The Fall Line-Up

I am awfully excited.

I wanted to post a picture of the piles of fabric and stacks of patterns that will hopefully take up a fair amount of my free time this fall as well, but then I realized that the final destination for many of those items is under some Christmas tree or another, so I'd better not post them for all to see.

The books, if you can't see them clearly in the photo, are: That Distant Land by Wendell Berry; John Adams by David McCullough; Remembering by Wendell Berry; The Brothers K by David James Duncan; Emma by Jane Austen; The Beekeeper's Apprentice by Laurie R. King; and The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. I am reading The Beekeeper's Apprentice right now and am really enjoying it. I don't often - ok, ever - read mysteries. This is the first time in a long time that I have felt my heart rate quicken and my shoulders tense from reading a book. Of course most good books have surprises and unexpected twists and turns, but not page after page after page. I rather like it. It is a pleasant detour from my usual choice of rather mellow literature. I do understand, however, why sleep experts make mysteries an exception in their advice to read for a while before going to bed. The imagery did not keep me awake, as it does after watching a suspenseful movie (depending on the imagery, a tense movie can terrorize me for months), but I was far too invigorated to fall asleep quickly. I felt as though I had just returned from a long run - tired, but alert. The first Berry book mentioned above is a book of short stories, so I think I'll start reading one of those before bed and will leave the suspenseful reading for earlier hours.