Fall Reading

We are definitely in that transitional period where it is cooling down (and most of the time I throw a fleece on before biking around the city), though then it suddenly gets hot again.  Nonetheless, there are other markers of autumn.  School is back in.  Cherries are basically gone from the market, and if they do show up the price is quite high.  What does get me down a bit is that it is already starting to get darker sooner, and soon biking home will be completely in the dark (and more dangerous naturally).  On the flip side, it is also the time to start making soups and stews, and I do enjoy fall cuisine.  I just made a big pot of chili and am hoping it turned out ok.

Of course there already have been a slew of articles on what to read for the fall or TV shows and movies to watch.  I have to say that I saw a trailer for it, and Rental Family looks pretty dire (and the Guardian agrees), though there was a home-town reviewer at TIFF that said it was a festival highlight!  I am looking forward to Honey, Don't, though I don't know where or when I can actually see it.  And I will probably give Spike Lee's Highest 2 Lowest a shot when it opens in Canada.

But mostly I am thinking about fall reading already.  This cartoon is so perfect (original source here).

I finished The Scarlet Letter.  I still cannot actually remember having read this before!

In terms of stone-cold classics, I would like to get around to Hawthorne's The House of Seven Gables, though I am not in a rush, and this can get pushed to 2026 or so.  I have an omnibus edition of Howard's End and A Room with a View, and I would like to get through both of those by 2026 or so.  Perhaps I should tackle Maurice soon after Howard's End (at least the play The Inheritance links the two), and Zadie Smith's About Beauty is also a bit of a riff on Howard's End, so maybe should be looped in at the same time.

I picked up a copy of Henry James's The Turn of the Screw.  This might make for good October reading, in the lead up to Halloween... 

Finally, I already alluded to the fact that Dec. 16 is Jane Austen's 250th birthday, and I am going to try to have read Persuasion in late November.

I don't think it is likely to happen, but I might attempt to read Shteyngart's Vera, or Faith in December, though because this novel draws upon Nabokov's Ada, it is probably a step too far for the fall.

I have a number of shorter books that I will try to get to this fall, including Kundera's Ignorance, Gibbon's Ellen Foster, Kaysen's Asa, as I Knew Him, Jelloun's The Last Friend and Azuela's The Underdogs.

I'm not sure if I really have a long book I am going to tackle, though if I do take the train up to Ottawa, I had been considering Skvorecky's The Bride of Texas, though perhaps I should switch this for Fontane's Before the Storm.

I had been sure I owned the LOA edition of Carson McCuller's Collected Novels, but maybe I only have this electronically.  Anyway, I picked up a copy of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.  I was going to put it outside, but now I think I probably should try to read it first, and ideally alternate with some books by Flannery O'Connor (I've only finished Wise Blood) and potentially even Eudora Welty, though I suspect that won't happen.

Somewhere on my list, I am trying to wrap up Dawn Powell and William Maxwell, only to then turn to Mahfouz and Narayan (as another pairing I am working through though slowly) and then Sinclair Lewis and Maritta Wolff!  And Far Tortuga in there somewhere, as well as Canetti's Auto-da-Fé, and many others...  As always, I have plenty of books to keep me busy!