Fall is the season when we all begin to move indoors and even pastimes get a little more ambitious – things like binge watching Game of Thrones, knitting Christmas stockings for the dog and tackling fat serious novels by Authors You Should Read come to mind. 

This fall is loaded with releases of buzzy books from authors Salman Rushdie, Elena Ferrante, John Irving and a host of celebrity authors. Fall break just may afford you time to get through one, or at least at procure it for your night table to enjoy over semester break. Some library staff have perused the fall lists and have picked their favorites. For a Booktober special, we’ll bring you their thoughts each day this week.

This isn’t the first time Patti Smith has published a book. She wrote the award-winning memoir Just Kids in 2010. Just Kids was a book about her childhood, about remembering, whereas her new book, M Train, portrays her solitary thoughts about the present-day as stations, as if they were visual tableaus of her life. The “train” stations seem to be places of meditation as well as places where Smith stopped while traveling through life.

M Train was published last week and precedes the HarperCollins 40th anniversary publication of Patti Smith Collected Lyrics, a 320-page book filled with new songs, new artwork and an updated introduction that comes out October 27.

Her book tour started on October 6 in New York City and will be coming through Philadelphia on November 6.

Will you be waiting for the M Train?

Additional reading:

Patti Smith Reveals Her Solitary Soul in the M Train, NPR, October 7, text & audio

Patti Smith’s ‘M Train’ is a Literary Ride Through Stations of Mourning, Observer, October 9

By Luisa Cywinski, editorial coordinator on the Communication & Service Promotion team and team leader, Access Services.