I wonder if there's a word for getting bogged down in a book you wish you hadn't started because there's another one you'd rather be reading. Or in this case at least fifty other ones, right here on my shelves, and hundreds more that I haven't even discovered yet.

Whatever that word is, I took remedial action today. I gave this book every chance, but at the pace I was slogging through it, I thought I should start paying five cents a day to the person I borrowed it from. So I skipped from page 20, where I'd been stuck for about two weeks, through to the end, making sure to glance at every page, just so I could say I did that.

Then I started another book and got to page 70 in one sitting. (I thought I'd borrowed this one, too, but on further reflection I'm no longer sure. That's the problem with keeping other people's stuff for so long. You forget and think it's yours, or can't remember whose library you've robbed.)

Today was as close to perfect, weather-wise, as any we've had this year, which is why I spent so much of the afternoon on the porch reading. Perfect, to me, is hot but not enough to cause sweat to stain the pages, with a slight breeze but not enough to make my bookmark go flying across the yard like a mad butterfly.

As we mercifully head into October, leaving behind a September that feels as if it began in a different country in another century, I'm looking forward to savoring every one of these dazzling days, until they're gone. At the end of October we slip out of daylight savings time, and before long the dimming light will fade in the middle of the afternoon, before I'm ready to give over to evening. The coming of winter gives a sense of urgency to enjoying the good fortunes of living in the Bay Area in autumn.

While I was sitting on the porch, I was visited by a couple of the lizards that live in my garden. When I sit still enough, they get up close. There were two of them, one much smaller than the other, but they didn't seem to take notice of each other. At one point the larger one ran under my chair and headed straight for the corner of the sliding screen door, where it's patched with masking tape. The landlord promised me a new door over a year ago, and yet here today I found myself thinking this lizard had seen an opening and wanted to get inside the house. Unfortunately (for him), he slipped trying to climb onto the sill and fell backwards onto the mat. After picking himself up, he looked around as if to see if anyone had noticed the indignity. I didn't let him know that I'd seen it all.