Leaves are changing colors, there's a crispness in the air, pumpkin spice is in everything. Oh, and there are a million boxes in our receiving bay. That's how booksellers can tell it's fall. Autumn is all about new releases, and all about the heavy hitters. It's like the book version of Oscar season. Here are a few books that we are excited to see this week:

SO, this might be a hard sell here in tech-centric Seattle, but why don't you put down your phone. Studies show that putting down your phone, and letting yourself be bored activates parts of your brain that have gone dormant from constant stimulation. Putting down your phone and getting bored helps you access that sad, almost dead part of your brain and boosts your creativity and problem solving skills.

In 2012 the New York Times Sunday Book Review published a very negative (and very hilarious) front-page evisceration of two works by a young, largely unknown fiction writer. The review sparked much debate and launched a thousand tweets about what a book review can or should do. Condemned for being "mean", a descriptor that I personally feel criticism should never pay heed nor extend an ounce of patience, William Giraldi's scathing summation of a novel and collection of stories by Alix Ohlin ruffled many feathers, albeit almost entirely of the twee, "lives in Brooklyn" variety.