"What Are You Reading?"

In a previous post, I listed my favorite books of all time in the universe. This is not that post. This is about reading in general and about my favorite question (see above).

When I see someone reading a book on the bus, I have to know what it is. But since I'm shy, it's hard for me to just up and ask a stranger to show me the cover. If it's easy to see, though, and it's a book I love so much I stay up nights berating myself for not having written it, I can't help blurting out, “I love that book!” In Florida and New Jersey, this is not always advisable. People's personal space extends about fifty feet in all directions there. But in Washington, Kansas, and Idaho, people are friendlier. They want to tell you how they like it so far. In Seattle, they might even ask you what you've been reading. (In Boise, they'll tell you how they like it, what else they've read, by that author, how they've been feeling lately, and what hospital they were born in.)

With me, books and pets have one thing in common. If I enter someone's house for the first time and see either a dog or a bookcase, I tend to gravitate toward it and forget to say hello. I'm fascinated by other people's bookshelves. Do they read what I read? If not, do they read anything I might like? If so, will they let me borrow it? If they have both a dog and a bookcase, it's a tough choice, but I'd probably give the dog a quick pat on the head en route to the bookcase.

I treat borrowed books like archaeological artifacts. Once, while an undergraduate at Smith, Sylvia Plath became enraged when a friend who had borrowed a book of hers returned it dog-eared and penciled to death. I feel her pain. I've had people say, when I return a book to them, “Did you even read it?” Not because I read it so fast, but because it still looks like new. If it's a book they really want my opinion on, I almost feel obligated to turn just one page corner a teeny bit and then flatten it back so there's just a faint bit of evidence. (But I won't even do that.) Years ago, I borrowed a book from a friend who wasn't even a friend. She was the friend of a friend. Back then I enjoyed reading in the bathtub. You can imagine how careful I was when I took a book in there. Well, as soon as I climbed into the tub with her book, it slipped from my fingers and went plop under the suds. (Yes, it was a bubble bath. Your point?) I was frantic. I knew wiping it down would do no good, because the pages would still be all wavy and crinkly. So the next day, I went from bookstore to bookstore until I found a copy of the same edition. When I handed it to her and explained what had happened, she said, “Why did you bother? I'm never going to reread that thing.”

I've been a library geek all my life. I used to read fast, so due dates were meaningless because I always returned books with three weeks still left. Late last year, I burned out on reading. I read so fast that it started to feel like a chore. My pending pile of books (right now it numbers around two dozen) started weighing on me, so that I had to put aside even the books I was enjoying to start another. Finally, I couldn't read at all. I was bereft. If I go more than two days between books, I forget to eat and start losing sleep. I told my sister about my situation, and she gave me two words of wisdom that changed my life and made me a new man – “Slow down.” It worked. I've only read four books so far this year, and the latest, A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry (awesome novel about Indira Gandhi's oppressive rule in the 1970s), has taken me more than a month! When you take that long with a book, the characters begin to seem like family, people you don't have to talk to every day, yet you know they're still there for you.

Sometimes I go through writer binges. This used to happen a lot when I was an undergraduate. No sooner was I enrolled in a lit class than I became consumed by anything and everything I could get my hands on that wasn't assigned. I can't remember the title of one particular lit course, but I remember reading The Pastures of Heaven on the subway and instantly developing a craving for all things Steinbeck. (East of Eden emerged the winner by a mile.) I started Brighton Rock in a hospital and a month or so later had finished every novel Graham Greene wrote (The Heart of the Matter won, The End of the Affair placed).

As a college writing instructor, I made it a personal policy never to assign any one book that was more than 200 or 300 pages long. I knew that my students had other classes that involved other books to read, so why make reading feel like a punishment and books the last thing they'll ever want to see after they graduate? My main impetus for this rule was Thomas Wolfe. I'd taken Mrs. Payton's undergraduate class on Southern Literature, and she assigned Look Homeward, Angel. It was a literary tsunami that swept away all the other little book dinghies we'd been assigned. What broke my heart was the fact that I loved that book! I knew I could never finish it and still pass the course. What was she thinking? I was only able to get back where I left off many months later, and the thrill was gone. I finished it, but I'd lost that spark that propelled me through the first 100 pages.

My sister calls me every Sunday afternoon so we can catch up on the previous week. Without fail, I ask her, “What are you reading?” She always tells me, but she doesn't always ask me the same question. The uninvited answer hangs there in space until I can email her the next day and tell her, relieved to have unburdened myself.

Speaking of my sister, she bought her first Kindle a few years ago, and I was as shocked as if she had told me she'd sewn her toes together. Why would any book lover ever want to buy a Kindle? You can't hold a Kindle up to your nose and inhale the smell of the pages as you riffle through them. You can't use a handsome bookmark to hold your places. You can't pull a Kindle off of a library shelf. Why had she sold her soul to the devil? “I like it,” was her explanation. She wasn't going to stop reading real books altogether. The latest novels by certain writers she admired (such as Grisham and Picoult) would always hold a valued place on the bookshelf in her craft room. It's just more convenient, she said.

Then she upgraded to a Kindle Fire. I didn't want to know how it was different. I didn't want to know anything about it. A few weeks later, a package arrived in my mail. It was her old Kindle. To make a long story short . . . well . . . I kinda . . . I sorta use the Kindle now and again. It will never replace books, trust me. In fact, I'm firmly committed to that pile of 24 books waiting in my kitchen (where the built-in bookshelves happen to be). But I can see the convenience my sister spoke of. A friend of mine flies from Arizona to Washington one week each month on business, and he bought his Kindle for the long flights. Easy to pack, easy to carry. I can't argue with that.

Still, I feel a little bit like a traitor, and I firmly believe books will never become obsolete. After all, if someone is reading a book across the aisle from you, what are you supposed to say? “I read that Kindle last year, it's great”? When the day comes when I can't even judge a book by its cover, that's the day I'll turn in my library card. Oh, wait – those won't be around, either.