What to Read in November (2024)

As far as Thanksgiving reading recommendations go, I have nothing different to recommend from last year. My favorite Thanksgiving-esque book is Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen, by Laurie Colwin. It doubles as a cookbook, at least a little. And many of the recipes are perfect for this time of year. Beyond that, I can recommend “Turkey Remains and How to Inter Them with Numerous Scarce Recipes” by F. Scott Fitzgerald (in The Crack-Up (used)). “Thanksgiving in the Anthropocene, 2015” (a poem) by Craig Santos Perez. Also, the first chapter from Tommy Orange’s There There.

I began reading Book of Delights by Ross Gay last Thanksgiving but still haven’t finished it. And although I can appreciate it on some level, I have found it to be about almost anything except delights. I don’t know if I have time to add another Thanksgiving-themed book to the TBR this year.

Here are a few, random other Thanksgiving-related reads that I have not read but maybe you could try out:

The Ice Storm, Rick Moody
Thanksgiving Night, Richard Bausch
Oldtown Folks, Harriet Beecher Stowe
The Thanksgiving Visitor, Truman Capote
Strangers at the Feast, Jennifer Vanderbes
Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, Ben Fountain
American Pastoral, Philip Roth
The Holiday Season, Michael Night

And here are some shiny new published books happening in November:

The City and Its Uncertain Wall, Haruki Murakami
The Half King, Melissa Landers
Somewhere Beyond the Sea, T. J. Klune (Cerulean Sea #2)
The Magnificent Ruins, Nayantara Roy
Believe, Jeremy Egner (the story behind the making of Ted Lasso)
The Authors’ Guide to Murder, Beatriz Williams
Murder Town, Shelley Burr
We Shall Be Monsters, Alyssa Wee

And just because I want to mention it:

The Mythmakers, John Hendrix

I will be reading book club books this month, but I also am reading books like the one I am revising and trying to find an agent for. I added many, many titles to my check-it-out list last week while I had a crisis of comps. Comps in the publishing world (and probably other worlds) is short for “comparables,” and it means a brief list of recent, relevant books that are like the one you are trying to sell. They help a possible agent (or editor) understand where your book would fit in the current market. This is a different blog.

Here’s the book club reads:

Giovanni’s Room, James Baldwin
Trail of Lightning, Rebecca Roanhorse
The Book Club Hotel, Sarah Morgan
Same Bed, Different Dreams, Ed Park

Here is the list of books I am pulling from to firm up my comps and read in my genre. The list might not make any sense to you or seem cohesive, but there are elements in each book which may (or may not) work (for my purposes):

City of Ghosts (Cassidy Blake Trilogy #1), V. E./Victoria Schwab
Hold Me Closer, Necromancer, Lish McBride
Lost Man’s Lane, Scott Carson
We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Shirley Jackson
Ghost Roast, Shawnee and Shawnelle Gibbs
Nothing More to Tell, Karen M. McManus
Gideon the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir
Sabriel, Garth Nix
Belladonna, Adalyn Graces
A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians, H. G. Parry
Miles Morales Vol. 1: Straight Out of Brooklyn, Saladin Ahmed
The Screaming Staircase (Lockwood & Co. #1), Jonathan Stroud
Two Sides to Every Murder, Danielle Valentine
Stalking Jack the Ripper, Kerri Maniscalco
Vespertine, Margaret Rogerson
Moriarty, Anthony Horowitz
The Dysasters, P. C. Cast
Renegades, Marissa Meyer
I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, Michelle McNamara

PS. I skipped all of my book clubs in October. Every single one. I was swamped with work, getting ready for a conference I’ll tell you about shortly, and my books clubs (and book club reads) were one of the many sacrifices to be made. Still, I read things.