With the fall leaves almost gone and daylight saving time behind us in the US, I thought it’d be a good time to look at some of my favorite fall reads. The nights are getting longer and the weather cooler, so what better thing is there to do than to curl up with a good book and read for those few extra hours of darkness? I missed the boat on Halloween reads, but I’ve included a bonus list at the end of some great Halloween reads!
Fall, to me, is the end of the year. For some reason I don’t really count winter as part of the year—it’s just this weird cold void that is neither here nor there and therefore isn’t part of the year. With this in mind, I see fall as a time to read books about endings or incredibly sad subjects. Maybe it’s all the dead leaves or the rich dark colors, but that’s the framework for this list.
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
This one is definitely cheating because I can read Emily Brontë’s masterpiece any time of the year, but there’s something about the cold and windy moors of Yorkshire that just screams fall to me, which is weird because the book clearly starts in winter. Add in the hauntingly beautiful love story of Catherine and Heathcliff and I’m sold on this being one of the best fall reads of all time. It’s depressing and oppressive (hello onset of winter and all the dead leaves), and yet simultaneously exquisite in the beauty of the fiery passion of Catherine and Heathcliff (oh hey blindingly brief leaf peeping season).
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Talk about a punch to the gut. I read this book seven years ago and it haunts me to this day. Ishiguro’s ability to tie the heights of human innovation and advancement to the depths of human barbarity is incredibly eerie. The story of Kathy, Tommy, and Ruth is all about the power of emotion (I won’t call it love because there are so many mixed emotions in the novel) and morality in a science/speculative fiction world. The fall portion, for me at least, is the shortened lifetime of the main characters due to a major spoiler. Suffice to say, there is a reason this book appears on the best novel lists regularly and that it stays with you. Ishiguro’s writing is incredibly moving and lingers.
Friday Night Lights by H. G. Bissinger
The one nonfiction book and the one “true” fall novel on this list. This books inclusion on the list is solely a not do Americana and football. Growing up in the south, fall didn’t really start until football started. It wasn’t anything like the intensity that Bissinger profiles in this book, but you can bet every Friday night in the fall we were at high school football games. We didn’t even go to watch the games (our team was pathetic), but it was such a cultural phenomenon and basically required, even if you were a nobody in the pecking order of high school.
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
We’re back to a feeling on this one, the feeling of hopelessness and despair as the green trees lose their leaves, the temperatures begin to drop, the nights get longer and the starkness of winter starts to really set in. From the draconian laws of Gilead to the harrowing flashbacks of Offred’s final pre-Gilead days this book really does reiterate that the carefree days of summer are over and the long bleak darkness of winter is just around the corner. It doesn’t hurt, Atwood just released The Testaments, the long awaited sequel at the start of fall 2019! And let’s face it Atwood is the reigning monarch of speculative feeling and if she has a season it is fall.
All Souls Trilogy by Deborah Harkness
Now if I cheated with Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, I’m flaunting the rules with this final choice. Comprised of A Discovery of Witches, Shadow of Night, and The Book of Life, this series is probably the closest to a Halloween recommendation on this list. It has witches, vampires, and magic and is set in places you really only thing of in the fall like Yale and Oxford. Maybe it’s a me thing, but quintessential New England Colleges are those with quads and you really only envision them in the fall.
I was going to include a couple of alternates, but considering I cheated twice (once egregiously) in my imaginary rules, I’ll skip right to the bonus Halloween Reads! From classics to straight up horror stories, here are ten reads you can’t go wrong with at or around Halloween.
Bonus 10 Halloween Reads
- Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn – Is it abuse or is it love?
- Misery by Stephen King – If Annie Wilkes doesn’t terrify you are you even human?
- The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe – An OG Gothic novel that inspired a genre (and Jane Austen’s satirical take on them, Northanger Abbey)
- Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling – Witches and wizard and ghosts, oh my! This is included for the epic banquet we barely get to see.
- Final Girls by Riley Sager – Another suspenseful modern story about surviving a mass murder only to be targeted again.
- Frankenstein by Mary Shelley – Probably not as scary as when it was first published, but a big middle finger from 18-year-old Shelley to Percy B and Lord Byron.
- The Madman’s Daughter by Megan Shepherd – An story inspired by H. G. Wells classic The Island of Dr. Moreau.
- The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson – Another classic about what’s hidden deep inside each of us.
- Dracula by Brom Stoker – It might’ve started off as travel writing, but those mountains are creepy AF.
- The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde – Who doesn’t want their sins hidden from the world, but what cost would you pay?
What are your favorite fall reads? Is it about setting or feeling for you?