The Blog of Wistar Watts Murray

If you go trick or treating in Lovingston, Virginia, you can expect to see:

1) historic houses with haunted front yards bombed with synthetic spiderwebs;

2) goth teenagers in extra-wide, circa 1996 skateboard pants;

3) a piglet in a tiger cub costume (and some other people);

4) a coven of six-year-old Disney princesses holding hands, clotheslining other children on their way to the candy;

5) preternaturally smiley and generous people handing out neon glow sticks and Ziplock bags stuffed full of Sweet Tarts, Whoppers, and Sprees. They were positioned on both sides of the Lovingston main street, doling out their goods not from a front porch, but from giant garbage bags on the sidewalk. “Those people are awesome,” I said. “They gave me my own glow bracelet. It’s pink.” “Seems suspicious,” said Darren. Then I reached into my candy sack and found a religious pamphlet published by Billy Graham and company. On the cover were cute cartoon kids dressed in Halloween costumes. They were walking up a shining path lit by pumpkins with trick or treat bags in their hands. At the end of the path was a gold mansion where God lived. Apparently God gives out the best candy.

I like them all, and it is my and not the authors’ failure that I have not finished them. But the stack is getting taller and I keep going to the library and I keep going on Amazon.com and now I have birthday gift certificates to spend. New books are constantly coming into my life and distracting me. What should I concentrate on?

Martin Amis - Experience: A Memoir

Saul Bellow - The Adventures of Augie March

Charles Baxter - Burning Down the House: Essays on Fiction

Daniel Amen, MD - Change Your Brain, Change Your Life

Marisha Pessl - Special Topics in Calamity Physics

Walter Kaufmann - Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist

David L. Holmes - The Faiths of the Founding Fathers

T.C. Boyle - If the River Was Whiskey

Don DeLillo - End Zone

Daniel J. Meador - Unforgotten

Virginia Woolf - To the Lighthouse

I feel like right now changing my brain and changing my life are priorities, even though I usually don’t buy into self help. And then I also have this Jehovah’s Witness pamphlet to read - Would You Like to Know More about the Bible?

It makes me feel important, like they think my soul is worth saving. I told them I’d be sure to read the Bible and we could talk about it in a few weeks. I told them I’d swing by their church some Sunday. Two Jehovah’s Witness ladies came to my house a few years ago, and I led them on too. I had no idea they’d actually take me up on my invitation to return for a religious discussion. When they arrived at my door for the second time, remembering my name and everything I had told them about me, I was grumpy and hungover and not as nice as the first time. Not as religiously oriented. Not as happy to be woken up by God’s knock on the door. In fact, my name is probably on a list somewhere. Maybe today’s ladies will find it before they make the mistake of coming back and trying their luck again. On many mornings I would rather sleep than be saved.