, traditional expectations by moving to Europe, though he has spent the last decade in German prison for killing his partner. Newly freed, he is nevertheless a captive of his past. A harsh, loveless upbringing haunts him and his siblings; of seven kids, six were unwanted: the first five because they were girls, the youngest, Keith, because he was gay. Keith’s return is the structural backbone, but author Kevin Chen gives voice to the whole family, living members as well as dead, dropping hints at surprising skeletons in the closet as he slowly, mesmerizingly reveals the family’s secrets, as well as the agonizing circumstances of Keith’s crime.