Books are Dreamy
Fall for me has always been about starting to layer my clothes, walking everywhere I go just because I love the feel of the air, shopping for winter, and the onset of winter, my favorite season. When I think about the fall and winter months, I feel myself in place in the world more than any other time of year - there are few times I feel more satisfied than walking down the city streets, wrapped in my heavy peacoat with my scarf and hat and gloves swooning with the romance only your favorite season can bring, and the total contentment of knowing you're right exactly where you want to be.
Fall is also about books for me. I suppose in retrospect I never got over that back to school book rush from my college days. While my summer reading is filled with fluff, light beach reads and back issues of magazines left piling in the year's crunch, the schoolyear is the meat of my reading life.
I love wandering bookstore stacks, browsing for new great reads, but too I love revisiting my old favorites, that short list of literary greatest hits that have become the canon of my life. We all have them; watershed books that shape the people we've become; remind us what kind of person we want to be, and how to love ourselves and the handful of people who are really important to us.
I'd like to take a few moments now to pay homage to those books... to share my list, in hopes that you will do the same. I'd love to hear what makes up other people's lists... After all, I'm always on the lookout for that next really great read. Throughout the year I'll be posting more fully fleshed out entries devoted to one book at a time.
For now, just the list.
Dream of a Common Language by Adrienne Rich
The Work of a Common Woman by Judy Grahn
The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver
For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf by Ntozake Shange
The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy
The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler (Villard Press Edition)
Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison
A Little Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupery
In Search of Our Mother's Gardens by Alice Walker
A Separate Peace by John Knowles
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
¶ 8:55 PM
Wednesday, September 07, 2005
Fall is in the air. I spent my afternoon today at work compiling back-to-school care packages for the youth in my afterschool group counseling program. Fresh penciles, packets of loose leaf, brand new spiral notebooks, pens, crayons, rulers. The air in the city, while still warm, has that scent... that turning leaf, earthy organic smell with a hint of crispness like an old friend you know is dropping by later in the week.Fall for me has always been about starting to layer my clothes, walking everywhere I go just because I love the feel of the air, shopping for winter, and the onset of winter, my favorite season. When I think about the fall and winter months, I feel myself in place in the world more than any other time of year - there are few times I feel more satisfied than walking down the city streets, wrapped in my heavy peacoat with my scarf and hat and gloves swooning with the romance only your favorite season can bring, and the total contentment of knowing you're right exactly where you want to be.
Fall is also about books for me. I suppose in retrospect I never got over that back to school book rush from my college days. While my summer reading is filled with fluff, light beach reads and back issues of magazines left piling in the year's crunch, the schoolyear is the meat of my reading life.
I love wandering bookstore stacks, browsing for new great reads, but too I love revisiting my old favorites, that short list of literary greatest hits that have become the canon of my life. We all have them; watershed books that shape the people we've become; remind us what kind of person we want to be, and how to love ourselves and the handful of people who are really important to us.
I'd like to take a few moments now to pay homage to those books... to share my list, in hopes that you will do the same. I'd love to hear what makes up other people's lists... After all, I'm always on the lookout for that next really great read. Throughout the year I'll be posting more fully fleshed out entries devoted to one book at a time.
For now, just the list.
Dream of a Common Language by Adrienne Rich
The Work of a Common Woman by Judy Grahn
The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver
For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf by Ntozake Shange
The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy
The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler (Villard Press Edition)
Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison
A Little Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupery
In Search of Our Mother's Gardens by Alice Walker
A Separate Peace by John Knowles
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
¶ 8:55 PM
