You can always trust me to go off into a piece of the world we all have before us, a world of nature that may take us away from the controversies of the moment and bring us to that other place - the place where our hearts reside. Autumn is ambling into town from somewhere north. The trees have picked up on it already - the days are shorter now and the leavings are setting about their annual shutdown. Lawn chairs are put away for the season, and we find outselves content to sit indoors on unpholstery situated near a fireplace —- or at least a nice incandescent bulb. What can be more appealing on a long fall evening than an impressive pile of books, a cup of tea and the scent of — yes - store-bough flowers beside you that seem to carry you back to a sweet summer day. For a while - in the crazyness of our everyday world of now - you can forget the world. Could we talk books for a bit? I find that we truly need a way to escape — any time we want. We all show signs of stress in our writings. OK, that is an understatement, but we need time away from all that. A time of our own, don’t you think? While a few of you have mentioned this book, it deserves plaudits and a quick trip to the library. In one of the biggest fiction debuts - and rightly so - The Thirteenth Tale wil keep the reader mesmerized with the closely plotted story that is oh! so hard to put down. Written in the genre of our favorite gothic works of the Brontes and Daphne de Maurier (my favorite), it has two heroines here: Vida Winter, a famous and prolific author whose life is coming to an end, and Margaret Lea, a young, unworldly bookish girl who is the boolseller in her father’s shop. After having given her biographers each a false version of her life over the years, Winter chooses Margaret to write her long-hidden life story. You will be pulled right into the world of secrets, lies, and half truths that seem to unfulr with each chapter. The ending? Surprising and satisfying — but there is no way I would give it away. First author and English woman, Diane Setterfield has spent the whole of five years from start to finish on this book — and it shows! What can I say — you must read it! One more — irresistible to those who can’t resist a love story that is like a real life Madame Butterfly — Sword and Blossom: A British Officer’s Enduring Love for a Japanese Woman? Forget “now” and let the true tale take you back and into the tragic love story of an aristocratic British officer and a young Japanese woman in the turn-of-the-century Toyko. Author Peter Pagnamenta has used historical records and hundreds of letters of British army captain Arthur Hart-Synot from 1904 onward to the young Japanese woman who became his mistress and the mother of his children. Posted in the Far East, Hart-Synnot always returned to his love until he was sent to France years later in WWI. While the story’s ending is sad, I am betting you will be stirred as I was by their long-distance ardor, frustrations and loneliness. And when I am a book reviewer, I always want to leave the WOWers with something that will hopefully bring out a little more of their inner world for a small bit. This is Henry David Thoreau: Live each season as it passes; Breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, And resign yourself to the influences of each. Joan

living in Maine - summer is our cultural peak for the arts, so fall is meant for hiking in the mountains and inhaling the views, the smells, the change of color in the ocean as it gets colder as well as the trees’ colors as the maples give way to the oaks - it’s poetic, musical, and artistic - and it’s Shakespearean since winter is only a tiny step away so parting is such sweet sorrow…

The Bonesetter’s Daughter, Amy Tan and Stewart Wallace’s new opera, premiered with the 2008-09 San Francisco Opera season. Beyond words.

Next month, I’m paying tribute to the incomparable Gabriel Garcia Marquez at an art show in my community. My book club cohorts and I decided to embellish child-sized chairs to honor a favorite author or book. My choice was Marquez’ One Hundred Years of Solitude for which he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982. “Gabo” is the master of “Magical Realism” and all of his works are great reads.

Mandy Patinkin in The Tempest—in New York at the Classic Stage Company. One of the most extraordinary Shakespearean performances I’ve ever seen. So much power on the stage,-every movement, every step, every look, every pause, every word. His Prospero so came to life—you will never forget it. Rush out and see it—I think it closes this weekend!