Read about it

For some reason, I suddenly have a desire to start keeping a record of the books I’m reading.

What has prompted this desire, I cannot say. Do I think I’m so famous and well regarded in literary circles that the world is clamouring to know what I’ve been reading? Um…….no. I am not even deluded enough to think that my friends, family or casual aquaintances are interested in viewing a list of the books I’ve read/am reading. I’m pretty certain it could be of no interest to strangers who land on this blog. Hell, let’s face it, even my imaginary readers, as supportive as those lovely people are, have no reason to be interested in a list of books that I have read, since they would be unable to read them anyway.

So why do I suddenly have this urge to record a list of  the books I’ve read?

Perhaps it’s a desire to enrich my own writing with better recall of what I’ve read. Perhaps I want to see what is revealed about myself through the list of books that I have lately chosen to read. Perhaps it’s just another ploy to create a diversion, in an effort to avoid thinking about my brother’s death last September.

But if I was to be completely honest,  I would have to admit that I’m thinking about writing down the books I’ve read since my brother died. Again, I’m not really sure why.

Maybe I want to check to see if I’ve been reading books that seem appropriate to someone who is grieving. Or, conversely, maybe I want to see if I’ve managed to read books that have nothing to do with sadness and people dying. Perhaps I want to see if I’ve read a well rounded balance of both. I don’t know.

Anyway, it seemed like material for a  post. I am not going to write reviews of each book, as that would make this post far too long.

Here they are, in kind of backwards chronological order, starting with most recently read, as best as I can recall:

Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte. I wrote a post about this book, which you can read here.

Surrender, by Sonya Hartnett. I have started to sometimes delve into the world of books written for teenagers and/or young adults, because I have an almost-teenager who is a prolific reader, and it’s nice to know what she is reading. It’s also good to discover quality books for this  demographic that adults can also enjoy. Some, such as this story, are complex enough to suggest that the only reason it’s classed as “kids” literature is because the main characters are teenagers. Surrender is about a boy who is dying, so yes, I did choose to read it for that reason as well. It turned out to be a dark, psychological tale with a slightly surreal feeling to it, about two boys – or is it? In the end, I was never quite sure whether there was two boys, or whether they were the alter egos, or dying imaginings, of one person. Worth a read.

The Year of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion. Well known American writer and journalist Joan Didion’s memoir about her life in the year after her husband died. Yes, I deliberately chose to read it for that reason, and in fact, I had read it once already, probably only about a year earlier.  So I knew what I was in for, and of course I had a different, more moving experience reading it the second time. This time I cried, not just out of sympathy, but out of recognition, for example when Didion describes her obsession with  calculating  how many hours he’d had left to live when some trivial incident happened.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, by Mark Haddon. Outside of actually reading books to my daughter, this one was my first foray into reading a “kid’s” book to myself, and I would encourage any adult to read it. I can’t say too much about the topic of death in this case without giving out plot spoilers, but I’ll just say that I did not expect it to have anything to do with death, and that it was an enjoyable, moving and rewarding read.

A Visit From The Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan. I’d read some short stories by Egan many years ago that I really liked. This novel is like a collage of stories, where each chapter jumps in time periods and locations, and where characters who feature in one chapter are secondary characters in someone else’s life in later chapters, but the entire effect is of their lives all being connected across generations and locations. I did not necessarily expect any thematic links to death when  choosing to read this, but, inevitably in a book which ranges across a period of about 40 years in the lives of at least about 20 characters, someone does die. Highly recommended if you like this kind of thing. I do.