September Is In the Air

Ah, September. Traditionally this was the start of the school year but now with the effects of climate change and parents who need the schools for extended babysitting, I see classes starting earlier and earlier (and going later and later).September is also the month that summer changes into fall. In New Jersey everyone was at the shore for Labor Day basking in the sun and chowing down on boardwalk pizza & zepoles and just 15 days later the heads came off the parking meters, the leaves fell off the trees, and the crisp smell of pumpkins was in the air.

It’s also a new month and that means I can pull out several new titles to read (or at least contemplate reading). Last month I shook things up and bit and was quite pleased with the reading so I will again brush out some of the unread books and replace them with new and exciting titles. Again, I select 30 books to read but only expect to read 8 or 10 of them, with 12 being the goal. What do you think of these selections?

This September for me will be momentous: my daughter is having her first child and I will officially become a grandfather. So my resumé now will read: Grandfather, Curmudgeon, Boulevardier.

1. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings— Maya Angelou *
2. Mercier et Camier — Samuel Beckett
3. Dandelion Wine — Ray Bradbury *
4. Cities of the Red Night — William S. Burroughs
5. Sky Saw — Blake Butler *
6. Three Trapped Tigers — G. Cabrera Infante
7. The Queen’s Necklace — Italo Calvino *
8. The Man Who Was Thursday — C. K. Chesterton *
9. Nostromo — Joseph Conrad *
10. Nervous Conditions — Tsitsi Dangarembga
11. The Big Money — John Dos Passos
12. The Mansion — William Faulkner
13. Independence Day — Richard Ford *
14. Two Girls, Fat and Thin — Mary Gaitskill
15. Cuckoo’s Calling — Robert Galbraithe *
16. Metropolis — Thea von Harbou *
17. Where You Once Belonged — Kent Haruf *
18. Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book — Maxine Hong Kingston
19. The Interrogation — J. M. G. Le Clézio *
20. The Periodic Table — Primo Levi
21. Defiance — Carole Maso
22. The Gravedigger’s Daughter — Joyce Carol Oates *
23. Martereau — Nathalie Sarraute
24. Momento Mori — Muriel Spark
25. Snowcrash — Neil Stephenson
26. The Royal Family — William T. Vollmann
27. Armageddon In Retrospect — Kurt Vonnegut
28. Infinite Jest — David Foster Wallace
29. Salamander — Thomas Wharton *
30. Black Boy — Richard Wright