labor day came and went and we shed what was left of our summer skin

Look guys, I have friends! A big group went to the Spanish Fork reservoir on Labor Day. There we are. Bye summer.

I loved this summer. Sometimes it was boring, but mostly it was perfect. I don't know if I'll ever have a summer as carefree as the one I just had and that hurts my heart. Growing up is hard to do. One of my favorite parts about summer was the books I got to read without feeling guilty that I wasn't studying. Here they are in order of when I read them:

In Cold Blood- Truman Capote

From Beirut to Jerusalem- Thomas L. Friedman

Jane Eyre- Charlotte Bronte

Steve Jobs- Walter Isaacson

Visit From the Goon Squad- Jennifer Egan

Cat's Cradle- Kurt Vonnegut

How to Win Friends and Influence People- Dale Carnegie

The Sunflower- Simon Wisenthal

Norwegian Wood- Haruki Murakami

South of the Border, West of the Sun- Haruki Murakami

Norwegian Wood and Steve Jobs are tied for my favorite books of the summer. I would very much like to read Murakami's entire works. His writing is beautiful. I know I said I would write reviews but I really want to take a quick nap before my class. I will share my favorite quote from South of the Border:

Because memory and sensations are so uncertain, so biased, we always rely on a certain reality- call it an alternate reality- to prove the reality of events. To what extent facts we recognize as such really are as they seem, and to what extent these are facts merely because we label them as such, is an impossible distinction to draw. Therefore in order to pin down reality as reality, we need another reality to relativize the first. Yet that other reality requires a third reality to serve as its grounding. An endless chain is created within our consciousness, and it is the maintenance of this chain which produces the sensation that we are actually here, that we ourselves exist. But something can happen to sever that chain and we are at a loss. What is real? Is reality on this side of the break in the chain? Or over there, on the other side?

I'm almost ready to transition into fall, but not quite. I think new boots and schoolbag will help ease my descent.