What Are You Reading This October? A New Releases Open Thread

By Kelly Faircloth | October 3, 2014 | 6:00pm

October is here! What are you reading? Here are some starters; please share whatever else you’re eagerly awaiting.

Yes Please, Amy Poehler

I assume this is pretty much an automatic purchase for most Jezebel readers, so here is your official reminder that Poehler’s book drops at the end of the month. The description promises “a big juicy stew of personal stories, funny bits on sex and love and friendship and parenthood and real life advice (some useful, some not so much), like when to be funny and when to be serious.” Like the lady said: yes, please.

Elsa Schiaparelli: A Biography, Meryle Secrest

Your monthly dose of fashion! Learn a little more about the famously far-out designer.

Ada’s Algorithm, James Essinger

Did you know that Lord Byron’s daughter, Ada Lovelace, is actually an important (and often overlooked) figure in the history of computing? (Here is a great, relevant Hark! A Vagrant comic.) Ada’s Algorithm is a portrait of a particularly fascinating woman.

Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights, Katha Pollitt

This is a particularly timely release, given the sobering news out of Texas.

As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride, by Cary Elwes

And here is your palate cleanser!

The Jane Austen Rules: A Classic Guide to Modern Love, Sinéad Murphy

The world is overrun with manuals positively chock full of garbage advice about love and life. You could do much, much worse than a spot of guidance from Jane Austen, especially if you’re the kind of woman who’s devoted real thought to which of the Dashwood sisters she most resembles (hi, friend!).

Lila, Marilynne Robinson

The latest novel from Robinson (the American writer I am most embarrassed about not having read yet, and profiled in the New York Times Magazine this weekend) is a prequel to her Pulitzer-winning Gilead.

The Secret History of Wonder Woman, Jill Lepore

Between the official description of The Secret History of Wonder Woman and this New Yorker piece, I’m beginning to think we should say screw a Wonder Woman movie and start angling for a picture about her origins as an American cultural phenomenon. Lepore got access to the private papers of William Moulton Marston, the man who created her, and the resulting book sounds like a damn doozy.

Alone in Antarctica: The First Woman To Ski Solo Across The Southern Ice, Felicity Aston

Have you been waffling over whether to book that long-overdue vacation? Well, here is a book about a woman who fucking skied across Antarctica by herself. Should give you the push needed for that Caribbean cruise, at the very least.

Pen and Ink: Tattoos and the Stories Behind Them, Wendy MacNaughton and Isaac Fitzgerald

For the inked out there. Spiffy illustrations. Features both Cheryl Strayed and Roxane Gay.

What else? Doesn’t have to be new. Pulling out any scary Halloween classics? Reading a forgotten classic? Please share!