Andrew Greer

It’s that time of year. A nip in the breeze. Candy corn. (I repeat: candy corn.) The trees shifting their color palette as they sigh into Autumn’s temperatures, signaling their boughs to close shop for the winter. Everything heads back home. Go out for the morning and you might need a light jacket. Sit on the porch with a good book and you might need a blanket.

Speaking of reading, October is the month where I get a bit sparky over spooky and crack open a new-to-me Stephen King tome. (This is not an invitation to discuss or debate the threat reading King poses to my psychosis or sanity. It’s one novel a year. Everything in moderation, folks.)

I typically purchase my annual copy from a local used bookstore on some credit I accrued from trading in books I long ago read and long ago ran out of space to store. But I would sleep on books if I could. I love books. I love the smell of the pages. The feel of the binding as it un-creases in my palm. The fonts. The titles. After music, words, especially words printed on a page, have been my greatest love affair.

All the stories in books. Not just within the outline of the tale that is published on the pages, but the layers of lives embedded beneath the ink. The author. The editor. The publisher. The printing press. The reader. All the traumas and triumphs of our very real and very human lives influencing and fashioning and culturing every yarn ever spun.

And then books get passed down, from generation to generation, over decades, even hundreds of years. With all those pieces of us within those pages. All the mystery of all of us that remains here—that lives here—long after our physical bodies have been laid 6-feet under the ground or scattered to the wind.

You see, I believe in ghosts …

Read the rest on my Substack. Link in bio. 🍂