Before the Readathon
When I was a child, I had a vivid idea of what my first trip abroad would look like, and none of it centered me as an active hero of my own life. I had some vision of someone saving me by taking me to Europe, to Mexico, to Japan, to Iran. At some point, we all have to realize that we are the heroes in our own lives, and for myself, that means that I am taking a solo journey to Edinburgh in a week or so.
I am frightened.
So much of me has been building to the possibility of being a traveler, and I did promise myself that my thirties would be mine, all mine. I keep thinking about what it would mean if I missed a flight or slept through an alarm. I am crowded with fears that have thus far suppressed any excitement, and I am trying to whip myself up into a state of happiness and hope: I am going to write in a coffee shop in Edinburgh. I am going to stretch my legs after a long flight. I am going to drink tea.
But Scotland does not come without preparations. I have five books to get through, ranging from memoir to classics. Enter the readathon. My goal is forty-eight hours to plow through these five books, two of which are quite short. The longest, Douglas Stuart’s Young Mungo, I am about a third of the way through already.
Readathons are special to me. They are something that, thus far, I have shared with my mother. We make a pot of tea (I am pleased to say that I am the person who converted my mother from coffee drinker to tea drinker), we sit in the library, and we tuck into our books. My mother was the one who taught me to read and to love reading, the one who taught me to journal, too.
So what am I reading?
Six books have made the docket. We have a memoir, Homelands by Chitra Ramaswamy. Because I am still listing in the opening pages, I am not quite certain what this is about. I know at the present moment that we are following the author as she interviews a Jewish man, Henry, who fled persecution in Nazi Germany as a teenager. Stories of this subject and nature are always important, must ever be passed along to the future generations, and so I am prepared to keep a reading journal chronicling my thoughts.
As mentioned above, I am working my way through Young Mungo. I can only describe reading this book as patrolling pages. It is written with Scottish vernacular — which is completely sensible — but as an American consumer, I do have to parse it at times. The reading experience brings to mind Marlon James and his A Brief History of Seven Killings. That book was a masterpiece that I just couldn’t connect with. I am doing a little better with Young Mungo in terms of forging some sort of threat between myself and the text, most likely because A Brief History of Seven Killings prepared me to stretch my linguistic diet.
Young Mungo, however, has a quality that is educational. While reading this, I am learning about pacing, which is quite slow in this book (we’re a third of the way through and have just met Mungo’s love interest, James). Like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie did with Americanah (my favorite book of the year thus far), Stuart has perfected the art of bringing up backstory without calling attention to it. Prior to Americanah, and probably Young Mungo, I had been compartmentalizing my writing, particularly with Cuyamungue’s chapters in my novel, Canis Major. There were moments dedicated to flashbacks, but now I want to experiment in sliding the information in among the action sequences. It is quite revolutionary for me as a writer.
Ali Smith’s Autumn is a book that I am going into blind. I know that it is the first book in a seasonal quartet, but that is the limit of my knowledge. I have a beautiful copy with a soft yellow cover. I do own Hotel World by Smith, but for some reason had never picked it up. This being my first Smith, Scotland’s “Nobel in waiting,” I am keen to see her strut her stuff paragraph after paragraph.
Next is The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. For a long time, I did not want to read this book, because I knew it was made into a tearjerker film starring Maggie Smith. Then I realized that the Maggie Smith film I was thinking about was The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne. Needless to say, I bopped my hand to my forehead.
No, I believe that The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is about a teacher and her pupils. Possibly at an all-girls school? We shall see, we shall see.
Outside of Scotland reading, I have two books to read for pure enjoyment. The first is Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Velvet Was the Night. I read Mexican Gothic last year and enjoyed it but wasn’t blown away by it. Like with Young Mungo, I am about a third of the way into it, and I am at the same level of enjoyment as Mexican Gothic. I think Moreno-Garcia tells compelling stories, and I suppose that is what matters in the end.
Finally, we are rounding out with the superb Love and Other Ways of Dying. This is an essay collection, and I have read about half of the pieces in this in my Essence of Place class last year. Michael Paterniti has crafted essays of sublime beauty, one of which, “Never Forget,” is among the most powerful and disturbing things I have ever consumed. It may take me longer to finish this book, as it has always been slower reading for me.
Normally, before a readathon, I peruse the library to see what I want to read. Today and tomorrow is about homework. These books put me one step closer to a Scottish adventure, no matter how queasy I am about going abroad alone.
See you on the other side of the books.
