The first day of autumn

Today is the first day of autumn. I love autumn’s cooler nights. I love the way the angle of the sun changes and it starts to hit different places in my house. The quality of light alters as well. The sky seems bluer than it does at other times of year. No doubt there’s a scientific reason for this but I’m not concerned to discover it. Trees start to colour their leaves red, orange and yellow before discarding them in a brown skirt around their trunk. No less joy than I recall as a child is had walking through piles of leaves when I don’t have to sweep them up. Sweeping them out with my feet and legs, noisily crunching them underfoot is still a delight.

I’m enjoying the library at school and taking advantage of the new range of books at my disposal. I’ve started on my ‘to read’ list.

I devoured Lily Brett’s ‘Lola Bensky’ and even looked for more in the library. Margaret Attwood’s ‘Cat’s Eye’ I read because I’d heard of her for many years though had never read any of her books. Robert Dessaix I had also heard of but could get past the first few pages of ‘Night Letters’. Perhaps when my bedside piles of books withers down somewhat I’ll try something else of his.

Right now I’m the middle of Marina Keegan ‘The Opposite of Loneliness’ which is a collection of essays and stories from a young American writer who died young a few years ago. I like her work so far -earnest without being pappy and definitely relatable.

 A recurrent theme I’m finding is that I enjoy writers who keep things simple for me as a reader. By no means am I suggesting that it is simple to write such simplicity though. There are no words that I need to check the meaning of, no tricky action to follow that my ‘dyslexia’ would trip me up with. Word use is concise, efficient yet still eloquent. This is something to aim for myself.