Book of the Day Roundup: October 13-17, 2025
The Wormhole Society
The Graphic Novel
Francis Levy
Joseph Silver, illustrator
Cogito Books
Hardcover $24.99 (299pp)
979-899236882-6
A man searches the multiverse for self-realization in the graphic novel The Wormhole Society.
Rusty is a sex-obsessed guy with erectile dysfunction and a history of demeaning women. He orders a call girl, Sonya, humiliates her, then kicks her out. Unhappy, he considers suicide but instead investigates an ad for ED treatment. The organization behind it, the Wormhole Society, offers portals to travel through the multiverse and find answers to his troubles.
Haunted by the memory of Sonya, Rusty travels through time and space to the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001; back 3.2 million years to form a romance with protohuman Lucy; and into the world of Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, where he has a fling with Guinevere. Rusty, realizing that he needs to change, begins to help people before seeking a final reconciliation with Sonya.
Rusty’s quest for deliverance is tense and compelling. The book strikes a delicate balance between dark introspection and humor. For example, Rusty attends a Wormhole Society meeting in a church with letters removed from its front signage, so it reads not “Church of Resurrection” but “Church of Erection” instead.
The art flows thanks to creative page layouts and interesting depictions of a variety of eras, settings, and characters. These include interactions between elementary particles at the Big Bang and scenes featuring the Marquis de Sade, Attila the Hun, and Nelson Rockefeller.
In the speculative graphic novel The Wormhole Society, a man has a fantastic romp across the multiverse, hoping to become a better person.
PETER DABBENE (August 25, 2025)
The Third Love
Hiromi Kawakami
Ted Goossen, translator
Soft Skull Press
Hardcover $27.00 (288pp)
978-1-59376-805-8
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop)
In Hiromi Kawakami’s transfixing novel The Third Love, a Tokyo woman evades unhappy realities through her complex, sensual dreams.
Even as a child, Riko was drawn to charming Naa-chan. While the “enfolding warmth” that she felt later led to marriage, Riko’s happiness was challenged by her husband’s unfaithful nature. Despondent, Riko confides in another childhood acquaintance, Mr. Takaoka, her former elementary school janitor who once trained to be a Buddhist monk.
Takaoka, who “longed to breathe the air of the profane world” beyond contemplative enclaves, consoles Riko, telling her that she can elude her present sadness through the “magic” of her dreams. She follows his advice, imagining life within two other significant historical settings: the “pleasure quarter” of the seventeenth-century Yoshiwara and Japan’s celebrated Heian period.
Thanks to the book’s splendid dreamworlds, it unfolds at the scale of a saga. In her dreams, Riko finds parallels to classic Japanese literature; she assumes detailed, alternate identities while maintaining an underlying consciousness of her modern self. As an oiran or courtesan, Riko experiences an erotic awakening through her sexual “patrons.” As the handmaiden to a Heian princess, she explores further romantic adventures and observes the intricacies of royal life. Each dream phase is heightened by the encompassing historical backdrops, from the economic enslavement of Yoshiwara women to the ordered yet communal structure of Heian court society.
Beyond her nightly visions, Riko gives birth to a son and remains in her imperfect yet compatible marriage. She also continues her matured friendship with Takaoka; in a moment of exquisite restraint, the two exchange a “loving kiss, soft and full of light,” but then separate with gentle detachment, like “a leaf parting from a branch.”
In the mystical, immersive novel The Third Love, heady dreams offer new insights into the waking world.
MEG NOLA (August 25, 2025)
Recipes from the American South
Michael W. Twitty
Phaidon Press
Hardcover $54.95 (432pp)
978-1-83729-087-1
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop)
Michael W. Twitty’s masterful cookbook Recipes from the American South includes thoughtful historical considerations on the “collision of cultures” that inform its recipes from a vibrant, distinctive culinary region.
Breads, breakfasts, and biscuits start the book’s myriad of clear, appealing recipes, introduced by tidbits of culinary and personal history. Twitty notes that Southern bakers are praised for their “light touch” and the softness of their baked goods, as with Sally Lunn bread and buttermilk biscuits; other recipes underscore Native American and African influences and use corn, sorghum, and sweet potatoes.
The Southern bounty of vegetables and rice further demonstrates how the foundational cultures of Indigenous people, West and Central Africans, and Europeans led to melded foodways and ingredients, as with beans and greens braised with smoked meats. The creative innovations of later Southern immigrants are seen in recipes for Chorizo Dirty Rice and for Mississippi Collard Greens bathed in oyster sauce, garlic, and ginger. While acknowledging racial prejudice, Native American removal, and rigid gender roles, the book also celebrates how Southern cuisine is a rich multicultural amalgam of “hospitality, resourcefulness … and survival.”
The origins of Limping Susan, Pine Bark Stew, and Chicken Bog are covered, and explanations are given for why certain recipes became staples for gatherings like sip-and-sees and political rallies. Regional variations in techniques and sauces for barbecue are described in mouth-watering detail too.
The Southern sweet tooth and hospitality culture is evident in the bounteous dessert and beverage sections, full of sweet iced drinks, fruit and custard pies, and cakes piled high with icing. Photographs, a helpful glossary, and an impressive bibliography round out this defining culinary history.
An instant classic Southern cookbook, Recipes from the American South explores the historical roots of one region’s culture and food.
RACHEL JAGARESKI (August 25, 2025)
Little Moments in a Big Universe
Todd Stewart
Owlkids
Hardcover $19.95 (48pp)
978-1-77147-590-7
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop)
An explorer and a robot crash in an ancient forest on an unexplored planet, but their heartwarming story is but one stitch in the great quilt of time and space that connects and envelops us all. The intricate illustrations nod to classic science fiction art while applying bold, modern color palettes and techniques; the mix results in otherworldly scenes that are strange but not scary, inviting despite being wholly unfamiliar. This unconventional picture book calls to the explorer in all of us.
DANIELLE BALLANTYNE (August 25, 2025)
In the Circle of Ancient Trees
Our Oldest Trees and the Stories They Tell
Valerie Trouet
Blaze Cyan, illustrator
Greystone Books
Hardcover $28.95 (224pp)
978-1-77840-268-5
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop)
The essays from leading tree scientists collected in In the Circle of Ancient Trees read like fervent love letters to ten of the most ancient and important tree species on the planet.
Dendrochronology, or the study of tree rings to help in determining the dates of past events, connects the ten explorations of tree species presented here. Because trees undergo regular and predictable cycles of growth in their cell walls, the book notes, their rings are an invaluable resource, speaking to the history of drought conditions, wildfires, cold spells, and other environmental influences across a given region. The essays describe the many ways in which these tree rings have helped clarify long-standing mysteries about the histories of cultures, environments, and climates of regions as diverse as California’s Pacific coast, northern New Zealand, rocky outcroppings in the Balkans, and the dense Amazon rain forest.
A tight but dense compendium, the book is scaffolded by accessible graphs and visual aids. The geographic sprawl of the species studied creates a pleasant and engaging “globe-trotting” effect, ensuring touchstones “close to home” as well as far-flung novelties. The narratives vary in tone and approach, with different authors foregrounding their personal experiences to different degrees. Field-based anecdotes create a somewhat uneven effect across the book, with many examples serving as filler between the more awe-inspiring, millennial-scale events that the chapters offer. Others dovetail with their respective subjects to create a congruent narrative pull, as in the case of one author’s moving parallel between her time researching kauri trees and her husband’s diagnosis of terminal cancer.
Mixing cultural, environmental, and scientific histories, In the Circle of Ancient Trees is a hardy introduction to the uses and methods of dendrochronology.
ISAAC RANDEL (August 25, 2025)
Kathy Young
