Booked for October

October is the perfect month for curling up with a good book. Pick something scary, pick something romantic, pick a biography or a beach read to remember the golden days of summer, just pick something and get lost in it. Books are the best portals of magic I know next to music, and wordsmithery makes me weak at the knees.

Every year I look forward to picking out my new books. Some are clearly for the summer, some can fit in wherever I need them to and some are for October reading only. I read about scary spaces and things that go bump in the night, murder mysteries and about beasties that defy classification. I eagerly picked this year’s October books and as a surprise to no one, I have more titles selected than I have time to read. But I will very much enjoy the challenge.

So many good books are being released in October it is like Christmas has come early, a weekly literary treat just for me. But there will always and forever only be one grand literary passion in my October days. Washington Irving’s Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Before there were movies about it, there was the book. Before the book there was a town, and before the town were campfire stories on dark and stormy nights. Was there really a Headless Horseman or a stork like school master named Ichabod? Did Katrina Van Tassel really marry Brom Bones? I don’t care. It is a good yarn to pass the fading fall light with.

There is always a special day when I KNOW, today is the day that I need to read the story. Sometimes I read it aloud and taste the words on my tongue sweet as sugar. Sometimes I read to another person, sometimes I read it quietly to myself. After I am done, I always have a hankering to move to New England and become a farmer. But then I remember that I am about as rural as Eva Gabor in Green Acres and New England winters are nothing to sneeze at. But with the power of a slim leather bound volume I can be transported there and walk amongst the superstitious towns folk and see life through their eyes. I can’t wait to pull it out and peruse its well-worn pages for another year. Today is not that day, but I can feel it coming. What are your favorite fall books, or do you have one in mind already?