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By the time autumn comes around with crisp chilly air and falling leaves, the hushed whispers of Christmas begin to emerge. While this is certainly a year different from any other in living memory, the retail industry is now rather inconspicuously promoting the latest Christmas deals. The publishing industry does not escape this, and thus behold Super Thursday…
Super Thursday typically occurs on the first Thursday of October, i.e., in this case, it would have been 1st October 2020. However, due to the elephant in the room that is the Coronavirus Pandemic, this was pushed forward by a month to September. With the world basically being on fire and whatnot, a huge number of books had their publication dates postponed until further notice during lockdown, and therefore, come September we were in for a treat when 600 books were released in a single day.
We can’t deny it: this year has been cruel and foul. Frankly we have learnt at a fast pace to appreciate things we once dismissed, and as book lovers often we don’t realise the significance and importance of Super Thursday, not just for sales and the fruitfulness of the publishing industry but also for the livelihoods of each author. This year, amidst the chaos of the world, we are in luck, as another Super Thursday (where one would normally take place) has been squeezed into the calendar. From fiction to memoir, nature diaries and poetry, where September brought all the books we’d missed throughout lockdown, October enters with armfulls of books for us to tuck into as the days and nights draw in! If you’re interested in buying books and getting ahead before Christmas, this is one of the occasions where it really matters!
Here are just some of the releases arriving in book shops this October:
A Life on Our Planet by David Attenborough
As we use more plastic with bottles of hand sanitizer and disposable masks, we continue to put pressure on our already fragile Earth, so who better to rightfully put us in our place than our favourite 94-year-old? No, not the Queen, Sir David Attenborough! As Attenborough movingly writes, “This is my witness statement” coming directly from the mind of a man who has spent his life attempting to preserve the environment and protecting the wildlife we take for granted. Our planet continues to fall into what Penguin Books call a “man made decline”, and now more than ever we need to educate ourselves on how to save the Earth before it is too late. This is not just an investment in your bookshelves, but in the future of humanity.
Hansel and Greta by Jeanette Winterson
Described by Penguin Books as having a “seemingly limitless imagination”, the author of the groundbreaking Oranges are not the Only Fruit weaves her web of ink and paper into a fairy tale for the modern age, in which Hansel and Gretal – now Greta – live in a forest on the edge of destruction at the hands of climate-change deniers.
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab
Although this does not come out on Super Thursday, an early October release such as one by V.E. Schwab is certainly not to be missed. Schwab has spent years talking about this book, inspired by the idea that one can live a life in which nobody remembers you and yet always remain an extraordinary figure, and now that very book is finally here. If you’ve liked the film Adeline or Taylor Jenkins Reid’s breathtaking novel The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, this has the potential to be one of the best books of 2020.
