A rather dull day, but the weather was beautiful. We turned off the AC for the year Sunday night. I’m delighted to spend time in the gazebo again, and I’m pleased with my artwork.

I just finished Inkheart by Cornelia Funke. I picked it up on the free shelf and wanted to read it because my brilliant 8-year-old grand-nephew read it this summer. It looked good and I would have been really amazed that he could read it, except that he is so much like me when I was little. I don’t remember not knowing how to read. The bookmobile brought me stacks of books every two weeks and I always finished them long before they came back. I loved the bookmobile, and I loved to read. Lately I’ve become aware that I missed a lot of children’s classics, though, and I’ve been picking them up periodically.

My mother and sister remember being surprised at me picking up a newspaper and reading aloud to them a story about a man that we knew who committed suicide – must have been early elementary school. They sometimes had to keep books away from me, not that there was anything lewd in that house. And my parents were not avid readers at all.

A big appeal of Inkheart is that the main characters have an unusual passion for books. The father is a bookbinder, the aunt is a book collector, and the daughter and mother simply love to read. It probably seems over-the-top to most readers, but I felt an immediate connection to this love for books.