And somehow Sunday is October 1. Conventional wisdom indicates that the years flow more quickly as we age; this has certainly become my experience.

This month, I will continue reading / studying Mary Beard’s SPQR for my Latin tutorial and Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain for one of two reading projects a friend and I have undertaken. The mighty algorithms recommended Rodney Symington’s guide to Mann’s tome, and while pricy, it has also been helpful. The second of the reading projects is an exploration of E.B. White’s work, which we began with Charlotte’s Web in September and will continue with Stuart Little in October. The Story of Charlotte’s Web: E. B. White’s Eccentric Life in Nature and the Birth of an American Classic by Michael Sims complemented this month’s reading; in October, I will begin Scott Elledge’s biography of White.

In anticipation of seeing Eurydice at Writers Theatre, I plan to read the play this week. Also up is Fahrenheit 451 for Banned Books Week. Soon, I will finish Drew Gilpin Faust’s Necessary Trouble: Growing Up in Midcentury, which I’m reading in anticipation of the October 8 Book Breaks at Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. Faust refers to Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique repeatedly, which has prompted me to (finally!) finish that, too.

For the October installment of APS Together, I will reread Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House. (I plan to join them for the November selection, too.) And for my first #Victober, I will tackle the group selection, Anthony Trollope’s The Way We Live Now, and reread Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, a book I first encountered when I was sixteen. This nearly sixty-year-old is interested in what a difference four-plus decades may make in my interpretation of the text.

At this writing, my train and airplane book choices for the Girls Rule! School reunion trip late in the month are Sherri Tepper’s Gibon’s Decline and Fall and Victor Lavalle’s The Changeling. 

Finally, I’m reasonably close to finishing Ben Goldsmith’s beautiful God Is an Octopus.

Here’s a a head-scratcher: How is it that I didn’t already own a volume of White’s letters? And another: How did I land atop the request list for the recently released fourth volume of the Thursday Murder Club series? Well. The house is tidy; I’ve walked four miles and mowed and trimmed the yards. Yes, I’m curled up on the couch with The Last Devil to Die.

A few new books.

The University of Chicago Graham School’s short course on The Moonstone concludes tonight, and I’ve finished Cervantes’ Don Quixote, an Open Yale Courses program. In the coming months, I will participate in Victober and two APS Together book clubs, take a deep dive into the work of E.B. White, and conduct a close reading of The Magic Mountain. Latin and music will round out my fall and winter studies.

After brunching / snacking at Taste of Chicago, we headed to the Printer’s Row Lit Fest, events we haven’t attended since we lived in Chicago.