The Seasonal Nature of Reading

May 8, 2017 |

One thing about being a writer and one thing about being a reader is that over the course of writing about reading, patterns emerge. I’ve found a really distinct pattern in my reading life in revising old blog posts and revisiting notes and lists I’ve kept myself about what and when I’ve been reading things.

Reading, for me, is seasonal.

This idea of seasonality has been on my mind for a while now, and it was something that really took hold during and following The Lady Project Summit in March. Everything comes in seasons, and if I take a page from the book of the world around me, I’d have see that much sooner. There are seasons when I need more rest than I do activity. Seasons where I can accomplish loads of things but my relationships take a back seat. Then there are seasons where all I want to do is talk with people I love and let my responsibilities become secondary.

This is also one of the big ah ha moments I’ve had as I’ve grown my work in photography — the more time I spend outside, the more I begin to notice how the world around me moves and functions.

Rather than trying to control these changes in seasonal needs, I’ve become to embrace them as necessary. Just as winter paves the way for spring and summer, seasons of life pave the way for new experiences and discoveries. And reading, while something that always finds its way into each of my seasons, is not always the primary goal or purpose or drive behind a particular season. It may be the case, too, that reading books isn’t a priority at all.

This period of time in particular, the one that blooms and blossoms immediately after a long winter, is one where I find my mind unable to connect with books the way it can at other times.

I picked up a book in early March to take with me while I traveled. The book, The Circus by Olivia Levez, is one I’d been looking forward to for months. I loved Levez’s The Island and knew this story of a girl who runs away from home because her father marries a woman she severely dislikes (step parent relationships are a never-ending source of fascination for me and a terribly underexplored theme in YA) would resonate.

But each time I opened the book, I couldn’t fall in.

I could fall asleep.

I could write an essay.

I could go out with friends.

I could let myself devour The Great British Baking Show.

I could let myself rewatch the entire series again. Then a third time.

Something about the act of putting the book in my hands activated a switch in my mind that begged me to do anything but read. In many ways, this last month has been one of my most productive and active and social and fulfilling. Yet reading, one of the basic needs in my life’s hierarchy, had fallen nearly completely off my agenda. I didn’t make time for it, and when I found time to settle in, I could find a million things to keep me from the book.

None of this was the book’s fault. It was the wrong time. The wrong place.

The wrong season.

My recent flight to San Antonio gave me a solid three hours to get some work done, as well as plenty of time to get in some leisure reading. But before traveling, I had real talk with myself: I knew I wouldn’t read the way I’d hope to while in Texas for a few days, so I shouldn’t weigh down my luggage with books that I’d carry and never consume.

It was that flight, with those restrictions, with that time, which allowed me to finish Levez’s sophomore read.

I flopped on the hotel bed after traveling and thought about the book. Little stuck with me, except for that last chunk of reading I’d just consumed. It was good, though nothing was completely outstanding for me. A good voice, but not as powerful as the one I’d read in The Island. An ending that was more wrapped up than the first book (and that untidy ending was a feature I admired, rather than a flaw that bothered me).

The book, marked read on social media now, became one I wouldn’t say or do much about. Not because I didn’t enjoy it. But because it didn’t come into my life during the right season. There won’t be permanence or resonance, and none of that is the fault of myself nor the book.

It’s the fault of simply wrong place, wrong time, wrong season.

When my trip ended, my life fell into a more familiar pattern at home. I’d been slowly carving more space into my daily routine for creative pursuits outside of writing and reading, and in a lot of ways, carving out that time meant winnowing a bit of the time I had for leisure reading in my afternoons.

But something magical happened, too — I found myself reading much better, and in the latter half of April, I blew through a good number of books. More than that, those books not only stuck with me, but they begged me to engage with them. I wrote reviews or incorporated some of what they’d given me into my own writing. I spent one afternoon after reading a professional development book and journaled about it privately. It was a kind of engagement I hadn’t felt in my reading life in quite a while, and it’s one where I’m allowing myself to stoke the fire and see where it leads me.

The seasonal shifts don’t always happen along the same lines that nature’s seasons do. Sometimes they run for a month. Sometimes for six months. Sometimes a year. Or a week or two. But I’ve come to listen to those shifts, to — if you will — lean into them, rather than attempt to hit reverse as quickly as possible. Because the more I let myself do the things that my heart and my mind are hungry for, when I come back to reading, I find myself more quenched, fulfilled, and engaged.

Will I return to The Circus to see if it works better now or in a couple of months? Probably not. The book came to me in that particular season for a purpose. It was a book meant to tell me to slow down, to be real with my expectations and desires, and enjoy it for what it was in the moment, rather than what I’d hoped for it to be.

The Year of the Canon

January 25, 2017 |

Late last year, I decided 2017 would be the year I dove more fully into the literary canon. I was an English major (you are all shocked), and when I graduated and no longer had to read the classics for my classes, it was a real joy to dive into books that were as far from that category as possible: YA dystopias, adult mysteries, popular nonfiction, and lots of Harry Potter re-reads.

Lately, though, I’ve been wanting to inject more variety into my reading. Despite all the reading I did for my degree, my knowledge of the (English language) literary canon is not as expansive as I wish it were. It will be ten years this December since I graduated with my BA, so 2017 seems like a good time to revisit some of my roots, to broaden them, and in so doing, learn more about our cultural history.

The first book I chose was I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou. I expect most of the books I read for this project will be audiobook reads, and this was a great one to kick it off, since Angelou reads it herself. She’s got such a unique voice and cadence, and her story of her first sixteen years of life is engrossing, painful, and important. It’s also full of joy and humor in many parts. I like a good memoir, and there’s no doubt that Angelou’s is among the best, both in terms of content and writing style.

I have read a lot of the classics already, of course; favorites include Jane Eyre, Frankenstein, The Color Purple, and A Christmas Carol. There are definitely some I like less (Mrs. Dalloway, A Tale of Two Cities, Wuthering Heights), and a couple I loathe (Absalom, Absalom!, The Great Gatsby). I look forward to adding more titles to each category this year.

I’ve made a list of some authors I’d like to read more of for this project, including Jane Austen, Toni Morrison, Salman Rushdie, and Ernest Hemingway. I want to try a few more Dickens titles and finally read The Catcher in the Rye. I want to check out classic adventure tales like Robinson Crusoe and read newer additions to the literary canon like Things Fall Apart and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. I want to broaden the idea of what our English language literary canon should be, too, and I hope you’ll help me do so by commenting with a recommendation for a book you loved.

Refilling The Well

September 12, 2016 |

I’ve been having a hard time reading this year. I know my perception of “hard time reading” and “not reading much” differs from the average person — I did just finish my 70th book, so I’m clocking about two a week — but it’s weird when you’re used to reading more than 100 or 150 books at this point in the year and you’re just not.

But my reading this year has been so much more satisfying than in previous years. Not necessarily because the books are better. Rather, it’s because I’ve let myself refill the well over and over, and I’ve listened to my instinct far more on what I’m choosing to pick up and what I’m choosing to put down.

Last week, I went on vacation with my husband to one of our top dream places: Marfa, Texas. We’d lived in Texas for a few years, but we never made the 6.5 hour drive out to west Texas. This time, we made the intentional decision to do it; we’d fly into Austin, then make the drive out to the desert.

Earlier in the summer, the two of us took a half a week trip out to the Denver area to see some friends, so this was our second couple trip together in the last couple of months. And one thing I figured out pretty quickly in that first trip was something I applied to this one: I don’t read.

I used to love the whole process of picking my vacation reads. I’d spend days debating which books make the cut and which ones would stay behind. But the truth of it was, I rarely read on these trips. I’d pack 4 or 5 books, and then I’d pick at a couple of pages while waiting at the airport and quickly discard it in favor of pacing the airport itself. When I get on the plane, I’m one of those lucky people who falls asleep nearly instantly. Then when I reach the destination, I’m conscious of leaving everything behind and living right in the moment.

What I did pack for both trips was my Nook. Out in Colorado, I did read. I woke up before anyone else did, since I’m a morning person, and I’d use the time to read a few chapters. I finished Kali VanBaale’s The Good Divide during one of those morning reading sessions, and I updated my husband on the story when he’d wake up. I loved the book, and I loved the slow, deliberate reading sessions, knowing that I was being intentional of when I was reading and I was fully aware of the moment I was in while reading (on an air mattress, in the home of good friends). The story and the setting coalesced into a wonderful experience.

I loaded up my Nook before this trip, but I wasn’t particularly excited about any of the titles on there. A couple of books I’d wanted to read expired, and given that this was a Dream Trip, my excitement was a bit dispersed.

Then we hit travel snags, and I suddenly needed a book to read. Right now. Something that would distract me from hours and hours of sitting at an airport.

I hit the O’Hare bookstore (note, this wasn’t the airport we originally had tickets to fly out of) and hemmed and hawed about what book to read. I picked up and put down tons of them. I left without a book. Then I went back and picked up more options, then put them down. O’Hare’s bookstore had some of those beautiful classics, including a cover for The Metamorphosis I hadn’t seen before (I was tempted). I ended up choosing the mass market edition of The Girl on the Train, which I hadn’t yet read. I picked up Mary Roach’s Packing for Mars for my husband.

And then I didn’t read.

For many more hours, I wandered O’Hare. And then when the flight finally came to be, I fell asleep, my dreams peppered with images of bowls of queso and margaritas.

I was disappointed about the delays. The trip was to begin with grabbing lunch with Kimberly, who I haven’t seen in a few years. My disappointment meant my concentration wasn’t there. Which meant my reading mind wasn’t there. There was some comfort in buying a book, but there was no response in reading it.

The morning after our flight, my husband and I tag teamed the drive out to Marfa. When we drive, I do not read. We have an understanding that when we drive like this, neither of us gets to read or sleep — we’re the second set of eyes. With driving such a huge expanse of Texas, it was hard not to keep looking out. It was beautiful and breath taking and there was so much to take in about the beauty of the land around us.

It hit me on the drive I wanted nothing more than to read a book about living in west Texas. About homesteading. About how you don’t feel like an insignificant speck in a part of the country where there is one person per square mile (a nifty fact gleaned at a rest stop Google session — one of my favorite parts of driving, the looking up of the things you see and know nothing about).

Marfa is a tiny artist town close to the Mexican border. But they have a pretty nifty bookstore, and as we discovered on the first evening there, a beautiful library with a lovely note to the community on the outside. I didn’t get a chance to go in, but I loved the love letter to the town. We did hit up the bookstore, located inside one of the new hotels downtown (…most of Marfa is downtown, I guess). It was a lovely specialty shop, filled with books about the artists who played a huge role in the community, as well as an extensive selection of Cormac McCarthy books — No Country For Old Men was filmed in places around town. Nothing caught my eye or scratched the itch of the kind of book I needed to be reading.

I didn’t read while on the trip. Instead, I explored. I saw the mystery lights. My husband and I and the other people who were out there watching the show that evening shared stories and theories; we learned one guy brought his family to this space ten different times and this was the first time they’d ever seen the lights. We wandered the campsite we stayed at, pet the dogs of other people staying there, and we even ran into another Wisconsinite, with whom we shared stories of travel, of how unbelievable the sky out in this space was. Even when I grabbed my book to read in the hammocks around the campsite, I put it down and instead watched the vast sky around me, felt the breeze, listened to the utter quiet of being in the desert.

One of the best parts of the trip, though, was stopping into the visitor centered. The woman running it was wildly enthusiastic about Marfa, and she told us about all of the places we needed to see, as well as the stories behind them. Our immediate trip after that was to the Chinati Foundation, where we wandered out into the land to see the famous Judd concrete sculptures. The Foundation is built on decommissioned military land that served as a German POW camp during the second World War. The sculptures, as well as the surrounding buildings filled with art, were the response to getting the land and making it mean something completely different.

Between the trip through the concrete sculptures, as well as our drive out to see the Prada Marfa installation, my husband and I had stories and theories to tell one another, as well as things to look up and read to one another. What did these things mean? How did they change over time?

Our reading wasn’t books. It wasn’t what we picked up or packed. It was what we were living right then.

One of the last stops on our last night in Marfa was one of the big hotel gift shops, and it was here I found the book I was looking for: a story about a girl whose grandparents made a homestead out in west Texas in the 1950s and 60s and what it was like for them to live in such a desolate place: A Stake in West Texas by Rebecca D. Henderson.

It’s a book that scratches all of my itches, and it’s one I cannot wait to read for the story, as well as the story behind where I got it, what it means to me, and what the longing I had to learn about this place meant to me before and during the travels. It is, as I type this, lost in transit with our clothes, our toiletries, our toothbrushes, our shoes, jars of honey, bottles of beer, and a number of other things. I’m eager to be reunited.

When we got back to Austin, our first stop was Book People, my all-time favorite bookstore. It was a sanctuary for me for the time I was living in that city by myself. On Saturday mornings when I wasn’t working in someone’s garage archive, I’d hop on a bus, then another one, then spend a few hours wandering the two-story store.

Remember when I said I didn’t pack anything but my nook?

That was in part because I knew I’d pick up a few things at Book People. And $125 later, I’m pleased to say I bought myself two books — including one that had expired from my Nook — and one for my husband.

We flew back to Milwaukee and when I got on the plane, everything changed. I needed to unpack the trip, the stories we heard and the ones we told, and the best way for me to do that was to read.

I pulled The Girl on the Train out of my bag and flew through 300 pages as we were in the air. Then the moment we got home, I tore through the remainder of the book. It was precisely what I needed when I needed it: a quick thriller which made me keep turning pages and put me back into my own space and turf. As soon as I finished that, I picked up another book, which I’m elbow deep in now, less than 24 hours after returning home.

There is a weird pressure to keep reading, to pick up the next book, to do more, more, more, when you make your life about books. When you identify as A Reader. You feel guilt when you’re asked if you’ve read something and you say no, you haven’t. Or worse, when you’re told about a book and you’ve literally never heard of it (the friend we stayed with in Texas asked me about a book by a UT Alumna, wherein I had to look it up and add it to my to-read ASAP).

The truth is, though, reading and one’s reading life is entirely personal. And sometimes being a “reader” means that you’re listening to stories in ways that aren’t about printed or electronic pages. Sometimes, it’s about experiencing stories in the moment, of asking people to share their stories, of reading those plaques on the side of the road, of paging through art books in a tiny collection, of enjoying the beautiful libraries in the middle of the desert.

Those are moments of refilling the well. Of remembering why it is you love to read.

Taking this break and leaning into it, rather than pushing to fix it, meant stopping and pausing. It meant finding momentum again upon return. It meant finding the hunger and passion again for stories, no matter how they’re told.

____________________

All photos above are mine. I started taking photography classes earlier this year, and it’s been another piece of my refilling the well. The stories you can tell visually, through little more than the lens of your phone, continues to impress and inspire me.

Tracking My Reading & Tracking Myself

May 9, 2016 |

I got a really interesting pitch email the other day. It wasn’t what was being pitched, but rather, one of the means in which I could highlight the book: I could share it on Instagram.

I’ve become a big fan of taking pictures of what I’m currently reading. I use it both on Instagram, as well as on Litsy (where I’m simply @kelly). Instagram because it’s available on the web; Litsy, since it’s a community limited for the time being to iOS mobile users. The photos are not just about the book. They’re also about where I am right now, in my life, in my space, and the entire atmosphere of reading. Photos capture something more to the reading experience than an update on Twitter or Pinterest or Goodreads or right here on STACKED could.

These images, these ways of sharing, are also very public. There’s intentionality in how I choose to share; I highlight things I like in images, talk about books on social media after I’ve finished them and mulled them over, and I am deliberate in the ways and hows. I like doing it, plan to continue doing it, and cannot imagine a reading life without it.

But despite the new technology and the fun there is to be had on each, I still track my reading in a very personal, private, long standing way: I keep a list of books I’ve read in a spiral-bound notebook.

The notebook on the bottom I began in 2001. That was my sophomore/junior year of high school. I picked up the habit of doing it after my mom began doing it herself as a way to remember what books she’d read. Rather than keeping a “to read” list, I began keeping a “read” list.

It’s weird to look at this list now, 15 years later. I don’t remember reading Harry Potter back then. It mustn’t have left a huge impact, since I didn’t pick up (most of) the rest of the series until well into college. But I do remember why I picked up Ishmael — it was sitting on a bookshelf of a friend’s when we snuck to her house between the end of school and badminton practice and I remember thinking a book about an ape sounded interesting. I remember picking up Innocence and then needing to pick up Mendelsohn’s other book immediately after. Fifteen years later, I still recall the visceral reactions I had to Innocence and how much I loved it.

And there’s no shaking the vivid memory of picking up Push and not just reading it, but being moved by it and immediately seeking the chance to talk about it with fellow book lovers (who, yes, at the time were on the internet — we had a whole teen community of book lovers and writers).

I lost this notebook for a period of time, somewhere between the end of high school in 2003 and the beginning of college in the fall of that same year. I picked up another notebook, same brand, same size, but with a pink cover. From the beginning of college until this very day, this is where I’ve written down every single book I’ve finished.

Between those lines are the memories of the books in some pieces, and in others, it’s the memory of the where, the when, and the why. I read so many debut YA novels in 2011, which is reflected; in 2015, my reading went a little broader, though was still mostly YA. I didn’t snap a shot of this year’s pages, but of the 40ish books I’ve finished so far, it’s almost an even mix of adult novels and non-fiction with YA.

I remember spending a long time on that first day of 2015 debating what my first read should be and choosing my all-time favorite book. I knew I wouldn’t be disappointed then.

I’ve cut back on reviewing here at STACKED, and I’ve also cut back quite a bit on Goodreads. But I still take notes on things, and I still keep my read list up. I’ve added new things to the mix, ways to talk about books with people in a way that will compel them to read it or pair it up with the reader who it’ll be the right book for. Nothing, though, no matter how fun and exciting, will ever take the private part of my handwritten reading notebook away from me. In no way are the stories of the books I read all the kind I need or want to share because they’re for me and me alone.

It’s a reflection of me, my growth, my thinking, a snapshot of time in my life, that I could never capture in any sort of digital world. What began as a simple way of making sure I don’t read something I’ve already read has bloomed into this incredibly personal way of seeing my life and my development as a thinker.

Tell me: do you keep a read list? Do you keep anything of your reading life private, just for you? I’d love to hear about it in the comments!

Elements of A Novel That Work For Me

February 15, 2016 |

One of the things that I did as a librarian was reader’s advisory, and I’ve said it here and elsewhere repeatedly that it was one of my favorite aspects of the job. Being able to help someone find their next great read is awesome, but the real joy for me was digging into the actual ideas they were trying to express to me in words that didn’t always come out clearly. By that I mean, it’s hard to sometimes explain exactly why a particular book is one you love; you can mention that it’s the language, but what does that really mean? Are you there for literary, pretty prose? Are you there for unique use of language? Are you there for something cut-and-dry and straightforward?

Ferreting those things out for others is a skill that’s learned more as it’s practiced. It’s a marrying of knowledge of books, as well as knowledge of what it is that’s appealing to readers about those books.

Something I never put a whole lot of thought into until the last couple of years, though, was what the triggers were for me when it comes to the sort of books I know I’ll love or find enjoyable to read (because, of course, you can enjoy reading a book and walk away not really having liked it since sometimes the experiential nature of reading is really what you’re after). I know there are certain plot points that work for me — words like “juvenile detention” and “ballet” and “road trip” and “haunted house” are just a few descriptive phrases that ring my bells — but there are other things that really appeal to me in reading. Those are far less easy to have conveyed on jacket copy, and they’re even harder to tease out when looking at those books you’ve loved and are looking for similarities between sometimes very different types of books.

What I found as I did this wasn’t surprising to me, but the method in which I came about discovering the elements of a book I love was. Rather than looking for things I liked, I thought through what books didn’t work for me, what my criticisms were of those books, and looked for similarities among them; in some cases, thinking about the opposite element as the one I criticized opened up a path toward thinking about what I liked.

What’s neat about this, aside from really discovering what it is you like, is that it’s a great door to open toward helping you push past your normal reading comfort zone. Teasing out elements that appeal to you in this way allows you to see past genre or categories of book and instead focus on the very things you love in a reading experience, period.

Here are four elements of reading I love and am able to now put words to, thanks to trying out this exercise. I would love to hear what you find if you do something similar — and I’d love to know, too, what sort of methodology you used to arrive at a favorite element or two of books.

Humor, Especially Dark

I’m going to have to write at length about why we discredit and belittle funny at some point, since I think so often, we’re eager to look at books, discuss their critical merits through the lens of morality/lessons/elements to take away, and forget that what some readers want in a book is something that they enjoy the experience of reading. Being able to enjoy a book as a thing in and of itself is hugely important, and we undervalue that so much, especially with younger readers.

Perhaps this is why I love funny books. I want to laugh. I want to smile. I want to read something that is cute, even if it’s a bit over the top. The thing for me is that the humor has to be natural and voice-y; in other words, I don’t necessarily reach out for “funny” books; I find books that weave the humor into them to be what’s appealing. Amy Spalding is an excellent example of this, as her books sometimes leave me in tears with how funny her characters are, even though they aren’t trying to be.

My favorite horror movies are those which are darkly humorous, and this same appeal factor is one I love in my books. Give me something twistedly funny. I don’t want to read about hard topics that are made funny; rather, I want to be thrown into a bit of an absurd situation and be able to laugh my way through, always wondering if I am supposed to be laughing or not. Kate Alender’s books are a great example of this in YA.

Tight, Short Prose

I’m not wary of long books, but I know my sweet spot is in a book that makes tremendous impact with few words. The tighter the prose, the more interested I am. How can an author tell a power-packed story in 230 pages?

A great example of this is Stephanie Kuehn’s book. She’s able to do so much with her plot and her characters in very few words — Charm and Strange is 216 pages, believe it or not.

Complex Moralities and Characters

This is pretty fitting with the first two elements, in that I’ve found complex characters and moralities play out well with humor, especially the dark variety, and it’s through the tight, short prose that these particularly appeal-y elements stand out for me.

I don’t need happy endings. I don’t need likable characters. Rather, I want a book that makes me think, and I love books that make me question how I feel. I don’t care what it is I’m supposed to want from a book, but rather, I want to bring my own sensibilities, my own beliefs, and my own ideas to the page as much as I want ideas and characters presented to me in rich ways.

I’ve heard it said before that books are a conversation between the reader and the story, and that’s an image I quite like. You can’t divorce yourself from what you’re reading, however you’re reading it and for whatever reason you’re reading it, so in a lot of ways, complex moralities and characters speak to me because they fascinate me personally.

I note Kuehn here again as an excellent example. A few others include Emily Hainsworth (especially Take The Fall, which is so Twin Peaks-esque, it’s impossible not to think about the complexities the whole way through), Melina Marchetta, Louise O’Neill, Malinda Lo, and Nova Ren Suma.

Everyday Magic

Could this be filed under “magical realism?” Maybe. But I think magical realism is a genre in its own right, and what I call everyday magic extends beyond that a little bit. I love the sense of wonder there is in reading a book and questioning what is real as in real-in-our-world and what is real as in real-in-that-world-but-set-in-our-world. In other words, there are books that are set in a world we live in, that are essentially of the realistic fiction variety, but they have a little bit of magic to them.

Nova Ren Suma is an obvious example here, but I also include Laura Ruby’s Bone Gap, Samantha Mabry’s upcoming A Fierce and Subtle Poison, Sarah McCarry’s writing, Infandous by Elana K Arnold. There’s also a fabulous adult novel with great YA appeal by Silvia Moreno-Garcia called Signal to Noise which weaves this everyday magic into the story in a way that checked all of my boxes.

What’s neat is teasing these pieces out shows how much they’re interrelated, really. Everyday magic happens through short and tight prose because that world is our world, but through subtle differences, the magic emerges. It also provides the catalyst for complex characters and moralities.

It’s also worth noting when you look at the books that fall beneath the elements of a story you love, they aren’t always fluid nor are they great read alikes to one another. I’d never connect Kuehn’s work with Hainsworth’s or Lo’s, and yet, they all “fit” under the umbrella of complex characters and moralities. This is such a great way to see past my own edges of reading and understand that going beyond my preferred genres or categories of books really helps me discover voices that are doing the very things I love so much.

Tell me yours! I want to know what elements you love, what books fall beneath them, and if there was any special way you figured this out.