Where I Read > What I Read

(probably not really but also maybe?)

In early quarantine, I did the most reading I’d done in years. My husband was furloughed and we found a very specific and unique rhythm to the days that included breaks from toddler care for both of us. During my breaks, when they didn’t have to be filled with work, I did two things. I would watch one episode of The Circle, a possibly strangely claustrophobic pandemic pick, and then I would read for an hour or so. I flew through books— mostly whatever had come in through my library app, Libby.

After a few months, my husband returned to work, my deadlines picked up, my brain started to tangle itself up in the processing of all that had happened, and my reading slowed down.

This weekend, I went upstate for a family weekend away, and I was able to get lost in a book again, reading almost an entire novel from start to finish in two days. It had been a while. And it felt spectacular.

The actual reading feels great, of course. Fun to get lost in something, necessary at times to check out of the stress of real life and visit someone else’s wildly different stressors for a while, and satisfying to actually complete a project, to get to close the cover and say, yep, I am done with that adventure, I have successfully completed my task (see also: the joy of cooking and baking) (usually the actual literal opposite of the experience of writing a book).

But perhaps what I love most about having time to read a whole book in a short period of time is what happens after— the connection between place and the reading experience, the connection in my own mind of book and who I was when I read that book.

Does this happen for you, too? I’d love to hear your book reading memories and why they matter to you. I read a very very fun, body positive, Bachelor-inspired rom-com this spring, One to Watch. Actually I listened to it on audio while going on long walks in the park, relaxed in a way I find difficult to accomplish in my own home. That book and the park and how good it felt to give myself that time are all connected now, into a singular experience. A really joyful and even revolutionary one.

The books I read during early quarantine— The Glass Hotel, Oona Out of Order, I Capture the Castle, Such a Fun Age, (I enthusiastically recommend all of these— it is no small feat to hold one’s attention in March-June 2020 and these all did exactly that) and so many others— are intricately connected to making a latte and bringing it to the bedroom and shutting my door on whatever stress and sadness the morning had brought on and allowing myself a space to exist outside of that. I want to write thank you cards to these novels, for letting me think about something other than wiping down groceries or what to do with my toddler or what terrifying covid numbers Cuomo was reporting on twitter.

There’s the cozy memory of flying through The Handmaid’s Tale one Christmas in college on my aunt and uncle’s St. Louis couch, and how easy and familial and right that felt. There’s the poetry books I returned to again and again in high school, reading and underlining and affixing post-it notes to in the closet in my room I liked to disappear into when things were difficult and poetry was grounding and my boyfriend at the time was being awful and no one understood me at all. There’s re-reading The Giver on our uncomfortable blue couch in our old apartment before my wedding, looking for a quote for the ceremony and getting lost in the pages and shouting out to my now-husband about what I loved about the book and why it still mattered so much to me. There was reading Anna Deveare Smith’s Twilight in preparation for my first semester of theatre school, all filled with anticipation and fear and not-good-enough-ness, and wonder of what it would all look like. My new life. This one, here, that I’m actually living now and have been for exactly twenty years. That book makes me remember the feeling of wanting to be the kind of person worthy of New York City and Tisch and life in the arts and conversations about Anna Deveare Smith.

There’s reading Shel Silverstein collections with my dad when I was little, tucked into bed in my childhood home, bargaining how many poems I could have before sleep.

And there’s the books read on my wonderful in-laws’ couch or hammock this weekend and others too (not so long ago, I read Damsel in quite the same fashion in the same setting with the same feelings), my kid entertained by her cousins, eating meals I didn’t have to plan or cook, the city not shoving itself through the windows the way it does, the to-do list far away, impossible to get to at that moment, a pocket of time opening up, unexpectedly, perfectly timed, necessarily even though I never would have remembered to ask for it.

And this is maybe that— the reminder to demand those moments, and the joy of getting to remember them later. The characters and yourself having shared that delicate instant in time together. The reason we read— and write—is maybe not only so our stories are shared, but also so that the experience of reading them— the care it takes to carve out the time for that escape, the way real life memories can get stirred into the reading of book itself— offers joy independent of the story itself. So that for a while, something matters more than the things that have to be done or, even harder to ignore, the things that have to be worried about.

And that something is actually maybe…. yourself? (my therapist would be proud).

And before I leave you, some things I’d like to recommend this week:

I have fallen a little in love with this picture book that had gotten lost in the bookshelves until just this very week: If You Want See A Whale. It’s poetic and quiet and elegant.

I keep getting compliments on dresses I purchased from Natural Life because instagram told me to. They are comfy and easy and pretty and are making summer sweeter. Is there a feeling better than actually being comfortable and like yourself in a piece of clothing?

We started watching the Woodstock 99 documentary on HBO, and wow is it immersive and propulsive disturbing and seeming to get at something essential and revealing about society and rage and America.

That’s it for this week. Wishing you a cozy reading memory all your own. And a hammock.