My goodness, I am in a foggy, mystical happy place here in Vermont. I’m feeling the positive energy from my cohort, my professors, and the full-blown autumn air!  Generative exercises in class are allowing me to free my grip on being “perfect.” Instead, I’m suddenly a literary scientist, content on adding a dash of this, a beaker of that, and putting it all into a cauldron to see what transforms, what changes state, and what explodes entirely.

I’m also super excited to begin my new volunteer position at the library (because there’s no such thing as being around too many books!) More on that later.

And now for a brief message: If I could go broke buying only one kind of item in the world, it would be books. I am quite frugal when it comes to clothes, food, even entertainment. But bring me to the bookstore and I lose all sense of frugality. I’ve always felt a certain kinship to this quote by Erasmus:

“When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I buy food and clothes.”

That is all. Absolutely no shame. In fact, I love to buy books sometimes because I think about in the future, when maybe I have my own little human rummaging through my house, and I imagine he or she searching through my shelves and pulling a book off the wall and we would sit down together and begin to read it, and I would say, “Ahh! I remember reading this book when…” Perhaps this is silly, but I find a deep comfort in this slice of my future life.

And now, to the reading pile of October!

I’ve already started Ben Loory’s Tales of Falling and Flying and am very much enjoying it so far! It’s a read you can ingest voraciously, so I’m trying to slow down and savor it.

I picked up John Hodgman’s The Areas of My Expertise because I was intrigued by its wordy cover (which is kind of like a book in itself). It’s pretty hysterical and will be great for afternoon slumps in case I run out of coffee.

I brought The Catcher in the Rye with me to school, mostly because it’s comforting to know it’s in the room with me. But the last time I read it was in AP English class in senior year of high school. I am a very different writer and reader than I was back then, and I’m curious to know what I think of it now. I’ve always had an affinity for Holden and I think his voice might be the perfect muse for one of my new writing projects.

In other news: it’s Birthday Week! So let the wild rumpus begin! Hieperdepiep Hoera! (which is the Dutch and in my opinion, far-superior, way of saying Hip Hip Hooray). This little boy needs a little practice on saying it, but he’s so darn adorable.