What are you reading?

Friday comment thread, and I know you'll have an answer. Also, 7 other things worth knowing today.

Just over 90 years ago, on October 12, 1931, the New York Times ran its first bestseller list. Top of the charts that day in fiction:

• The Ten Commandments, by Warwick Deeping

• Finch’s Fortune, by Mazo de la Roche

• The Good Earth, by Pearl S. Buck

• Shadows on the Rock, by Willa Cather

• Scaramouche the King Maker, by Rafael Sabatini

As for nonfiction:

• Ellen Terry and Bernard Shaw, a correspondence

• The Epic of America, by John T. Adams

• Man’s Own Show: Civilization, by George Dorsey

• Washington Merry-Go-Round, by Anonymous.

The list was given no prominence at all; it was really just an aside within a column headlined “Book Notes,” which was sandwiched between “Visit to Cannibals Told by Explorer,” and “Topics of Sermons Preached Yesterday in Churches of the City.”

The link is here, but it’s behind a paywall as you might imagine. To be honest, I went down a heck of a rabbit hole while researching this, which had to do with skimming the main book that was reviewed in that column, entitled Wings for Men, by…