The books I didn’t read this year. And what I’m reading now.

For the first time in a long time, I let October slip past me entirely, without reading either The Westing Game or Tam Lin. Reading them in the fall is a tradition. And I’m not sure where my copy of the Westing Game is! Got two of Tam Lin, though.

What happened to reading in October? Oh! Right. Zombies, vampires and then Christmas books for the Ledger.

And now, I’m reading Gail Collins’ America’s Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines (P.S.) I can’t get enough of this book. Makes history fascinating. On every page I learn something, or see something in a new way. This is the way history, and nonfiction, should be written. Like a novel, crowded with characters you meet in passing, but nonetheless know clearly. I will have to reread this, and its follow-up, I know, just to continue absorbing the details.

Still, though, I feel melancholy about missing this fall’s perfect timing to read The Westing Game and Tam Lin. Not like I can’t quote large chunks of both from memory.

Now of course… trying to picture the characters of both in a giant literary mash-up.  Chess, classics, a spooky mansion, a college campus. It would work. I think Janet would like Turtle and Sandy. And oh, would Turtle do some shin-kicking!