There is nothing like reading the night away, or at the very least the illusion of reading the night away. Normally when I pull out of a word induced coma it's at least 2 am. 11:45 is the new "late." Well, at least when I rise at 6 am anyhow.
I jest, but really I do love it. I think it is the setting. The bright, yet indirect light of the corner lamp and the dining room, the pitch dark outside the open window, the pleasant breeze of the fans, also the only notable noise in the room. Knowing my husband is breathing deep in slumber in the other room.
It is even more welcomed tonight since it has been so long since my last indulgence.
I feel like my free reading up to this point (the past few months, but especially this past free month) has been flitty, nervous, inattentive. I've been bouncing from book to book, leaving them molested with creases and dust, having been forgotten, laying open, face down (gravity the best bookmark) on the floor near the bed, on the dresser, the top of the lamp, the bathroom counter, the windowsill... bookmarks are a pleasant surprise if they are to be found still lingering nearby or, heaven forbid, inside the book.
Even after grad school I wasn't being sucked in. My to-read shelf was over flowing but with what? Books I figured I'd read when I ran out of money to spend at the bookstore? Books I had some kind of passion for for some reason, but that moment having been, at least momentarily, lost, leaving the book with only a puzzling kind of value? Surely this looks interesting, but just not right now. My "junk food for the mind" (I'm stealing this term from a friend) series that I had the forethought to purchase the rest of ahead of time, but not in the right order, missing the precise next book I need? (And regardless feeling reluctant to take it up again just yet.)
I think my birthday trip to the Borders was needed. However, enjoyable and fitting as it was, it felt a little orchestrated. I started in the front because it was the front and normally it takes me an hour to navigate past this front of forward facing covers and read-me titles, and this was true again, but this time not because I was genuinely captured. I was trying to hard.
I found myself getting aggravated with narrators over little things, like finding barely plausible excuses to describe themselves (physically). I began to feel snobbish in a way, not only of the text, but of the design. I stopped counting after finding 7 books with a dress on the cover. A disembodied garment with no wearer, but an implicated life of its own. I noticed the first because it reminded me of the Memory Keeper's Daughter and the rest because they were all just so like that, even the cartoony ones. I didn't bother to pick the rest up and became exasperated at the mere sight of them. (This was before even making it through the front of the store, need I remind you?) Did they know? Had they done it on purpose? Was there a study somewhere that said readers were drawn to floating dresses? Had they not one creative bone left in those mouse hugging, Indesign navigating fingers?
I would have continued fumbling, too consciously, over the whole process had it not been for the saving grace of an intelligent yet fun memoir (If I lived in that House My Life Would be Perfect), an intriguingly strict non-fic on animals (Animals Make Us Human), and, buried in the "Literature" section a surprising novel with a strangely appropriate subject matter, Admission (whose title I was beginning to question the meaning of). This book is heavy and awkward in both setting and language and even the outer margins. Yet, it is endearingly different, easy, and challenging. I need to learn to read it and am happy to do so. It is, in fact, the very cause of my recent word induced coma, one I am contemplating returning to when I am done here (despite the call of the large cool bed).
These finds, however good, were each of a certain quality of writing. I felt justified, but overly selective. And I would have pondered further on the effect of my MFA and my ability to enjoy anything other than a classic, a master piece, or something terribly unique had I not stumbled upon a $2 clearance book called Skelanimals containing short, not always flowing poems about dead animals because "dead animals need love too." It's a children's book, which for that price tag, I happily added to my already unusual stack.
It is arguably terribly unique, yet faddy in its own way, and just goofy enough to know I still care about such things. Though secretly I wonder if that is not an art in itself, this other type of book. This awkward humor and surprisingly bright cover.
But to ponder on this would leave me back to where I began, and I clearly am not ready to quite think of myself as a selective reader, or to face what that term even really means.
For now, I am done analyzing. Instead I am happy to just be grateful. These books saved me, gave me back my reading life, gave me back these late night reading sessions, gave me back books that were molested not by gravity and forgetfulness, but by reading and dog earring and dropping a bit of microwaved fettuccine Alfredo on page 125 because the book was too good to put down, even to eat with proper aim.
They restored, not my faith in literature, but my faith in myself as a reader. Confirming, things were still as they should be -- that it is my heart and not my mind that leaves itself open, and that it isn't me who chooses. The books choose me.
I jest, but really I do love it. I think it is the setting. The bright, yet indirect light of the corner lamp and the dining room, the pitch dark outside the open window, the pleasant breeze of the fans, also the only notable noise in the room. Knowing my husband is breathing deep in slumber in the other room.
It is even more welcomed tonight since it has been so long since my last indulgence.
I feel like my free reading up to this point (the past few months, but especially this past free month) has been flitty, nervous, inattentive. I've been bouncing from book to book, leaving them molested with creases and dust, having been forgotten, laying open, face down (gravity the best bookmark) on the floor near the bed, on the dresser, the top of the lamp, the bathroom counter, the windowsill... bookmarks are a pleasant surprise if they are to be found still lingering nearby or, heaven forbid, inside the book.
Even after grad school I wasn't being sucked in. My to-read shelf was over flowing but with what? Books I figured I'd read when I ran out of money to spend at the bookstore? Books I had some kind of passion for for some reason, but that moment having been, at least momentarily, lost, leaving the book with only a puzzling kind of value? Surely this looks interesting, but just not right now. My "junk food for the mind" (I'm stealing this term from a friend) series that I had the forethought to purchase the rest of ahead of time, but not in the right order, missing the precise next book I need? (And regardless feeling reluctant to take it up again just yet.)
I think my birthday trip to the Borders was needed. However, enjoyable and fitting as it was, it felt a little orchestrated. I started in the front because it was the front and normally it takes me an hour to navigate past this front of forward facing covers and read-me titles, and this was true again, but this time not because I was genuinely captured. I was trying to hard.
I found myself getting aggravated with narrators over little things, like finding barely plausible excuses to describe themselves (physically). I began to feel snobbish in a way, not only of the text, but of the design. I stopped counting after finding 7 books with a dress on the cover. A disembodied garment with no wearer, but an implicated life of its own. I noticed the first because it reminded me of the Memory Keeper's Daughter and the rest because they were all just so like that, even the cartoony ones. I didn't bother to pick the rest up and became exasperated at the mere sight of them. (This was before even making it through the front of the store, need I remind you?) Did they know? Had they done it on purpose? Was there a study somewhere that said readers were drawn to floating dresses? Had they not one creative bone left in those mouse hugging, Indesign navigating fingers?
I would have continued fumbling, too consciously, over the whole process had it not been for the saving grace of an intelligent yet fun memoir (If I lived in that House My Life Would be Perfect), an intriguingly strict non-fic on animals (Animals Make Us Human), and, buried in the "Literature" section a surprising novel with a strangely appropriate subject matter, Admission (whose title I was beginning to question the meaning of). This book is heavy and awkward in both setting and language and even the outer margins. Yet, it is endearingly different, easy, and challenging. I need to learn to read it and am happy to do so. It is, in fact, the very cause of my recent word induced coma, one I am contemplating returning to when I am done here (despite the call of the large cool bed).
These finds, however good, were each of a certain quality of writing. I felt justified, but overly selective. And I would have pondered further on the effect of my MFA and my ability to enjoy anything other than a classic, a master piece, or something terribly unique had I not stumbled upon a $2 clearance book called Skelanimals containing short, not always flowing poems about dead animals because "dead animals need love too." It's a children's book, which for that price tag, I happily added to my already unusual stack.
It is arguably terribly unique, yet faddy in its own way, and just goofy enough to know I still care about such things. Though secretly I wonder if that is not an art in itself, this other type of book. This awkward humor and surprisingly bright cover.
But to ponder on this would leave me back to where I began, and I clearly am not ready to quite think of myself as a selective reader, or to face what that term even really means.
For now, I am done analyzing. Instead I am happy to just be grateful. These books saved me, gave me back my reading life, gave me back these late night reading sessions, gave me back books that were molested not by gravity and forgetfulness, but by reading and dog earring and dropping a bit of microwaved fettuccine Alfredo on page 125 because the book was too good to put down, even to eat with proper aim.
They restored, not my faith in literature, but my faith in myself as a reader. Confirming, things were still as they should be -- that it is my heart and not my mind that leaves itself open, and that it isn't me who chooses. The books choose me.
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