In the gallery of broken new year’s resolutions, my reading promises to myself stand out. More than exercise, more then diet, more than deep breaths before saying something incredibly stupid, I promise to read things. A short story a day, a poetry collection a week, all of Dickens (kidding, I’m not that deluded). Sometimes I don’t even make it through a week.
In my family, we have an expression: “Look! A squirrel!” when someone is distracted or not paying attention. It’s for when we can’t seem to keep ourselves from looking away from what’s important towards the bright shiny object (the squirrel). I do that constantly with the books I choose.
I want to read more classics, I want to read more poetry. More literature in translation, or NYRB imprints. More novels I hadn’t heard of before I came across them in my favorite used bookstore. Instead, I end up reading whatever everyone is talking about, the bright shiny literary objects.
This is how I went from complete absorption in the first volume of Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time to Luster, by Raven Leilani. I’d put it on hold months ago at the library and when it showed up, I dug in.
I’m not saying it’s bad. The prose is funny and sharp and it’s clever. But it’s not for me. Multiple times, I stopped to ask myself why I was reading it, did I really want to spend time with these people right now? Then I would look at the ecstatic reviews and go back to it grudgingly, the way I’d go back to a huge bowl of tiramisu which I didn’t really like that much, but everyone else can’t be wrong, can they?
So my goal (even as I finish this book because I am so close to the end) is to allow myself to fall outside the hot new properties of the publishing world and read what I want to read. Maybe it will be a hot new property, or maybe it will be a return to Widmerpool and Anthony Powell’s world.
Kate Staples 