I made a promise to myself in January to read at least seventeen books over the course of the year. For some of my friends, this would probably be about half of what they typically read in twelve months, but I am not sure if I finished even one book last year, so seventeen is a pretty big goal. Someone, somewhere, said that writers need to write… but they also need to read. Time to get on that.
When I was juggling my final classes in my BA program with my newborn son and my new-ish marriage, I was feeling completely burnt out on reading. Most of my upper-level classes required several books to be read each semester, and not only did I have to read them, I had to actually LEARN THINGS FROM THEM. I am really not a very good critical reader, y’all. I just want to get to know the characters, smell the smells, feel the feels, and come out on the other side with a little more of a feeling for who I am and why I’m here and with a firmer grasp on my own voice as a writer of my own stories.
Unfortunately (but to my betterment, I am sure) literature courses and the professors who teach them don’t necessarily allow for such frivolity. It was a tough row to hoe. I remember being so relieved to get that diploma and know that I could keep the books I loved, sell the ones I didn’t to the Dickson Street Bookshop (where I bought most of them to begin with), and finally do some reading for pleasure.
It’s been eight years since that day, and I still have 205 books on my shelves that I have yet to read. I know this because I sat down a couple of years ago and made a list of all my books, and then I recorded them on GoodReads.com to make myself accountable. And then, as I have acquired more at thrift stores and yard sales, I have added those as well. When we spent a week in Austin last year on vacation we hit a couple of Half-Priced-Books and I think I came home with at least ten more. Given my (maybe) one book completed in 2014, I’m not sure how successful the recording of titles was as an incentive to read more… but at least I am having a go at it now!
In February, I completed Notes from a Blue Bike by Tsh Oxenreider and The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion. I didn’t set out to read two books by two women I admire, but who are (at least in my mind) 180 degrees opposite each other on the social compass… but now that I have, I have found it interesting to compare them to each other, and consider what I like about each.
I read some pretty catty reviews of Didion’s book on GoodReads, and came away thinking that some people are really lousy humans. Readers complained that she dropped too many names of famous people who were her friends. They accused her of intentionally recounting events that indicated her wealth and life of luxury as she recounted of her husband’s death and the miserable year that followed. They seemed, ridiculously, to want to read a book by Joan Didion in which she was living the life of someone other than Joan Didion.
For me, the book was poignant. To be honest, it was the first thing I have read by Didion, aside from a single essay, the name of which escapes me at the moment, that I read in my Art of the Personal Essay class. But the fact that Didion is wealthy and had cocktails in famous people’s homes and had doormen logging visitors in her building had no bearing on the very real story she told of struggling to come to terms with losing her partner in life in a sudden cardiac event. Her pragmatic attempt to do all the right things as a new widow, to learn all she could about her own grieving process so as to compare herself to others and make sure she was being correct; to me it was indicative of a woman who was as practical about emotions as she was about which wine to serve with dinner. Some reviewers said she included too few emotions in her book. I would posit that the reason for that is because she is not an emotionally-driven person.
As I read, I saw many similarities to the things Didion did and thought throughout the year following her husband’s death and my own grieving process that followed my mother’s death five years ago. Whether or not Didion lived in a beach house… it never occurred to me to care.
Tsh Oxenreider is as different from Joan Didion as I imagine another woman could be. I believe she is probably every bit as self-engaged and analytical, but there is an intentional bent in Oxenreider’s story – which is part of her “brand”, so it was expected – that I don’t get from Didion. As I read Notes from a Blue Bike, I found myself not learning from her as much as wanting to emulate her. I sit in a large house full of stuff every day, barely managing to keep my head above the chaos of dinner planning, laundry-doing, errand-running, deadline-meeting… there are so many projects on back burners in my house that I seriously need a proverbial industrial kitchen full of proverbial industrial Wolfe stoves to keep things from getting out of hand.
Oxenreider’s book is easy to read, and her stories of the process her family went through to trim the excess baggage of their life and focus on only the things that bring them closer together and provide moments of joy are inspiring. There are probably some messy bits that she doesn’t share, as there would be in any family making a significant change anywhere, let alone moving house and family halfway around the globe. But it’s allowed, I think, to keep those messy parts close to the vest as she attempts to be encouraging and to help others believe that an intentional life can be had.
She fills her pages with challenges they experienced and choices that her family made that helped them get closer to their desired lifestyle. In fact, I will probably re-read the book with a pen and paper in hand to start making a list of some of those changes that can be made in our home. I made a few notes in the margin, but I’m not a critical reader, remember?
All in all, February was a good start on this journey of reading more in 2015. I have picked up Reading Lolita in Tehran as my next book… once it’s done, only 204 left to go…
