October 2026 Book Recaps.
October 2026 Book Recaps:
Edgar Allan Poe Stories:
Here are three of his obscure stories I read this year.
X-ing a Paragrab by Edgar Allan Poe is an amusing story about a battle of newspaper editors, which leads to the theft of the letter “o” used in printing, resulting in an X-traordinary and in-X-plicable editorial.
Mellonta Tauta is a satirical story set in the future year of 2848, where a woman is on a balloon pleasure excursion for at least another month and decides to write a letter to her friend in order to kill time. She spouts sophisticated riffs on various topics such as astronomy, religion (of fashion and wealth,) and philosophy, which was, at times, difficult for me to follow. Her observations on ‘ancient Americcan’ politics, however, produced an eerie chill as she explains that those ancient “Americcans” had the “queerest idea conceivable, viz; that all men were born equal and fair—this in the very teeth of the laws…” She marvels that every man could vote—“as they called it—that is to say meddle with public affairs…” She mentions the ruler being a despot—“insolent, rapacious, filthy, had the gall of a bullock with the heart of a hyena and the brains of a peacock.” Yikes! Is this prescience? Finally, she ends with history in an ancient newspaper article about a marble slab that was discovered commemorating a man called George Washington and a man named General Cornwallis, assumably a corn dealer, who undoubtedly surrendered to savage cannibals who intended to make sausage of him. Amusing and biting! (no pun intended)
The Duc De’Omelette is a satirical short story that was almost incomprehensible to me because it’s saturated in French. The Duc De L’Omelette dies after eating an ortolan (tiny bird) and goes to hell. He describes his surroundings in this hellish apartment with no ceiling and fiery clouds looming above, a chain coming down from Boston, statues all around, flames seen through the windows, and howling of the hopeless and damned are heard. SPOILER ALERT: Duc, aka Grace aka Prince of Foie Gras, challenges Satan, aka Prince of the Fly aka Baal-Zebub, to a game of cards (because Satan doesn’t fence). Duc wins and walks away.
The humor of this story leans on knowing that the ortolan is an indulgent meal. I first learned about this French delicacy in The Paris Novel by Ruth Reichl. An ortolan is a cooked baby songbird eaten feet first, beak and all while wearing a napkin over your head—some say for shame to conceal your sin from God, others because the napkin traps the scents and makes it more flavorful.
A Village in the Third Reich: How Ordinary Lives Were Transformed by the Rise of Fascism by Julia Boyd
This was a fascinating look at how lives were either won over by Hitler or how others suffered through the dangerous changes forced upon the German people. The year 1933 was the definitive year that strongarmed the population into an entirely new existence with the barrage of events that eventually brought them to their knees. For some Hitler’s control and path out of the consequences of WWI were a godsend, for others they saw the restrictions against the Jews and also themselves as the evil it truly was.
So many things stood out in this book as Boyd and fellow author Angelika Patel laid bare personal stories of a small Bavarian village. The Equalization Act was eye-opening for me. This act, which I hadn’t heard of, was the way that Nazism was infiltrated into the very fabric of their lives. This act ordered all associations and societies to be dissolved and reconstructed in the Nazi image. This is one of the holds that turned it all upside down. Furthermore, the descriptions of the T4 euthanasia program, the jarring Treachery Act, and so much more ran chills up and down my spine!
Excellent insight into the Nazi regime.
Stitched by Eli McCann
October Classic Challenge:
Esther Greenwood is a 19 y/o student who, along with 11 other girls, won a summer internship at a fashion magazine in New York City in 1953. After her time in New York, she goes home and falls into a depression that leads to suicidal thoughts and attempts at ending her life.
I knew going into it, that the story would be dealing with depression and suicide, and I was mentally bracing myself for that. But I did not know that Sylvia Plath had such a wonderful writing style. It sparkled like a diamond, and maybe I should have expected that, because she was a poet first and foremost. The Bell Jar was her only novel. Her writing style kept me going through the dark subject matter.
The end of the book had my head spinning in thoughts of mental health, especially at that time when shock treatments and lobotomies were common practice. It made me think of My Lobotomy a non-fiction memoir by Howard Dully and Charles Fleming, that we read in our book club about a boy who had the procedure and wrote about it as an adult. 😯
And, of course, it led me to think of Sylvia Plath’s own suicide shortly after publication of the book. It made reading her novel more tragic, more poignant, more real.
All in all, I’m glad I read it. I now know what the title refers to. I may or may not watch the movie that supposedly wrapped up production last month (September 2026) with Billie Eilish starring as Esther and Carey Mulligan playing her mother.
Here’s a glimpse of Sylvia’s writing style:
“I felt like a racehorse in a world without racetracks or a champion college footballer suddenly confronted by Wall Street and a business suit, his days of glory shrunk to a little gold cup on his mantel with a date engraved on it like the date on a tombstone.”
💥💥💥The Bell Jar was my Classic Challenge pick for October, where I have been reading a book each month corresponding to a notable author’s date of birth. Sylvia Plath was born October 27, 1932.
Catch me again at the end of November!
Happy Reading,
Annette
Comments