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Our very own legendary Andrew has put together a form to see what the most popular books are for the Booksworn. If there's anything readers like as much as reading, its filling a form in about reading, so click on the link and let us know your favourite books!

Hi paid members! Just a reminder that this is the final week to help populate our monthly newsletter with all your cozy, creative joy. This month’s theme is: The Tea Room’s Autumn Notice Board

I'd love it to feel like things have been pinned to the tavern notice board: what we’re reading or brewing, exploring, working on, baking, looking forward to, etc.

Happily accepting any photos, artwork, recipes, etc. that feel in tone with the fall season!

Ready to submit? CLICK HERE to send in your photo, piece of writing, book rec, drawing, etc. by FRIDAY and I’ll include it.

I can’t wait to see what you submit!
Meg

I've got such a bizarre range of books that I've been gettin' into lately so I'm gonna tell ya about those and as always I wanna know what you're been reading (or plan to read) in the comments! PLUS we've got our Fiction/History Sickos Book Club vote results for October. Let's boogie!

READING

REVIEW

THE UNSELECTED JOURNALS OF EMMA M LION: VOL 1-3 by BETH BROWER (epistolary historical fiction)

Progress: Vol. 3 - 101/213

I was sold on this by Maddie (of Kris & Mads) while we bopped around the UK and I'm utterly enchanted. I'll be doing a video on this once I finish vol. 3 (I was told it was best to treat the first three tiny books as one arc), but this is scratching an itch I didn't know I had. The stakes are low enough to be cozy, but all these tiny social interactions feel so much more important than they ought to be. And everybody has this very proper, slightly haughty exterior that I love, but it never dips into overly cynical territory.

I don't know which suitor I "ship" yet, but while I figure that out I'll just delight in the side characters like Agnes (think Daisy from Downton Abbey) and the "goddess divine" Arabella, who is exactly the kind of socialite character who could've been written as a nightmare but is instead genuinely supportive while still taking obvious delight in a bit of mischief and scandal.

My wife found a freshly listed set of eight published volumes for $50 on Pango and swooped in to whisk them away, so I will be getting caught up before Vol. 9 releases early next year.

THE SIXTH EXTINCTION: AN UNNATURAL HISTORY by ELIZABETH KOLBERT (popular science/natural history)

Progress: 70/283

I felt a dum dum for being surprised by how much this book deals with evolution, the dark twin of extinction. I'd just mentally separated non-dino species extinction from the big dramatic mass-extinction events. Nonetheless, this is quite fascinating.

Side bar: there's a piece on a fungus ("Bd") that is presently fucking up frogs, and it on pg. 18 there's this bit of information:

"One theory has it that Bd was moved around the globe with shipments of African clawed frogs, which were used in the nineteen-fifties and sixties in pregnancy tests. (Female African clawed frogs, when injected with urine of a pregnant woman, lay eggs within a few hours.)"

This is known as the Hogben Test, which is remarkably accurate (with virtually 0% false positives!). In that vein, I've been re-watching The Great again, and in S1 Catherine is made to urinate on wheat as a pregnancy test. This less reliable method originated in Ancient Egypt and is considered the first successful pregnancy test. One facet of this was missing from The Great, as both wheat and barley were used and depending on which one sprouted, that would determine the sex (this aspect was bunk).

In summation, I'm unexpectedly learning a lot about pregnancy tests! Huzzah!

BERSERK: VOL 25-27 by KENTARO MIURA [Deluxe Edition Vol. 9] (manga/grimdark fantasy)

Progress: Finished

The Falcon of the Millennium Empire Arc is in full swing now and we just got introduced to a new tool for Guts that's a game-changer. Can't say too much without spoilers but if you stopped at the Golden Age or Conviction arcs, I'd say pick it back up and see how the tonal shift works for ya because I'm loving it so far.

20TH CENTURY BOYS by NAOKI URASAWA [The Perfect Edition Vol. 1] (manga/seinen thriller)

Progress: Finished

I finished Berserk early enough that I had time to crack this open and I ended up devouring the whole damn thing and am fiending for more. Here's the quick blurb on the premise:

Humanity, having faced extinction at the end of the 20th century, would not have entered the new millennium if it weren’t for them. In 1969, during their youth, they created a symbol. In 1997, as the coming disaster slowly starts to unfold, that symbol returns. This is the story of a group of boys who try to save the world.

This feels closer to something like AKIRA than the other manga I've read, only with more mystery and perhaps a dash of Stranger Things. I was pretty locked in once I got past the first handful of chapters but it's the final one, chapter 21, that had me 100% hooked. Also, the art is exceptional in how it blocks scenes to feel cinematic.

PREVIEW/BOOK CLUB SELECTIONS

We have locked in our picks for the Fiction/History Sickos Book Clubs for October so those will be next up for me after these, along with more Berserk and maybe 20th Century Boys if I get the second volume in soon.

The Fiction Sickos will be reading The Secret History by Donna Tartt.

Under the influence of a charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at a New England college discover a way of thought and life a world away from their banal contemporaries. But their search for the transcendent leads them down a dangerous path, beyond human constructs of morality.

The History Sickos will be reading Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization by Richard Miles.

Drawing on a wealth of new research, archaeologist, historian, and master storyteller Richard Miles resurrects the civilization that ancient Rome struggled so mightily to expunge. This monumental work charts the entirety of Carthage's history, from its origins among the Phoenician settlements of Lebanon to its apotheosis as a Mediterranean empire whose epic land-and-sea clash with Rome made a legend of Hannibal and shaped the course of Western history. Carthage Must Be Destroyed reintroduces readers to the ancient glory of a lost people and their generations-long struggle against an implacable enemy.

EVERYTHING ELSE

• Publication News: A Complement of Scoundrels is nearly a week old into its official release and I made this handy dandy guide on how you can support it. This week I've got some audiobook codes to hold a giveaway for so keep an eye out for that as well. Also, after about a bazillion emails and dozens of options poured over, our second acquisition (Grave of Petals by Ofelia J. Vazquez) will be getting a new title that will be announced soon!

• Game of the Week: You know the drill, more Civilization VI. But also! I've linked up with a few other creators and we plan on doing a test stream this week. The hope is to stream weekly at first and go from there. I created a new Twitch account (same handle as everywhere else, "KistReadsBooks") that you can follow for these sessions.

• Show of the Week: As previously mentioned, I'm fully locked in on yet another re-watch of The Great.

• Movie of the Week: I'm actually going to dedicate this space to a documentary I watched last week, The Deepest Breath (2023). It's about a free diver training to break a world record with the help of an expert safety diver. I had some issues with how it withheld key information for dramatic effect but this was a riveting watch with a medicinal gummy.

This week's new releases deserve celebrating, but this feels like the week to take a deep breath before a TON of exciting new releases in October.

Trad Wife by Sarah Langan 5/5 stars

Put this on your TBR if you liked the idea of Yesteryear, but it fell flat. This is also a horror take at the exposing of trad wife influencers.

Something Followed Us Home 4.5/5 stars

Put this on your TBR if you enjoy horror anthologies by marginalized authors (this is Latine horror).

The Radiance by Ayad Akhtar 4/5 stars

Put this on your TBR if you enjoy prose some people would call purple and stories that are a bit meta.

The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman by Deesha Philyaw 3.5/5 stars

Put this on your TBR if you enjoy contemporary fiction that exposes the hypocrisy of the evangelical church culture.

And a couple I didn't get a chance to read yet:

American Hagwon by Min Jin Lee

I got declined for an ARC for this (rude...kidding!), so I'm glad my preorder is on it's way. I want to read this because it's an immigrant story of finding satisfaction by a rockstar author.

The Unhaunting by Micaiah Johnson

I want to read this because it's a haunted house story by one of my favorite science fiction authors. I'm excited what she will do in a different genre. Thankfully this preorder is on its way as well!