“We know that in September we will wander through the warm winds of summer’s wreckage. We will welcome summer’s ghost.” -Henry Rollins
Here in the Northern Hemisphere, we feel the light receding. We arrive at the balance point between the darkest winter and the exuberant summer. We look both forward and backward.
For me, in the autumn, I long for things just out of reach, and I often become obsessed with particular books that scratch at that itch.
This year, I’m obsessing over a new release from an author I loved when I was just the age of the characters he writes about. Reading The Shards by Brett Eaton Ellis, I taste not only of the time I came from but from the feelings and fantasies of those times. The voice feels recognizable and immediate, but impossibly far away. Although obviously this nostalgia is a very personal one, it’s got me thinking about this mood that comes around each year and the way it drives me into intense reading of very particular books.
I’d love to hear about the books you come back to over and over again in the autumn. Join in the discussion on our Goodreads page and let’s share with one another the books we can’t resist indulging in. Are they books that evoke a time and place for you? Or a feeling? Are you nostalgic for places you’ve never been or things you’ve never experienced? Let’s discuss!
More broadly, I offer some suggestions of books that reflect on nostalgia itself:
