Amazon’s Fall Prime Days are October 7 – 8 , and we already have some sense of what they and their competitors are cooking up. Here is a book-reader focused rundown of some of the more interesting deals across retailers.

Amazon
The biggest savings are on Kindle bundles, with savings up to 32% off regular prices. If you are looking for an iPad mini , which might just be the best all-around reading device, you can pick one up for $399 ($100 off the regular price).

There are plenty of deals on both print and ebooks as well. Looking over the print offerings, The Dream Hotel in hardback and Isola each for less than $14 each are pretty enticing. On the ebook side, The Gene and Between Two Kingdoms for $1.99 each are screaming bargains.

Bookshop.org
Bookshop.org has offered some compelling deals as an alternative to Prime Day of late. This time, there are two main offers: free shipping across the site and 20% off a selection of titles that are frequently banned, curated with We Need Diverse Books. Bangers throughout, ranging from Stephen King to Sally Rooney to Toni Morrison, with YA titles being especially (unfortunately) well-represented. Use code BBW25 at checkout to get the discount.

Thriftbooks
Simple and straightforward offering here: double ReadingRewards points (Thriftbooks’ loyalty program). Also of note: Thrifbooks gives free shipping on orders over $15 in the U.S.

Kobo
Get 10% off Kobo devices and accessories throughout the month of October.

Walmart
Their week-long event kicks off tomorrow morning, and early indications are that tech and household deals are the best bets. Walmart also sells a ton of books, so you might want to check out that section when the full line-up goes live.

A new book from Thomas Pynchon, whose last novel came out 12 years ago, is always a big deal. A new book from Thomas Pynchon at the same time that a blockbuster film from one of the most acclaimed directors, starring one of the biggest actors, based on one of Pynchon’s previous novels, is in theaters? Huge.

It almost doesn’t matter what Shadow Ticket is about. Pynchon is a vibe. Chaotic, absurd, political, zany, impossible to pin down. I just read Pynchon for the first time—better late than never—and can’t wait to pick this one up.

Also hitting shelves this week:

• The internet sucks now. Sci-fi author and tech journalist Cory Doctorow explains why and what we can do to fix it in Enshittification.
• US Poet Laureate Joy Harjo’s memoir Girl Warrior recounts her artistic evolution as a Native American woman.
• Booker Prize-nominated author Brandon Taylor returns with Minor Black Figures, a novel about a Black painter at a critical crossroads in his creative life.

Browse more new releases in every genre.

p.s. Wanna know about the book before you see the film? Listen to our discussion of Vineland, the Pynchon novel One Battle After Another is based on.

Your phone is essential, so treat it that way. An OtterBox case offers proven protection against everything from minor fumbles to serious falls. Protect your device with a case you can trust. Take 30% off Apple and Samsung cases through October 12th. Also available from Amazon.

Two things can be true.Twilight by Stephenie Meyer isn’t above critique—it glorifies purity culture and appropriates Native American mythology, just to get started—and it is essential for understanding the current landscape of YA fiction and romantasy.

Many of today’s bestsellers and BookTok phenomena wouldn’t exist if an angsty teen girl hadn’t yearned for a sparkly vampire first.

Listen to our conversation about Twilight‘s enduring impact on reading culture on Zero to Well-Read.

In 1925, Simon and Olga Guggenheim endowed The Guggenheim Foundation with a mission that feels more remarkable today than it did even then: to support "exceptional individuals in pursuit of scholarship in any field of knowledge and creation in any art form, under the freest possible conditions."

One hundred years on, Guggenheim fellowship awardees read like a who’s-who of American cultural and intellectual life: Rachel Carson, Zora Neale Hurston, Linus Pauling, and on and on. Edward Hirsch, President of the Guggenheim Foundation, says this is the ultimate goal of the awards: "Our idea is that by supporting the most talented individuals, we participate in American culture and contribute to the whole, to the common good."

In honor of the program’s centennial, The Guggenheim Foundation has collaborated with The New York Historical Society on an exhibition highlighting the work of Guggenheim fellows. Hannah Pennington, Archivist and Associate Director of the Guggenheim Foundation, says that the material comes from applications from previous fellows and subsequent correspondence. "I think this exhibit is an exciting opportunity to share archival materials that have rarely been seen before or have not been exhibited to the public in this way before," Pennington says.

To take just one example, Pennington says that Hurston’s materials at the Guggenheim show just how crucial a fellowship can be: "In 1936, she applied for a fellowship on her application form. She described her field as literary science." She used the fellowship money to travel to Haiti to write. The book she produced? Their Eyes Were Watching God, which Hurston dedicated to Henry Allan Moe, then Secretary General of the Guggenheim Foundation.

You can see other material from the Guggenheim archives on display in The Guggenheim at 100, on view at The New York Historical Society through November 30th.

For a limited time, earn 10% Cash Back on Kobo eReader and accessory purchases. Plus, new Rakuten members earn a $20 Welcome Bonus. Offer ends October 31st. Terms and conditions apply.

Every month, Rebecca Schinsky and I try to guess what the "It" book of the month will be , what book will get that combination of sales, acclaim, and special something that makes a book stand out from the crowd. It is more art than science (and not much art to be truthful), but it’s a fun way to keep track of what books are capturing readers’ attention. Here were the books we considered last month:

We Love You, Bunny by Mona Awad
Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy
The Midnight Timetable by Bora Chung
The Academy by Elin Hilderbrand and Shelby Cunningham
The Impossible Fortune by Richard Osman
Amity by Nathan Harris
The Wilderness by Angela Flournoy
Will There Ever Be Another You? by Patricia Lockwood
All the Way to the River by Elizabeth Gilbert
The Secret of Secrets by Dan Brown

We went with Will There Ever Be Another You? by Patricia Lockwood, whose previous novel No One is Talking About This was a breakout book in 2021.

Did we get it right? Sadly (and happily because I really like this book), I think we should have picked The Wilderness by Angela Flournoy, which has more consistently positive reviews and made the longlist for The National Book Award. You can track if we do any better this month by listening to our It Books of October episode.

🍁 Complete a line or try to black-out the whole board. Tag @bookriot on the socials as you track your progress.

For four days only, every dollar you spend earns double rewards points! Whether you’re shopping our best prices, exploring already discounted ThriftBooks Deals , hunting for rare collectibles, or pre-ordering those must-have sprayed edges, now is the perfect time to treat yourself and get FREE US Shipping on orders over $15.

And if you don’t know the mystery surrounding his death, it’s worth reading about.

☕️ Beverage goblins, rejoice! Keep your drinks as hot or as cold as you want them with BOGO insulated drinkware.**

🏳️‍🌈 The winners of this year’s Lambda Literary Awards were announced last week.

🔤 Bloomsbury UK to launch "industry-first" collection of dyslexia-friendly editions of some of their best-sellers.

✍️ Ever wondered what it would be like to be obsessed with handwriting? Me neither, but this is really interesting.

👓 Speaking of accessibility, Amazon is bringing new reading options to Kindles, including in-device text-to-speech capabilities.

🔎 I just learned that we are getting a new book from Patrick Radden Keefe, which is a cause for being really excited about what will surely be a compellingly grim look at some horror I didn’t even know existed.

_{**This is a product recommendation from the Book Riot team. When you buy through these links, we may earn a commission.}

Written by Jeff O’Neal and Rebecca Schinsky. Thanks to Vanessa Diaz for copy editing.

Did someone forward you this email? Sign up here.

If you’ve made it all the way to the end, you get to read the first lines of Edgar Allan Poe’s hauntingly relatable poem, "Alone":

From childhood’s hour I have not been
As others were—I have not seen
As others saw—I could not bring
My passions from a common spring—
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow—I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone—
And all I lov’d—I lov’d alone—

_{Got a tip, question, comment, or story idea? Drop us a line: [email protected].}