to read or to re-read, that is the question

a crisis

Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

Last week I had a crisis. As far as crises go, this one was fairly trivial. And yet I was still completely paralyzed in its grip.

I didn’t know what I wanted to read. I was a hundred pages into The Master and Margarita, but my attention had waned from it. I tried to once again pick up the epic tome of Simone De Beauvoir’s seminal text The Second Sex, but it was decidedly too heady. And I attempted the much-anticipated To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara. Thirty pages in and it just wasn't right. It was close, but not quite right. I had turned into Goldilocks.

This did beg the question, what exactly was right. After some caffeine fuelled pondering I discovered what I wanted, what I needed, was comfort. I wanted the book version of being held by my boyfriend after a long day, my cat purring contentedly on my lap, the feeling of the perfect cup of tea, and rainy days, and warm beds. I wanted a book that felt like home.

I knew just the book. I remember the first time I read A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara, and the second, and every time after that. I can confidently say it is one of my favourite books, ever. Getting caught in the wonderfully weaved story of Jude, Willem, JB and Malcom is a gift. The writing is a gift. This book hits it out of the park on very front. And, this book feels like home to me. It brings me comfort.

So, now I bet you're wondering what exactly my crisis is?

Well you see A Little Life is 720 pages long. It is no mere feat. I am not a particularly fast reader (much to the disbelief of the people that know me). I don’t read quickly, I just read A LOT. Since I fell head over heels for literature at eleven I have been consuming books of all sorts at a steady and consistent rate. I am always reading at least one, sometimes two books at any given moment. You can look into my bag at any event and there will be a book settled amongst the debris. I was then struck with this familiar anxiety. It is the specific anxiety I feel whenever I think too hard about all the books there are to read, like in the world. The sheer volume of content is too large to fathom. Where others have bucket lists, I have a master to-read list. It is vast, and ever expanding, and it makes me anxious.

So this is the dilemma I faced. Do I re-read this beloved book of mine, commune with old friends? Or do I forge ahead into the long list of friends yet to be made?

This quandary plunged me head first into a tempest of anxiety. I can feel this yearning for comfort, but I am also petrified of failing. Of not reading widely enough, or often enough, or just enough. I have a stupid Goodreads challenge. I do this every year. I set myself an unrealistic goal of books to complete for the year, and the satisfaction of knocking another off is tainted by the little schedule telling me how many books I am behind if I wish to reach my goal. I am already one book behind. And this whole productivity, list-checking mindset is infuriating. Do I read only to complete some silly challenge? I have in the past intentionally shied away from long books, as I know it would take me ‘too long’ to read them. I still haven’t started David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest (even though it has been littering my bookshelf for years), as that mammoth book would take me a month, at least to complete, and thus completely throwing off my schedule.

Why have I allowed my most sacred joy (reading) to be tainted by the pervasive hustle narrative of our culture?

I used to read for joy. I picked books that sparked curiosity and wonder. I trawled libraries, reading blurbs and just taking a punt. I didn’t care how long it took. I just liked doing it, doing the reading. Now, I made this thing I love into work, into a competition, into anxiety. No more.

After too many hours of pontificating, and a flurry of frustrated tears, I just thought fuck it. I picked up A Little Life and began reading. I decided to let myself free of all those silly expectations and pressures and to just choose the joyful thing instead. And you know what? I’m relishing in every word.