Before the Readathon

Today I went to the library, selected ten books and packed them tightly in my bag, and took a requisite photograph of my bounty for the thumbnail of this blog. Getting back into blogging has been like stretching a lazy muscle, but, more to the point, I now have a surfeit of books that seem in the taste of what I am looking for these days. All through January and February, I contented myself with some fantasy romance that left a lot to be desired (but damn it if I didn’t read them every day), but my eyes are craving a different sort of book for this forty-eight hour readathon. That is to say, I am not eager to consume more fun, hot trash (it has its place on every bookcase), but instead something profound.

Sophisticated.

This is a subjective word and, I would argue, a nonsensical one. Does it refer to award winners? To the ones my favorite intellectual booktubers recommended? That must be it. It must be that I want to be swept away in good literary and surreal fiction, or just a book that has a lot of profound things to say.

I am kicking off the readathon with Butter Honey Pig Bread by Francesca Ekwuyasi, The Dream of a Common Language by Adrienne Rich, and Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell. The latter is inspired by mother, who read Hamnet and was so enthusiastic about it that she announced that it was one of her favorite books in the whole of her life as a reader. If I finish those, I have some Cesar Aira, as well as Sjon’s CoDex 1962 and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s masterpiece Americanah. For a long time, I have wanted to pick up Adichie’s We Should All Be Feminists, so Americanah is a piece that I have high expectations for.

With regards to Sjon, I read The Blue Fox a few years ago and was, admittedly, simultaneously bewildered and moved by it. It was a fast read, and part of the plot slithered out of my mind the moment I put it to bed, but I am excited to pick up something with a smidge more heft, to see how Sjon’s quirky and experimental style functions when it has to go the protracted distance with a bulky page count.

There is a classic on my list, Knut Hamsun’s Hunger, which has sat, patient and tapping its toes on the floor, on my to-read list for several years now. Despite this, I know little about the book. I think I would like to keep it that way, for when I finally approach it, I want to have my hands out like I am coaxing a deer.

What is it about a book that makes it intellectual or, to repeat the meaningless word, sophisticated? An arrogant part of me wants to say, “Because they’re obscure, duh.” But Americanah is not obscure and the idea that a book has to be looked over by the current intelligentsia to be worthwhile is balderdash anyway. In the end, I think what I am looking for is a book that has something to say. Beyond mere themes or motifs, I am anxious to see a book that imparts a lesson for me as a reader and me as a writer and me as a human being puzzling to make sense of the world that I inhabit. That all of us inhabit.

Is that what literature is? An apparatus of metaphors and lessons, turning like a fan over our heads every day? I want to think of it as something more ethereal, a calculus instead of a discrete math. Maybe I think that these ten books that I stuffed in my library tote bag will bring me some enlightenment and that is what I am craving.