Books for Autumn

It is October, darlings. Bright blue weather and foreign winds sweep through the fields, white pelican birds with black under-wings break their journey for a few weeks on the lake, darkness falls earlier and earlier, and the fairy-grasses (what are these actually called?) turn deep purple and seem, in the early morning when they’re laced with dew, to be the only things left growing.

It is sweater weather, bonfire weather, adventuring weather. It is reading weather.

There are several books I really want to read this fall (you know, for the vibes). Some are new; some are rereads. Whether I will actually read a single one of them remains to be seen. But I am filled with the need to bask in autumn vibes, and talking about these books definitely does that.

The Perilous Gard

I randomly get urges to reread this at all seasons of the year, but especially November. You’d think it’d be October, when the book takes place, but no, it’s November. Possibly because of how cold and chilly it all is, up north in a secluded castle in Derbyshire.

It’s also autumnal because of Halloween. This isn’t a fun story about Halloween—pranks or ghosts or even kids being stupid. No, I mean like original Halloween stuff. Human sacrifice.

Also one very stubborn young woman who does not plan on letting this happen if she can help it—but can she?

She’s delightfully skeptical. She’ll figure out the rational explanation for all this if it kills her. And if it takes thinking of the ballad Tam Lin as a garbled account of real history or listening patiently to the ramblings of a half-mad minstrel (I love Randal by the way) or following the oak leaves out to a tree that is alarmingly bare of leaves, she will rescue her true love from the Queen’s plans for him.

This book is spare, elegant, thoughtful, and frightening in a much subtler way than a book about any sort of monsters but humans themselves could be.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

I just feel like this ought to be read in November.

I am a fan of Oscar Wilde, this was his one novel, novels are my favorite literary form, and I finally decided I did want to read it after spending many years of my life not sure it was worth it, so why not this November?

The Scorpio Races

What is more autumnal than man-eating horses and a healthy dose of loneliness?

Well, cold beaches, I suppose, and a hungry ocean. Festivals, November cakes, really really hoping your cat’s gonna be okay.

I like this book for Finn, but also for George Holly (the chipper American, out of place among all these close-mouthed, thrifty islanders—but they’re fond of him and he’s fond of them, because he’s a good sort and he wears red shoes), but also for Puck and Sean and Thisby itself.

This book feels exactly like a certain type of October. It reminds me of days when it’s not too cold, and you go out, and the woods are bright and bare but the fields are pale and the wind soft: and no noise you hear is as loud as the silence; and it comes to you that your whole life is simply one of the noises and never touches this silence. The silence is always there; you are just rarely aware of it.

I like that, but also, I admit, I just like horses.

Beowulf

The fall-ness of this one seems self-explanatory to me. Monsters coming into the hall at night. Heroes roaming out into the fen in quest of said monsters. Feasting. Fear. The joy of battle. Removal of arms and display thereof in public places. Good stuff.

Boys of Blur

It’s a Beowulf story, you see. Maybe not quite a retelling, but close. It’s more of an early fall (or even late summer) story, but oh well. I read it recently, and I’ve been wanting to reread it to see if I’ll appreciate it a bit more the second time around.

There’s football (so, fall) and family (good, bad, crazy, found, and otherwise), and Grendel’s mother living deep deep in the muck beneath the sugarcane fields, drawing life from death and eternity from a spring. There is envy like a deadly poison and graves standing empty that should not be empty. And three scared boys. (Who are not safe from envy’s poison either.)

The Lantern Bearers

It’s fall, so what could be more apropos than a book about the fall of a civilization?

I don’t know if this book is actually autumnal (I really don’t know what it’s about except a soldier who remains behind in Britain when the last Roman company pulls out, I think?), but in my head it is, and so I want to read it. My mom says it’s really, really sad. It’s Rosemary Sutcliff, so I believe her.

…Come to think of it, Rosemary Sutcliff’s writing has always given me autumn vibes. The muted colors, blazingly brilliant yet touched with frost, and whatnot. The sudden flick of pen or phrase (like the sudden flick of breeze or falling leaf) that chills you with nameless sadness where a moment ago you were smiling in deep summer content.

The Hobbit

Although Bilbo’s journey takes a year, I associate it immutably with fall.

It just…is so autumnal. The Elves singing in Rivendell, and the emergence into the cold but free and sunlit Wildlands on the other side of the Misty Mountains, and the spiders in Mirkwood, and the dragon soaring in fire and ruin from the lonely mountain to the town on the edge of the lake, and the treasure, and the battle, and the Eagles, and Bjorn—doesn’t it all just scream sweaters and flannel and pumpkin spice lattes?

I’ve been aching to reread The Hobbit for a while. Now that autumn is here, the time is ripe.

I also will probably want to reread The Lord of the Rings after I reread The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings is a fundamentally autumnal work too. I feel very Bilbo-ish every fall, but when I get the urge to read The Lord of the Rings is always spring, for some reason. Also The Lord of the Rings is long, so we’ll see.

This fall I also intend to memorize “When the Frost Is on the Punkin.” I memorized it halfway last fall and never finished for some reason, but I’m going to try and have it by my dad’s birthday (in November) and recite it for him. I know this sounds like something you’d do for your dad’s birthday when you’re six, but though I have progressed past the age of six, my dad on the contrary has not progressed past his fondness for hearing poetry recited. Especially poetry he really likes, and “When the Frost Is on the Punkin” is one of his favorites. (One of mine too. It is autumn-in-the-country incarnate.)

I would also like to rewatch Penelope with my sisters and give Over the Garden Wall a try.

So those are my literary plans for fall! Now it hardly matters if I carry them out, since I’ve blogged about it and the fall aesthetic has been served. Hope you guys are cozy! If you have fall book recs (or otherwise need me), I will be curled up with a London Fog and a good book, watching the leaves fall.