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What is worth reading this month
Every month a new stack lands on our counter, and a few titles always pull ahead of the rest. Here is what has caught our attention this time around, across fiction, non fiction, design and photography.
Start with our October Picks, a short list we put together from what customers keep asking for and what we could not put down ourselves.
Fiction Picks
For fiction this month we are leaning toward quiet, character driven stories. The Beginners follows two strangers who keep running into each other at the wrong times, and it reads fast without feeling rushed. For something sharper, Bandwidth follows one family unravelling over a single long summer in Durban.
Nonfiction Picks
Non fiction readers have been coming back to travel writing and photo essays lately. Below Zero is a photo essay on polar light that works well as a slow read, a few pages at a time. For something more practical, A Year by Bicycle follows one rider's slow route up the coast, with enough detail to plan a trip of your own.
Shelf Favourites
On the design and photography shelf, two books stand out. Grandstand is this year's design annual, full of South African studio work worth flipping through slowly. Alongside it, Contemporary Portrait Photography is a solid pick if you want technique as much as inspiration, with enough plates to keep you busy over a weekend.
Cursus aliquam
Two more worth a look. Surf Odyssey follows photographers up and down the coast chasing light and swell, and it is one of those books people keep picking up off the shelf just to flip through. In The Dark is quieter, a study of photography shot almost entirely after sunset.
For readers who travel through books rather than planes, Wanderlust is a hiking photography collection that covers trails from the Cederberg to the Alps. Closer to home, Inside Utopia looks at interiors with a calm, uncluttered eye. Both are the kind of books you leave open on a table and keep coming back to.
