Might go to a bookstore

Or the library!

Oct 06, 2023

Hi! Happy Friday! Have you gone into full fall mode yet? Pumpkins, tea, plaid, vests, soup, rugby shirts, yellow gingko leaves? Here in Austin it just cooled down a teensy bit, so we can finally embrace ‘fake fall’ or ‘hotumn.’ This weekend I’ll be furthering my current research project where I try the various local adult ciders.

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In the last newsletter, I shared part one of my futsal coaching journey. I’m not quite ready with part two, but I do have some bookish stuff to report.

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Bookish thing #1:

Last night my 11 year old George and I went to Barnes and Nobles to see the author Stuart Gibbs talk about his new book Spy School Goes North. I just wrote ‘Barnes and Nobles’ like it’s just any Barnes and Nobles, and not, like, the exact place I spent my entire adolescence dreaming of my future glamorous adulthood! I told George that I used to go to that location when I was his age and order caramel macchiatos at the cafe and read magazines. He asked, “what is a caramel macchiato?” We arrived about a half hour early, which was lucky because by the time the event began it was standing room only. If you have every imagined what Stuart Gibbs is like IRL, he is about 150% more charismatic than you would expect. He talked about the new book, and then did a Q&A.

Bookish thing #2:

Over the past month I read these three books which all orbit the world of book publishing. I enjoyed all of them! The Neighbor Favor is a romance novel with strong You’ve Got Mail elements, Yellowface is more of a thriller or caper, and The Rachel Incident is an Irish bildungsroman. They are all great fall books—there is some combination of cold weather, rain, correspondence, betrayal, fairy lights, and imposing architecture in each. Here’s a line from The Rachel Incident (the book mostly takes place in Cork, but this is once the protagonist has moved to London):

“I passed a lot of landmarks on my way to work. I went over Tower Bridge on the bus, like a child in a cartoon about London, and saw the Tower of London and St. Paul's Cathedral. It helped. A landscape costs nothing, so it always helps.”
- Caroline O’Donoghue

Bookish thing #3:

An oldie but a goodie💙