"The real secret of re-reading is simply this: It is impossible. The characters remain the same, and the words never change, but the reader always does. Pip is always there to be revisited, but you, the reader, are a little like the convict who surprises him in the graveyard — always a stranger.

I look at the books on my library shelves. They certainly seem dormant. But what if the characters are quietly rearranging themselves? What if Emma Woodhouse doesn’t learn from her mistakes? What if Tom Jones descends into a sodden life of poaching and outlawry? What if Eve resists Satan, remembering God’s injunction and Adam’s loving advice? I imagine all the characters bustling to get back into their places as they feel me taking the book down from the shelf. “Hurry,” they say, “he’ll expect to find us exactly where he left us, never mind how much his life has changed in the meantime."

Some Thoughts on the Pleasure of Being a Re-Reader, Verlyn Klinkenborg

she's an open book

Partly due to my love of books and partly due to my extremely neurotic personality, I have been compiling a spreadsheet of every book I have ever read (It was hard to draw the line but I'm including anything literary-ish that I have read since about the 1st grade: The BFG, Island of the Blue Dolphins: IN; Encyclopedia Brown, The Box Car Children #1-50: OUT.) Though I read a lot of magazines and articles (esp with The New Yorker internship), I've refrained from even going there because I might go crazy, but I am thinking of creating a less formal sub-list of really good articles and stories I've read, just for personal reference. (What the book list is for besides personal reference I couldn't really tell you). Besides title and author, my spreadsheet includes type (anthology, non-fiction, play, etc), date it was read (generally the first time if it's been read multiple times), and notes about the book (if I read it for a class, if someone recommended it to me, if I read it in the rain sitting on the edge of the cliff, shaded by trees, in Corsica). Though I'm sure I've missed some, I have a pretty good memory for the things I've read, and my other neurotic tendency to keep all papers I've written (on my computer, I'm not that crazy) and syllabus from classes (ok, some of these are physical copies but I had a colloquium to prepare for!) has helped me a lot. 

So far the list is at about 230, which seems like kind of a meagre number to me--not because I'm being a snob about it, but because I feel that half of who I am, how I see the world, how I interact with others, my general habits, views of humanity, etc. is directly informed by the words and characters I've read and loved. I exist, partly, in between the lines of all the books I've ever read, and I feel like my existence somehow takes up more space than 230 books worth of them.

But that is besides the point of this post. Even though books are about as important to me as food, I rarely ever talk about the books I'm reading, the books I've read. I guess I feel that if I don't write a formal analytical essay on them, it's not worth sharing it. I'm scared to write my personal reaction and thoughts, of what they would reveal of me as a Reader, a title which I hold dearly.

For awhile now, I've had a "currently reading" goodreads widget on the side of this blog. If you click it, you'll get to my goodreads profile, where I've been updating the books I've read and am currently reading. It's not as complete as my spreadsheet, but it's completely up-to-date in terms of the last year or so. I put it there because friends are always asking me what I'm reading and for book recommendations, and the site feels like my own little narrative of my thougths and recommendations that I can share without having to actually say anything about the books.

This is ridiculous, of course. Me giving four stars to Jeffrey Yang's poetry collection, An Aquarium, and two stars to Bolano's The Savage Detectives doesn't tell you anything about my relationship with either of the two books. The fact that two of the books I'm currently reading in the sidebar right now are bright yellow might give you an idea of what my bedside table looks like, or how to pick me out on the subway, but not much more.

So, I'm going to start writing about the things I read. I'm not sure of the format it might take yet-- books as I read them, monthly roundups, flashback fridays for books from the past, maybe all of the above. Some books might get a line, others a page. Whatever the form, the function will be this: to look the books I read in the face and to speak to them, without reservation; to develop my ability to talk about books in different ways; to share with you.

Until then-

"This spy-glass is good for nothing."

As I labor through The Savage Detectives, I've also been doing some decidedly lighter reading, including English as She is Spoke--most recently published by McSweeney's but originally published in 1855. It is an English phrasebook for Portuguese students, written by an earnest translator who was eqipped with a Portuguese-to-French phrasebook, a French-to-English dictionary, and had absolutely no understanding of English. This book is absurd and completely endearing. Also! I finally finished A Better Angel by Chris Adrian. I started the short story collection back in December while I was at FSG, but at some point my closet swallowed it and only spat it back out during post-colloquium cleaning. The stories were alive and immediate and both real and completely unreal in ways unlike anything I've read before.

I think I'm coming down with a slight cold, but I've got manuscripts to proofread and many books to keep me company until I go home next week. I'll be happy as long as my apetite stays; I've finally got time to cook again.

Today I made mushroom ravioli and butternut squash salad: