September has come, It is hers whose vitality leaps in the autumn,

Whose nature prefers
Trees without leaves and a fire in the fire-place;
So I give her this month and the next
Though the whole of my year should be hers who has rendered already
So many of its days intolerable or perplexed
But so many more so happy;
Who has left a scent on my life and left my walls
Dancing over and over with her shadow,
Whose hair is twined in all my waterfalls
And all of London lilttered with remembered kisses.

- Louis MacNeice, "Autumn Journal"

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Happy autumn, everyone. I love this time of year – but I think I say that with every season. Fall makes me want to break out my knee socks and new school shoes, and sharpen some pencils. Oh, and bake an apple pie. Instead what I really need to do is schedule tours of public school kindergartens and fill out applications to magnet schools for Si for NEXT fall.

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I am halfway through Children of God and while I find the plot slightly less believable than that of The Sparrow, the characters, especially those of Fr. Emilio Sandoz and Supaari VaRakhati, are so compelling and intricately drawn that I have to keep reading to find out what happens to them.

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Last night I started the new Jennifer Weiner, Goodnight, Nobody. Gina is right, it is very reminiscent of Ayelet Waldman’s mysteries, except I do like the main character of this one better (probably because she dresses the same way I do : )). But God, I HATE her husband, what the hell is wrong with him? There’s this whole bit where he gets mad at HER because his kids' birthday party was not a three-ring circus that made me want to fling the book across the room (and if it had been my copy, I probably would have.) Why can't anyone write a book where the husband is a nice guy trying to do his best and yet the mom still feels like a failure?

And also, the parts about her parents – her father is an oboeist and her mother is an opera singer. Where have I read this before? It sounds so familiar – maybe Dewey Decimal System of Love? I’d have to look. But the estranged musician parents plotline has definitely been done before.

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OK, I give up, Sebastian Faulks has crossed the radar one too many times to be ignored any longer. It is a sign from the gods, or something. After this article in The Guardian, I really need to read his Human Traces.

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I love A.S. Byatt. I think she is a genius and among the finest writers living today. As soon as I am guaranteed fifteen minutes of uninterrupted peace, like sometime in the next twenty years, I will read this article about her use of fairy tale imagery in her short stories.

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Check out these children’s books, shortlisted for the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize. They all look pretty good. Gina, care to read them and report back, maybe for some sort of credit for your Kids’ Lit class? I’ll speak to Maggie about it : )

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Snippets:

My boys are busy performing the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “By the Way” at the top of their lungs. It’s ok until they get to the part where they freak out across the stage shouting things that sound like “Pork Chop!” and “Wombat!” and that I am fairly sure are actually profanities. My walls are in danger of being whacked to bits by foam baseball bats and waywardly-flung dolls and Pooh bears in the frenzy.

OK, my guy JD won the Rockstar INXS thing. He is the new lead singer of INXS. I even whooped and cheered, before I realized that all my windows were open, it was 11 at night, and other normal people might be already sleeping. But really – he’s sexy, attitudinal and confident, holds the crowd in the palm of his hand, has the moves and the voice, and meshes nicely with the band. Go, JD! And now the freakish Marty (who at last count had 28 teeth just on his bottom jaw) can go star in some adaptation of Kurt Cobain’s life directed by Tim Burton.

The neighborhood has had a strange rash of plant thefts this past two weeks. Someone perused my plants (according to my usual modus operandi, purchased half-dead and cheaply from Home Depot’s end-of-season sale) and selected the purple azalea bush, leaving behind the pink azaleas, some purple asters, and a whole clump of black-eyed Susans. They then carefully dug it up, roots and all, and took it away. I was so pissed.

And in baby news – everyone, including my OB, seems to be under the impression that this child is going to be a girl. Hmmm.