A commitment to myself
First dated: April 2020
Something my mother says to me almost every time I see her is, “but Shayne, you can’t read,” which is a half sarcastic and half truthful jab at me for not being a big reader.
Like any other millennial, I consume a lot in a day and read a lot between social media and various articles - just not much that’s long form. To make my mother’s argument worse, the only long form literature that I do consume is generally through an audiobook. It’s not that I don’t like reading, it’s that as a chronically anxious person it is hard to sit still.
So, here is the challenge for next week: read a book and write a review on it. Hopefully proving to my mother that I can in fact, read.
Part of the reading challenge for me, is I have not embraced the search of finding something good to read. Whether it is hunting in book stores or finding something to order online, I don’t trust my own taste. Part of this comes back to the High Fidelity quote from the last post - if I am my tastes and my tastes are what’s important, then I can’t possibly read a Stephen King book, or indulge in the YA fiction that I once loved (not that I think I’d like it anymore anyways).
How do people find cool literature? I think the answer I need to embrace is that they don’t. Like with music, everyone is into their own niche and it’s cool to have music in common with someone. Nothing is inherently cool. Coolness is something I have been so preoccupied with, and I think it is time to leave it behind.
In the past I have picked books like the Savage Detectives, On the Road, or Catcher in the Rye that I could not get through due to their insufferable misogyny or cliched adolescent musings. I chose these books because they were on best of lists, or were recommended by some celebrity or another. These books are often considered quintessential books of their generation; but not my generation, and I guess that’s the problem.
So here this journey begins, not with a specific book or genre that I will explore, but with a mandate: not to read anything because it seems cool, and to just read something I am interested in. Easier said than done. I will stop trying to find books the same way that I find music. I will cease to look up or try out what influencers recommend without a deeply critical eye. I will wander a bookstore (online because of quarantine). I will use current book reviews and not all-time best of lists to find content.
What will come of this? One book that has not been recommended to me by any one person that I WILL read and eventually write on. Here is what that book turned out to be:
Writers & Lovers, Lily King - About being a lady living in NYC in the late 90’s? That’s all I needed to hear. This being an ultra-new release (March 2, 2020) also makes this fit the criteria I laid out for myself. How did I find it? Recommended on the podcast hysteria, then researched.
Two other books that I have on deck that are not quite a part of this challenge of pretentiousness, are Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller, and How to Kill a City by P.E. Moskowitz. How to Kill a City is a great analysis of gentrification and it’s effects on community that I’ve had on the back burner for a while. Tropic of Cancer is a once banned beat generation novel, that I expect to hate based on it’s reviews, as well as my varying levels of success with beat literature.
So sit back, and wait a few weeks for book reviews on all of these babies. We are going to start reading, even if it is just to prove to my mother that I know how.
