Even though I’m taking some time to assess and explore how I blog, I didn’t mean for this place to go to radio silence this week (or to get woefully behind on responding to comments). But that’s life I guess, and I’m not beating myself up about it.

I haven’t been reading a ton this month, but not for lack of great books available for me to choose from. I’ve got a bunch of fall releases on my shelves that I’m hoping to pick up before the end of the year. Here are nine of them, three each for the next three months:

September (aka Books I’ve Already “Missed”)

Although September is almost over, there are several books that came out this month that I have but haven’t gotten to read yet.

• Five Days at Memorial by Sheri Fink, a chunkster of investigative journalism about patient deaths at a hospital in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. I’m taking this one with me when I’m traveling this weekend — it looks awesome.
• The Nazi and the Psychiatrist by Jack El-Hai, the story of a young American psychiatrist sent to evaluate Hermann Göring after the fall of the Nazi’s. The description of this one calls it a “cautionary tale about the dangers of coming too close to evil” — awesome, right?
• Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking by Anya Von Bremzen, a food memoir about life in the USSR in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s. I love a good food memoir, especially one that incorporates family as deeply as this one seems to do.

October (aka The Month of Big Books)

October is the month of the chunkster. In addition to the books I’m including below, keep an eye out for We Are Water by Wally Lamb (576 pages), The Abominable by Dan Simmons (672 pages), and The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton (848 pages).

• The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, probably the biggest fiction release this fall. I read the first few pages of this earlier in the month and can already tell it’s going to be amazing! (784 pages)
• Social by Matthew D. Lieberman, a look at the current research in “social neuroscience,” which argues that humans are fundamentally wired to connect with other people in the social world. Science!
• We Killed by Yawl Kohen, a look at the rise of women in comedy. Technically this is coming out in paperback, but I’m so excited about it that I’m breaking my own rules to include it.

November (aka The Final Countdown)

December is such a crazy month with the holidays, I tend to think of November as the last month of “new” books until we hit January. Luckily, there are some good ones coming out.

• This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Anne Patchett, a collection of essays on “love, friendship, work and art.” I don’t always love Patchett’s plots, but her writing is gorgeous. I’m excited about this one.
• Princesses Behaving Badly by Linda Rodriguez Mcrobbie, a look at the ruthless behavior and closet skeletons of some of the worlds most interesting princesses. Can’t wait!
• Anything That Moves by Dana Goodyear, a look at the extreme edges of the American culinary establishment. Goodyear is a New Yorker writer described as a mix between Mary Roach and Anthony Bourdain — it’s hard to resist that.

What books are you excited to read during the rest of the year?

Time // 8:55 a.m.

Place // On the bus with my sister, heading to our first Vikings game ever!! (Full disclosure: I wrote part of this post yesterday night.)

Feeling // Super excited!

Reading // It was another slow reading week around these parts. I did manage to finish Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg (wonderful, by the way), but that’s it. And I’m starting to be ok with reading slowly for awhile. It’s a nice break to make space for other things.

My reading priority for this week is to finish Cat’s Eye by Margaret Atwood. I selected it for a one-time “book club” with some girlfriends next weekend, so I have to get it read and some up with some discussion points. I’m a few chapters in and so far it’s amazing, as one might expect.

Watching // Fall television started this week! I didn’t watch as many new shows as I thought I would, but fell in love with the first episode of Brooklyn Nine Nine, a police comedy in the vein of Parks and Recreation by the same folks. I think it’s going to be awesome (the Boyfriend liked it too!).

Listening // I’m going to be traveling for the next three weekends, so I think there will be prime opportunity for some audio books. I have Countdown City by Ben H. Winters queued up, but I’m not sure if that’s what I’ll end up going with.

Buying // I almost pulled the trigger to buy myself my first DSLR digital camera yesterday, but chickened out at the last minute because I couldn’t decide on lenses. I’m pretty sure I’m going to go with the Canon Revel (Ti3), but I can’t decide whether to get two lenses (one standard and one for more distance shots) or splurge a little bit on an all-in-one lens. The sales person suggested the all-in-one, since I’m going to be using the camera a lot for work and changing out lenses on the fly is a pain, but I’m not sure. I’m open to any and all tips or suggestions from you photographers out there!

Blogging // I put up a long post on why (and how) I blog yesterday, which isn’t really much of an answer to those questions so much as some more pondering on my plans for blogging.

Wanting // I’d love to take a week off and read. I splurged on Five Days and Memorial and Eleanor and Park when out shopping this weekend, but I’m not sure when I’ll get to read them…

Anticipating // I’m excited about the game (duh) and also about getting home for Breaking Bad tonight.

If you happen to be a book blogger, you’re probably aware of an ongoing conversation via blog posts over the last couple of weeks about why we blog (I linked to several in Sunday’s post, so I won’t do that again). I’ve read, and I hope commented, on many of them and I’m glad they’re being written because they’ve helped me solidify some thoughts I’ve alluded to briefly over the last month or so about changes that I need to make here.

(If you are not interested in some broadish thoughts on the state of blogging, just skip this post — there are no books here!)

The question of why I blog is actually pretty easy to answer. This blog has become the holding place for my life in books, which is deeply (almost entirely) connected to my life in everything else. Certainly, this function of a blog-as-list could be done with a commonplace type book, but a notebook isn’t searchable or sharable or even conducive to the other thing I love about blogging — conversations with other readers. This blog facilitates and encourages those conversations and holds them in place for me into the future. I love being able to search an archive and pull up a moment in time and what I was thinking about then.

Since the “why” is pretty easy, the better question for me, at this moment, is how do I blog now, and what do I need to do so I can keep blogging into the future?

Right now, I feel pulled in two very different directions: blog less or blog more.

The blog less urge is fairly straightforward. Over the last six months or so, I’ve been dealing with what I consider mild/moderate, persistent pain in my hands, wrists, arms and shoulders. I’ve had issues with this since grad school, but lately it’s gotten much worse. I’m taking some steps to address the ergonomics of my home and work spaces, but I’m not sure if they’re helping much. As a result, I’ve already been pulling back a bit on the time I put into blogging… some evenings, I can’t bear the thought of sitting at a desk and typing more.

At the same time, we’re going through some major staff changes at my day job. They haven’t affected me much yet, but I can see in the next few months ways in which I, and everyone else in our small office, will be doing more tasks with less support while we hire and train new staff members. This isn’t uncommon for most working people, but it is a change to how my life has been that I’m trying to anticipate and adjust for ahead of time.

And yet… I have so many ideas for this place. I want to blog more. And I want to write about more than books. As much as I love reading, I want to continue to make my life full of more things that just pages and words. I really admire and enjoy bloggers like Meg (Write Meg!) and Florinda (The 3 R’s Blog) that integrate life with books and bloggers who have evolved far beyond books like Trish (Love, Laughter and a Touch of Insanity). I’m also feeling an urge to go there, to blog more about the other things I love in new and challenging ways.

Ultimately, I think the solution is going to be a combination of more and less. It’s going to be to learn to blog differently and manage my online life in a different way (changing the “how” because the “why” is so important). I wish I knew, concretely, what those changes might be… but I don’t. I have ideas. I may cut back on responding to comments. I may try to write shorter blog posts. I may try to incorporate more lists, videos, and photos. I’m just not entirely sure yet. What I do hope is that you will stick around with me while I try to figure it out.

I like to think (and hope) that every person has at least one other person in their life who will tell them what is what. For me, those people are usually my mother and my sister. I know they love me unconditionally, but I also know that they don’t put up with my nonsense. If I’ve gone off the rails in some small or large way, they get me back on the track in the most kind and generous way possible. I’m so lucky to have that.

I tell you that because I think the voice that Cheryl Strayed adopts as Sugar, an advice columnist for the online age, has a lot in common with a family member who loves you but doesn’t let you get away with anything. In her columns, collected together in Tiny Beautiful Things, Strayed practiced what Steve Almond called radical empathy:

Life can be hard: your lover cheats on you; you lose a family member; you can’t pay the bills — and it can be great: you’ve had the hottest sex of your life; you get that plum job; you muster the courage to write your novel. Sugar — the once-anonymous online columnist at The Rumpus, now revealed as Cheryl Strayed, author of the bestselling memoir Wild — is the person thousands turn to for advice. Tiny Beautiful Things brings the best of Dear Sugar in one place and includes never-before-published columns and a new introduction by Steve Almond. Rich with humor, insight, compassion — and absolute honesty — this book is a balm for everything life throws our way.=

The first thing to know about this book is that Cheryl Strayed can write. If you don’t believe me, stop reading this post and go read these two columns: The Baby Bird and Write Like a Motherfucker. I’ll wait.

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Finished? Holy shit, right? Cheryl Strayed can write like a motherfucker, and that talent is on display in every one of her lovely, profane, honest and frustrated columns collected in this book. I just can’t even quite articulate just how great each and every single one of them is to read.

If you haven’t read these essays yet, I highly encourage you to pick them up. But, I think this is a book that is better read slowly, a few pieces at a time over a month or two. When you read them back-to-back, you start to see a little bit of repetitiveness in the way that Strayed approaches each problem. That’s not to say her answers aren’t surprising or wonderful to read, just that they have a little less impact taken all together than I think they do taken at a slightly slower pace.

This is a book I will be holding on to, dipping back in and out in those moments when I just need to hear someone kindly and generously tell me to get my shit together.