Before the Readathon
Two weeks ago, I was perusing the library with Lanie. There are few things in life that rival the act of stalking up and down bookshelves, pulling out a book with a beautiful cover, sticking a book in one’s bag. When Kailee and I were children, our mother sat us down and the three of us decorated tote bags to use for the library. The way libraries smell, the way they are a temple of paper, I feel at peace there.
This trip, and I brought back a few literary fiction pieces. I have been wanting to read Minor Detail and The Iliac Crest for some time now. I saw the latter in World Literature Today and have had it on my list ever since. Minor Detail has been all over Booktube in the news of this ongoing genocide. I feel a responsibility to read globally, to hear the words of people who are surviving despite all knives held at their throats. I’ve been wanting to read books by people under occupation, from Palestine to Tibet to Hawaii. That is another story for another day, but the big takeaway is that I feel that I need to listen now, to take in the stories that people are telling of their own resilience.
On the docket is Kate Atkinson’s Normal Rules Don’t Apply, a short story collection. Like with Uwem Akpan’s New York, My Village, I scooped this up because of the cover. The saying is literally to eschew judging a book by its cover, but I do, and I am not afraid to admit that. Beautiful books are an experience of a myriad of colors, and I will die on that hill.
I’m going over a few ebooks as well, including Me Talk Pretty One Day, a book my mother introduced me to even though I never got to read it before. I have on my kindle a copy of The Great Gatsby, which I am ashamed to confess that I have never read before — it is time to rectify that.
Here is how it is breaking down:
Friday, I am reading New York, My Village, Minor Detail, and The Iliac Crest. Saturday, I am tackling The Seas (something I have checked out of the library four times and still haven’t gotten to), Normal Rules Don’t Apply, and Me Talk Pretty One Day. I’ll round out the weekend on Sunday with Measure for Measure, The Great Gatsby, and The Folded Clock. All of these are quite short books; I don’t imagine that I will struggled to make my way through them, but perhaps that is my hubris. I love what I read, and I am going to enjoy this time to sit with books and simply be.
When I was working on my first novel, I had a strange relationship with reading. I felt like if I weren’t actively writing, then I was wasting my life and my time, which transferred even to when I was reading. It is an old saying, but it is true that to be a writer, one must first be a reader. Reading a book is never a waste of time, and I knew that logically, but it was difficult to conceptualize myself as anything other than a hardworking, aspiring wordsmith. With this new novel, Project Novocaine, I am trying to maintain a better reading-writing balance, an improved work-life exchange. A readathon is a wonderful thing, a productive thing.
Also, the last readathon that I completed, I had a library and thick beanbag chairs to cozy up in. Now, I am in my studio downtown, which is lovely, but finding a space to read comfortably is a miniature challenge, a source of literary tension if you would. I think that I am too excited to care. I’ll sit with my cats on my bed, no matter how much that irritates them.
It’s a new life every day. I’m seeing these books as a beginning. Happy reading, everyone.
