My November Book Club

Or books I read in the dead of fall. 

Let's face it, November is the neglected child of that illustrious Autumnal season we all celebrate.  Anyone who has spent more than a few months visiting my humble contribution to the digital decline of civilization knows my love for Fall and all things Autumn.  I won't even link to them here.  Check them out as you will. 

Most of that gushing over the season tends to happen early on.  It begins for me around the end of June, when we approach our first birthday of the calendar and look toward July 4th as the beginning of our time of year.  Then by August I begin anticipating the coming Fall season and everything to do with it.  The year 2020 notwithstanding, all of the things to do with Autumn begin drawing me forward.  Even though I was always careful not to 'wish my life away' by looking forward to future things, especially once we had children, I still get pretty anxious as the days counted down.

Then comes September and October, the football, the bonfires and homecoming parades, the college campuses and the foliage, the cooling temperatures, the apple cider, the pumpkin pastries - why the list is endless!  And the activities.  No other time in our calendar year are we, or have we been, as active.  Road trips and pumpkin patches, football tailgating, apple orchards and ghost runs through endless cemeteries, walks through the parks to see the changing leaves, ghost movies and Halloween specials, decorating for fall and All Hallow's (and let's not forget Columbus Day!), and all the buildup.  It leaves us exhausted, but even in this year of crazy, it still leaves us happy and satisfied.

But then comes November.  Oh we have Veterans Day, a day we still set aside for the important reasons it represents.  We have Thanksgiving to look forward to and get ready for.  And we know Christmas - that holiday of all festive days - is that much closer.   But from All Saints Day, there is a definite drop.  The morning after Halloween (on which is always Tricks or Treats in our little Ohio town), when I go out to survey the damage and pick up any stray candy, there is always a 'feel'.  Those crisp gray mornings, the leaves on the ground and the Jack O Lanterns burned out seem to bring a sense of 'it's over.'  Relief and rest.  And wait for the end of that next month. 

And that's November.  The 'also ran' of Autumn.  By now, most of the leaves are down and the branches bare.  The fireworks display of foliage is behind us.  Rains are common, cold, chilling to the bone rains.  Sometimes there is snow, though not as often as in days gone by.  Football is halfway done, and high school football has ended (at least for my high school since we never had a ghost of a chance to go to the championships).  Marching band was over and concert band began, though at least the first order of business was getting the year's Christmas Holiday Concert music going.  In college November marked the second half of the semester, midterms over (and the subsequent parties and celebrations), and back to the grind until that brief break before finals. 

Because of November's 'stuck in the middle' feel, things are a little different around these parts.  We do have some things we watch as a family, though we seldom watch all of these every year, save for Charlie Brown.   We don't have any particular feasts, holding out for that feast of feasts at the end of the month.  And there isn't much we do, unless I happen to have tickets for an Ohio State football game at this time.  

Therefore, one thing I've tended to develop over the years as a quasi-tradition, for me at least, has been to reread certain books at this time of year when I normally wouldn't otherwise.  Not that I don't like them or anything.  In fact, they're usually ones that I've read and reread a thousand times because they are among my favorites.  

It's just that I set my usual reading regiment aside and bring back the usual suspects - books that give me that 'fall feeling', whether in terms of history or fantasy or nostalgia or some other form of fiction that strikes my autumn nerves.  Unless I get a really big recommendation, I don't get new books at this time.  Below is a partial list of the most common, and indeed ones that I will usually read, if not every November, at least once in a two or three year period at this time of year.

1. The Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien  (one a year, rotating)

2. Beowulf, favorite translation being Howell Chickering, Jr. (it's also interlinear, and someday I'll have that Anglo-Saxon down!)

3. Ivanhoe, Sir Walter Scott  

4. Godric, Frederick Buechner 

5. 1066: The Year of Conquest, David Armine Howarth 

6. The Middle Ages, Morris Bishop

7. The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer 

8. Memoir of a Revolutionary Soldier: The Narrative of Joseph Plumb Martin, Joseph Plumb Martin 

9.  Darkness at Noon, Arthur Koestler (not a bad book to brush up on right now)

10. The Pilgrim's Progress, John Bunyan 

11. All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque 

12. Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe 

13. Mayflower, Nathaniel Philbrick 

14. Paradise Lost, John Milton 

15. Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte

Again, I don't read all of them every year.  Time simply doesn't allow it.  Though I don't make a habit of picking up newer books in November, if for no other reason Christmas and my birthday are around the corner.  Still there are times when a recommendation comes so strongly that I go ahead and get the book in question and read it, momentarily setting those above aside.  Plus time.  Time doesn't allow all of them in only a few weeks, given other obligations of life.

But for those dreary, raining, bare tree, gray November evenings, you can rest assured that at least a half dozen of the above list will be spread about the house, next to the bed, in our basement by my Grandma's antique rocking chair (my hiding place down there), or in the living room.  And there they'll be until I've gone through them in time to read whatever I inevitably get for my birthday, then Christmas, and then back to normal as another year begins afresh.