Still from It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown
Dear Friends & Readers,
It’s that time of year where we wait again for the Great Pumpkin. A time of leaves changing colors, sugar overdoses, Halloween parties, and watching It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. Seeing this 1966 cartoon classic is always a favorite ritual as each joyfull moment in the lives of the Peanuts gang turns into an existential bummer. . .just like it happens in real life.
This month our reading groups venture into the shadowlands- our selections include: William Hope Hodgson’s 1908 supernatural classic The House on the Borderland, where time and space unravel into cosmic terror, and Olga Ravn’s The Wax Child, a contemporary fable of bodies, memory, and mystery. These strange companions seem tailor-made for the season—stories between the living and the spectral.
Resident bibliphile Tom Bowden has created a special Halloween edition of small press book reviews for the season in his column “i arrogantly recommend. . .”
Colleen from Book Beat will be giving a children’s picture book presentation highlighting the best new titles from 2025. The event is free to the public hosted by the Storytime Guild and will take place Thursday, October 16th at Troy First Methodist Church, 6363 Livernois Rd, Troy Mi 48098. The talk will begin at 10 a.m.. Books will be for sale at the presentation.
And while Linus may still be hopefully waiting for the Great Pumpkin to rise from the patch, we know what truly appears each October: readers gathering together, ready to believe in the magic of books.
Below are more literary and art related goodies we have planned that may spark your interest and love of reading. As always we thank you for your continued support during these stressful times.
Stay healthy, keep reading, share books with others… and Happy Hauntings!
~Cary, Colleen, and the Book Beat staff
Book Beat Events for October
Oct. 31: Noise, Vision & Ruins at the Detroit Public Library