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Discover how this transitional season can reveal both the abundance and the limitations of our everyday lives. Autumn, with all its traditional images of colorful trees, frost-covered pumpkins, and piles of wood stored up against winter's cold, can be a season filled with anticipation. The harvest, the imminent onset of cold and snow, the resumption of old routines, and the beginning of the school year all require preparation and planning. If summer has been something of a pause, autumn helps us to see the passage of time more clearly. Autumn is a season of fruition and reaping, of thanksgiving and celebration of abundance and goodness of the earth. But it is also a season that starkly and realistically encourages us to see our own limitations. Warm and stirring pieces by E. B. White, Anne Lamott, P. D. James, Julian of Norwich, May Sarton, Kimiko Hahn, and many others in this beautiful book rejoice in autumn as a time of preparation and reflection, when the results of hard labor are ripe for harvest.… (more)
User reviews
Fancy subtitle aside, this is an anthology of essays, poems, prayers, and nonfiction excerpts from larger works, all on the subject of autumn. The editors have divided the selections into five parts: change, endings, work, harvest, and thanksgiving. They do a good job of introducing both the parts and the individual pieces, so the entire anthology hangs together well. Only at the end did I wonder how well some of the individual pieces reflected their theme, but they were still good to read. The writings mostly come from North America and western Europe, and most of them are modern, but there are also older and/or non-Western selections included. I recommend reading this book at the most autumnal time of year in your area, just to add to the atmosphere of it all.