What to read and how to know what to read are some of the things people contact me about the most. I absolutely love it when people want to talk about books, so I’m always glad to get your notes and happy to explore ideas with you. But I thought we might talk a little more generally about that subject in this space this month.
As many of you know, though I am currently working on a university English degree, most of my reading disciplines I developed entirely on my own. I say this because I am often surprised by the timidity people have in talking about the types of books they like or the books that feel accessible to them, etc. Reading is so common to most of us, I think we forget that it is a skill that evolves with use. The more you put yourself in contact with challenging texts, and the greater the variety of texts, the better you will be at understanding and retaining them. I have always read absolutely anything that interested me, from young adult genre novels to literary fiction, from nonfiction to academic commentary that was/is way over my head. I have consistently and intentionally attempted books that were too difficult for me. My early Goodreads reviews often went: “I mostly didn’t understand this book, but I liked what she had to say about ___.” It didn’t matter if I understood it all; I almost always came away with some new thread of understanding that I didn’t have before. I’ve done this all my adult life, but it is essentially how my classes work now too. I wade through an enormous amount of literature, talk about it, write about it, and occasionally retain something. The learning comes when this is repeated over many books or many classes. A poet shows up in a history class, a political theorist turns up in a novel, an essay about writing illustrates a technique in a short story. You dive into a deep pond and swim; slowly you become a fish.
But how do you find these books to swim in? There’s absolutely nothing wrong with just reading bestsellers or beach novels. My first rule for a reading life is that it should be pleasurable. But if you want to challenge yourself and develop your ability to find pleasure in new kinds of books there are many ways to go about it. You could use a formal approach, like following a university literature list (here’s one from New College Oxford) (and one from Berkeley) or a library list (The Library 100). I love a good list, but I often find that reading one selection after another from a list like that leads to a feeling of disjointedness. I prefer an interest-led approach that allows me to make connections and follow them, something I think of as roaming.
In a roaming approach, I might start with a list, but as soon as something starts catching my attention, I wander off the path and follow it. It might go like this: a character in a novel quotes Sylvia Plath: “I eat men like air.” I look up the poem, I look up the book, which I read and find vaguely disturbing, but also, who can ever forget “Out of the ash/I rise with my red hair/And I eat men like air”? I read articles about Plath. I read a biography of Plath. I discover Plath is a lot different than I originally thought. The bio tells me she liked Auden. I buy a collection of Auden but I don’t read it. I think about Plath’s hunger to be both a mother and a serious writer. I read Rachel Cusk’s A Life’s Work: On Becoming a Mother. I read Rachel Cusk’s Outline Trilogy. Cusk has a short story on “the self in visual art” in the New Yorker which takes my breath away. I think about art and artists. There’s an article in the Guardian about the painters Celia Paul and Lucian Freud. I look up Paul and am mesmerized by her portraits. I order her new book, Letters to Gwen John, even though I know almost nothing about either of the artists. The book goes on my To Read shelf with Auden. Celia Paul was 18 when she met Lucian Freud (54). I read Claire Dederer’s Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma about what we are supposed to do with artists whose personal lives make us cringe (or worse). And on it goes.
This roaming and enrichment can go on forever. The first thing I do when something begins to sparkle at the edges of my attention is start googling. What else has the author written? Is there a documentary? A well-written criticism of their work? A movie adaptation? A People magazine article where they reveal the music that inspires them? What other books get recommended to me if I plug this title into Goodreads?
Do this over and over and you find that you are suddenly recognizing a current of connectedness that links artists, writers, and thinkers from every part of life. It’s a lovely pond to swim in. Of course none of this even touches the other riches available through re-reading, marking up books, keeping commonplace books, writing your own summaries or thoughts about what you read, doing a deep dive into a time period, or an author’s oeuvre, or exploring a niche genre (how about Afrofuturism or Native American Horror?) , reading author biographies, listening to book podcasts, joining literary book groups, taking classes, etc. The pond reveals its depths, widens into a sea, and you discover you will never reach the opposite shore.
***
Phew! That was a lot! I don’t know if any of it was helpful or not, but often, it seems people just don’t know where to start. I say start where you are now. See what is sparkling at you, research your favorite author, find their influences, find early writers in their genre, or look for new writers that are experimenting and taking the genre in new directions. Most of all, you should feel excited by what you read and not worried about if anyone else likes it. I guarantee you someone somewhere does. Perhaps in your travels you will find that person, or a group of people, who feel the same. And then you can swim even deeper.
I hope February is being good to you. Let me know what you are reading and exploring, and let’s enjoy the last of the dark season while it is with us!
tonia
