Before the Readathon
My TBR cart is heavy with words.
As I mentioned in one of my last blogs from 2022, I am sifting through close to thirty books on my currently reading shelf. This hefty number originates in my itty bitty attention span — I have to bounce from book to book every few minutes — and it presents some challenges and opportunities for the sort of reader I want to be. A lot of these books are re-reads, from This is All (I read this originally in high school) to The Diary of Anais Nin (one of my favorite books). They speak to the sort of thoughts I want to think whilst pacing around my room, to the sort of ideas I want to explore and cultivate while lounging in bed with my cats.
I like to think.
There is such pleasure in feeling a thought sliding around one’s skull, the possibilities that open when an idea oozes into being. The books that I read and have read support this intellectual process, tickling my mind like they are playing a piano. So for this particular readathon — which I believe is my third or fourth — I am focusing on the stories and nonfiction pieces that facilitate that cognitive bonfire. I’ll be taking in:
After the Fall. Richard Gray is a leading European scholar of American literature. Because I aspire to be an expert in comparative literature someday, I’m always drawn to books like this, and even more so because this book has impacted how I approach my novel, Canis Major. Within Canis Major there is a tragedy that bears resemblance to our own world. Reading After the Fall for the second time is an exercise in trying to place my own work in the modern zeitgeist, even if no one else reads it. I do hope to write something that captures at least part of that shaky era and how we as readers and writers and, yes, thinkers can heal. What more could anyone want for her story?
This is All. Mentioned above, this is also another re-read for me. This was popular with my friends in high school, and I purchased it for the sole purpose of giving myself some ideas for my own diary (the book is told in pillow book form). Nonetheless, it is an intriguing character study and a great trot around my memories of sitting on the floor in my freshman geometry class, reading instead of doing homework.
The Essential Writings of Christian Mysticism. I am an agnostic, but there is ever a part of me looking for something bigger than myself, something that strums two souls into a single harmony. Spirituality being what it is — which is to say, compelling — I want to read about mysticism across religions. As a long-term devotee of Rumi and his Masnavi, I had this urge to read about pursuing God as though God were a beating heart, like a universal drum, that simultaneously throbs under the surface of the earth and in the kingdom of the stars. It is an adventure, chasing some sort of inner meaning.
The Diary of Anais Nin. I don’t believe that this book needs anymore introduction for anyone who has read this blog (Hi, Mom and Kelly). I used to read this book in the libraries at San Juan College when I was a teenager, and it was my habit to select a volume at random, dive into a page that was equally random, and allow the words to lope over me like rain. I now own all seven volumes and am in the midst of annotating them.
The Count of Monte Cristo. I don’t have enough common sense to be intimidated by big books. I received this book for Christmas, and I promptly went out to find a pen set that matched the cover so I could annotate it. Once I finish this, it will officially be the longest book I have ever read. I entertain no delusions that I will finish this within the next twenty-four hours, but I am thrilled by books that are so substantial that they could, if we allowed it, sink into the ground like a magnet and take root there, perhaps blossoming into a tree. I’m psyched.
Should I have time, I will try and sneak The Great Hunt (also a re-read) in. Or perhaps The Hidden Spring. It’s all a mystery.
It is time to get started on some books.
