This picture says it all. Two months ago, the wisteria was just beginning to climb up my porch railing. Now, it claims my chair.

It’s been the same sort of summer as usual: busy. I work long hours, shuffle back and forth between the bookstore and home, and marvel at how time is flying (or complain about how time seems to have stopped). Our website is a full-time job, and exciting. My head is filled with html and SEO, URL path settings and publishing options. My time is spent on updates and order processing, inventory upload files and shipping quotes. Above all, I keep in touch with books. Books and bookselling are still what I do.

There’s been knitting. Free-range knitting. Dabbling. I finished my Saroyan weeks ago (Sundara Fingering Merino Cashmere). I’m working on a couple of pairs of socks, a little shawl experiment, and a few other things. It keeps me sane.

I’ve also been reading. This should not be remarkable, but it is. My reading mojo has been non-existent for a very, very long time. Tolstoy and the Purple Chair is a beautiful memoir by Nina Sankovitch. It’s about her year of reading — a book a day, for 365 days — after the death of her sister. In an article in the New York Times, she said she was seeking answers about “how to live with sorrow and how to find my place in the world.” I think I knew that books can provide those answers, but I didn’t go to them. Nina Sankovitch’s wonderful book has begun to lead me back. I’m reading one of the books on her list now: How to Paint a Dead Man by Sarah Hall.

Maybe reading is keeping me sane, too.

 ❧ Rosemary… Rosemary is a furry firecracker. She is fond of stuffed mousies, especially when they need to be attacked at the foot of the bed in the middle of the night. She doesn’t keep me sane, but she makes life interesting.