Books publishing in and around November, 2026.
Depending on where you sit, the world is either grower more cold or more warm. Where I sit, the world is warming. The sock drawer is opened less, in exchange for slippery leather sandals and slip on scuffs. Layers of light fold through the window, earlier and earlier each morning. My effciency wanes, my drive softens and I feel the ‘summer uselessness’ drawing closer. Rest. All this to say as the world moves through it’s changes, the books continue t publish. Below is a list of notable releases to be read this November.
To share your literary or cultural opinions, email hello@pagesstudio.net
It's been a while since Tara Selter was all alone in her repeating November day. It's been even longer since she was one half of a unit called T&T Selter, an antiquarian book dealership she ran with her beloved husband Thomas. Her hazy days of confusion are behind her, and so are her desperate and doomed attempts to reattach herself to linear time. Tara has begun to settle into a new life, with new habits, and new people, and so have the many other time-trapped individuals who have joined her along the way. And yet we can't help but wonder whether she and her fellow travellers will ever find their way out of a trap so inexplicable and profound--and will they even still want to?
A husband announces he is leaving, that he was never happy. A woman is left behind with their two children in the house they built together, reeling at this forced recasting of the story of their marriage. Everything becomes strange: an encounter at the grocery store, a looming cicada horde, a statue of Diana that suddenly appears in her neighbor’s yard. Or was it always there?
As she wades through the aftermath of her marriage, her complicated family resurfaces. Although close to her parents, her relationship with them is strained, and she is fully estranged from her older sister—the perfect daughter—who still lives at home and always disapproved of her husband. So when did the trouble begin? And where will she go from here?
A young French photographer travels to Palestine to report on the bombings in the Gaza Strip. One morning, during a ceasefire, he wanders far from his hotel into the narrow alleys of the city. Roaming aimlessly, he stumbles across a bookseller sitting on the doorstop of his shop--an old man, surrounded by stacks of books. As the photographer raises his camera, the bookseller calls out to him and asks him to listen to his story, not simply take his picture.
The story that unfolds is one that encompasses exile and imprisonment, activism and political disillusionment, the joys of love and art and watching your children grow up and thrive, and the tragedies that tear your loved ones from you. Each event is tied to the book that helped him understand and, in some cases, survive it, from Milan Kundera to Frantz Fanon to Umberto Eco to Ernest Hemingway, among many others.
There's a saying that when an old man dies a library burns, and it's this very library that the bookseller opens and describes. Rachid Benzine gives us a magnificent modern tale that explores the power of words against barbarism, of books as the last bastions of resistance against the loss of empathy, of literature as a means of sustenance during our darkest hours.
How to be Less Useful: The Joy of Inefficiency
Think about what we choose to cut out or overlook as we approach the deep end of adulthood: Dessert. Naps. Pretty underwear. Sweaty dancing. “Pointless” hangs with the people we love most. And then, activities that used to be fun somehow lose their luster, usually in the decade between thirty and forty: summer vacation (exhaustion), stay-in-touch texting (bandwidth), finding the perfect restaurant (the algorithm).
When did our lives become entirely about efficiency and optimization?
Priyanka Mattoo shares her journey toward being less useful, delivering life lessons without an ounce of preachiness or pressure. She looks at where pleasure begins and what it serves. Did you know karaoke can cure a stomachache? Or that Paddington Bear is a stealth lifestyle guru? Or that nobody actually asked you to do that labor-intensive thing you begrudgingly did? With self-deprecating humor, devastating insight, and bracing honesty, Priyanka shows us how to step out of the grind as a friend, as a partner, even as a parent, and welcome joy back into our lives without burning it all down.
What if, instead of being useful, we could all learn how to be happier, lighter, more present, more engaged?
Morris Harkin brings his new girlfriend Tammy to meet his family. She is not at all who they expected. But who, really, is Tammy? Across seven vignettes, in Elizabeth McCracken's witty and tender fashion, we see Tammy through the eyes of the Harkin family throughout the years, and a picture of an insecure and unhappy family emerges.
CONTRIBUTE
hello@pagesstudio.net
All over the show.
Stay Away from Nothing
THE CORRESPONDENCE OF PAUL THEK AND PETER HUJAR, WRITTEN BY JOANNA LUCACIU