We're celebrating Reading this October in honor of Book Month, One Dog-Eared Page at a Time (no wait –we have bookmarks!)
At Allport Editions, we’re big believers in the power of the written word, whether it’s stamped on a greeting card, scribbled in a notebook, or pressed between the pages of a well-loved book. To celebrate National Reading Month, we asked the readers on our team to share their favorite books (they were all sad to find out they could only pick 3).
Based on their bookshelves, here’s a lovingly unscientific analysis of some of my brilliant co-workers. Naturally, I had to objectively do myself.
I'm Sam! At Allport, I work in digital marketing and social media. I write for the blog, handle retail e-blasts, and am the one who hunts down your runaway puzzle pieces to send them back home to you.
My Bookshelf Probably Reads Like: Someone obsessed with dark academia, fantasy epics, and any story where someone finds a mysterious book and immediately ruins their life over it. Likely a haunted scholar with raccoon eyes and a pen full of marginalia that would follow a scribbled annotation down a dark alleyway.
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova – An academic mystery that starts with a strange old book and a letter addressed “To My Dear and Unfortunate Successor.” It begins a hunt that unfolds in candlelit libraries, dusty cathedrals, and train compartments across Europe to Instanbul, chasing the dark possibility that Vlad the Impaler might still be pulling strings in the margins of history. The writing is slow, elegant, and full of dread in the best way. If you’ve ever wanted to read about Dracula through the lens of archival research, inter-generational trauma, and the quiet horror of libraries at night, welcome. This is your section.
House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski – A disorienting, genre-breaking novel where the real horror isn’t just the impossible hallway growing inside a family’s home, but the act of trying to understand it. The book is a puzzle box: a fictional academic analysis of a fictional documentary that may or may not exist, annotated by a man who is unraveling as he reads it. There are footnotes inside footnotes, pages that have to be turned sideways or read backward, and text that disappears into the page like it’s being swallowed by the void. It’s about fear, obsession, and the idea that the more you look at something, especially something that frightens you…the deeper it pulls you in.
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke – A gorgeously slow and intricate re imagining of a magical 19th century England, where books are as dangerous as spells and the Fae are not your friends. The story centers on two magicians: Mr. Norrell, a reclusive scholar desperate to hoard magic, and Jonathan Strange, a charismatic wildcard who wants to blow it all open. There are enchanted mirrors, forgotten roads, spectral armies, and a Raven King who may or may not be watching from the margins. It’s funny, terrifying, and heartbreakingly beautiful, with prose that reads like Austen but laced with something older, stranger, and wild at the edges. Also: the footnotes might be alive.
What I’ve realized while putting this together is that our reading lives are just as different and beautiful as the cards we sell. We love books that ask hard questions, make us laugh unexpectedly, or just remind us that connection is what we’re all here for, whether through words, worlds, or wildly specific lore.
This month, grab something from your shelf… or better yet, someone else’s (support your local library & independent bookstores), and sink into a story. Revisit a favorite, get haunted by footnotes, cry about marshes, spiral over moral philosophy, or finally figure out what’s actually happening in Flatland (if you do, please report back).
So, Happy Book Month from some of the bookish weirdos at Allport Editions, including myself, who is currently finishing The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins and using this post as an excuse to sneak in one last book recommendation. You’re welcome.
Check out the other shelves of our fabulous Team that makes up Allport Editions! I might be biased, but I think they’re pretty awesome
Until next time,
Sam