Here’s what’s making us happy this week.

Get in, Lit Hubbers. We’re going…everywhere. The whole staff is skipping into fall with an eye to adventure. We’re picking apples and pumpkins. We’re bringing abroad stateside, and the Deep Sea to the surface.

I, Brittany Allen, have been really enjoying city life lately. Between Monday’s midnight Pynchon release party at Greenlight Books and a few lucky stand-by adventures at the NYFF—shout-out to Jafar Panahi’s excellent ode to dread, It Was Just an Accident—staycations have been filling my well. But another lovely thing this week has been the life of the mind.

I’ve been digging the excellent Hammer & Hope, a magazine dedicated to Black politics and culture. There’s a buoying optimism in their organizing principles, and pieces like this one about the pioneer hip-hop journalist behind NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts are rigorous, fun scoops. The pub has also just announced a brand new culture editor, Lovia Gyarke. Very excited to see where she takes the arts section next.

Molly Odintz went to Fredericksburg to celebrate Octoberfest with the good Germans—i.e.,  “the ones that left in 1848 and were staunch abolitionists and atheists.” Between the polka and the plant-based bratwurst, an erstaunlich time was had by all.

Drew Broussard is keeping the Hudson Valley classy with the queen’s own grocer. His sister was recently in London for work and returned with a trove of “high-grade tea” from his “favorite supplier in the whole wide world, Fortnum & Mason.”

Says Drew of this most civilized stock: “I am at this very moment sipping a cup of their single-estate FTGFOP Assam while reading Alan Garner and all, in such moments, is right with at least my world.”

For Jonny Diamond, cool nights in the Catskills bring idyllic autumn vibes. Picture “sitting around the backyard fire pit as the Canada geese make their way down over the mountains in search of the Hudson River—while the grown-ups drink scotch and wear sweaters.” Ahh, perfection.

In other tranquil news, Jessie Gaynor went to Baltimore for a wedding last weekend—”a decidedly Nice Thing, complete with an after-hours mechanical bull.” There she got to spend some time at the spectacular National Aquarium, socializing with the sting rays. “It was so cool that my kids didn’t even notice the gift shop.”

Also closest to home, James Folta saw One Battle After Another and believes it does live up to the hype: “Good filmmaking, good performances, and good translation of Pynchon’s loopy paranoia on screen.” Your resident literary chef also continues to tend the hearth. A special extra shout out this week goes to Penzey’s Air-Dried Shallots. (“These things can do it all!”)

Wishing you a weekend of travel, in and out of your own imagination. May the week ahead be cozy, and adventure-packed. Here’s hoping it all lives up to the hype.