I know, I missed September the first. I thought it, all day, and all day yesterday, too, but I never reached my blog with it. I've always said that September and especially September the first is more like the New Year to me than the New Year is. This is when everything begins again. No matter the weather - and it's hot here now, not like January (in the Northern hemisphere) - people are through with summer. Life as we know it is beginning again. Classes and courses and new programs are beginning again. Plans and routines and itineraries are beginning again. Out with the old, in with the new. Yes, yes, all of that. So I spent the weekend throwing out clothes, well, not throwing out, but putting them into donation boxes for use by other people. I now have a pile of empty hangers and one whole (new!) empty garment bag. That feels pretty good. I was motivated by the fact that I hadn't worn most of the clothes in over two years but also by the recognition of how little I needed while I was on my cruise: 109 days of looking like Li'l Orphan Annie changed my attitude toward what I wore. (Is anyone reading this old enough to remember that the comic strip character wore one red dress for years and years and years?)

That doesn't explain or excuse why I didn't report here on the first of September. I think I had a Writer's Block. (Writer's Blog?) It happens. Too much to say, but too vague to say it. The end of so many things, summer things and memories paralyzed me. I was still basking in the luxuries of the cruise and not coming to terms with the realities of my life. I am normally quite a frugal person and it was hard letting go of profligate, wasteful indulgences. I must be disciplined again and careful. I am a glass-half-full kind of person but I must get used to the half-empty glass in terms of my budget. I need to count my blessings more carefully.

Does that explain my reluctance to acknowledge my "new year"? Do I understand? I am alone, I know that. But sometimes I forget to blow the whistle. No one else is going to. And sometimes I forget to listen. I'll try to now.

So happy September the third.

I'm still reading in my spare time - lots of time on the bus the other day. I Just finished Kate Atkinson's newest novel, "A God in Ruins". Mixed reactions. I still haven't made up my mind about her, although her jacket blurb says, "Few will dispute that [this book] proves once again that Kate Atkinson is one of the finest novelists of our age." I wouldn't go that far.

I read a couple of her early novels that were in my building library while I waited for "Left Early, Took my Dog" which I ordered because I liked the title. I didn't really enjoy any of them and stopped. But then I saw a TV mini-series, a BBC production based on three or four of her novels featuring Jackson Brodie. I remembered him and liked the actor who lead Brodie - Jason Priest {I think). Even so, I passed on "Life After Life". I'd had enough. But then (again) I found it in the ship library and read it and enjoyed it a lot, so much so that when I came home I ordered "A God in Ruins". And now I'm confused again.

Why can't writers tell a story in chronological order any more? Atkinson leaps around in time, telling her story in chapters that identify the time her characters are living through, backwards and forwards. She drops terrible nuggets of information that she will elucidate sooner or later, major events like a death or a discovery that the reader will have to wait for and piece together. I could never cotton onto one of her major characters, she was so disgusting at the beginning. Later, I'm supposed to understand what this woman went through that made her what she was. Not believable, also unforgivable.

The various chapters, set in different times, succeed in varying degrees. The best are like mini novellas or short stories and quite gripping. Others I could barely wade through. Are you familiar with the expression that assesses quality when it is spotty? Well, this book to me is" like that curate's egg": good in parts. (Curates were known to be poor so they couldn't afford good eggs.)

Neverteless, Or notwithstanding. Go ahead and read it for yourself.