Reading through the end times

I’ve read a ridiculous amount of books this year. I do not get to say this often. My reading habits are sporadic and tinged with guilt. I do not constantly have a book on the go and always feel bad about this. I buy all the books, eagerly anticipating the person I’ll be when I get to lie down on a chaise longue (I do not have a chaise longue), next to a roaring fire (I do not have a fireplace) and read for hours. And then life gets in the way. I cannot read fiction when I’m writing it because every book brings out the doom in me. When reading a particularly good novel, I immediately decide I am a terrible writer and shouldn’t bother. So there’s months of the year where I don’t read anything and when I do finally pick up a book, I am furious I haven’t done so sooner. 

But this year I went into the Christmas break having just finished writing a book, and over the long blurry days between Boxing Day and New Year’s Day, I picked up a book. I Who Have Never Known Men is not the most cheerful of novels I have to warn you, but it’s short enough to tackle in a couple of hours. When I finished it, I went over to the bookshelf of unrealised chaise longue dreams and selected Room With A View. I continued on this back to back roll until last week, when I was struck down with a horrific vomiting bug and couldn’t do anything but lie down and weep. My streak was 15 books. Not a collection large enough to build a fortress with, but more than enough to hurt if they landed on your head. And guess what? My brain got calmer and calmer the more I read. It didn’t matter the subject (I wasn’t reading light and cheerful books), I don’t even think it mattered how much I liked the book. The act of reading was what quieted the chatter in mind. I guess it’s obvious that when given something engrossing to dive into, there was less time for overthinking, for catastrophising, for coming up with my own scary fiction. 

The dawn of the post-literate society - I read this piece at the tail end of last year when my brain felt like sludge and I was scrolling in an attempt to stave off the doom. It shook something in me, even though I thought at times it perhaps painted a slightly bleaker picture than is warranted. In particular, this paragraph stood out: “The transmission of knowledge — the most ancient function of the university — is breaking down in front of our eyes. Writers like Shakespeare, Milton and Jane Austen whose works have been handed on for centuries can no longer reach the next generation of readers. They are losing the ability to understand them.” Isn’t that terrifying? But it rings true, just from personal experience. If I don’t read for a long period, I can almost feel my brain seize up and start to harden. I lose some elasticity, some comprehension. I become stupider. I do not want to find Jane Austen incomprehensible but I am certain that if I slack off reading regularly - and I mean daily really - it will happen. 

I started off my reading streak with a slim novella but for every day that came next, I deliberately chose books I suspected I’d find mildly challenging - in language, theme or tone. These might not be challenging for everyone - you might think them beach reads - but they stretched my brain by small but meaningful increments. Here were my choices: 

I Who Have Never Known Men - Jacqueline Harpman 

The Accident on the A35  - Graeme McRae Burnet 

A Room With A View - EM Forster

Communion - bell hooks 

Mrs Dalloway - Virginia Woolf

The Party - Tessa Hadley

The Examined Life - Stephen 

The Immortalists - Chloe Benjamin

Down And Out In Paris And London - George Orwell 

Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro

If Beale Street Could Talk - James Baldwin

Prophet Song - Paul Lynch 

James - Percival Everett 

Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë 

The Sellout - Paul Beatty 

By the end of my run (and before I succumbed to the vomiting bug that had me being sick in a bowl a record breaking 16 times!), my brain was so suitably limbered up, I felt like I could rugby tackle James Joyce. You might never want to read a book with no punctuation, and I wouldn’t blame you. Whatever you read is valid - I firmly believe that. If all you want to read is unicorn smut, then fill your boots! There’s a snobbery attached to books, one which implies audiobooks aren’t the real thing, that beach reads are junk food for your brain, that it only counts if you’re reading books by serious men who think big thoughts. While trying my best to sink into the language of a particularly difficult book, I saw what a privilege it was to have the time and space to really concentrate on a book. Our attention spans are shot and the world is anxious and heavy. 

But I also suspect that had I been reading fun thrillers with grabby titles (and as someone who has made a lovely career writing these kinds of books, believe me when I say I am not knocking them), I’m not sure I’d feel quite as changed. Some of the titles I picked I found initially difficult to get into, the language inaccessible or the plot slower than I’d like, and I longed for a page turner with short chapters and smart cliff hangers. But then gradually I would make friends with the text as if I was becoming proficient in a foreign language, and the reward was far more satisfying as a result. So keep going with the thrillers, but follow them with the occasional novel you’ve left on the shelf for years, always vowing that one day you’ll get to it. This piece is late because post vomiting, I’ve felt anxious and low. Yesterday, I forced myself to pick up a new book. I want to maintain with my reading streak, to be calmer and more elastic. I also want to stay limber enough to eventually oil up and wrestle Finnegan’s Wake. If you’ve got any suggestions for nicely challenging books, let me know in the comments.  

On another note -

It was my little sister’s 40th birthday this week. She reads every piece I write here (but only because I gave her a free subscription) and texts me with withering feedback each week in the way that only a sibling can. I write this birthday missive from the perspective of someone who adores their sibling. I know that’s not true for many, but I am my sister’s biggest stan. I would write tumblr fiction about her, buy cheaply made merch if she flogged it, sign up to her Substack AND pay for it. So yeah, my lens is clouded by love here when I say that I think a sibling relationship is the most interesting, rich and complex you’ll ever have (she has kids who she contractually has to love more, so may be a one-sided opinion) in your life. How much of it is luck? This random tombola pick of genes made flesh and hurled into your toddler paradise like a bomb? When I saw my sister for the first time, I demanded my mother look instead at the sticky bun I’d been given beforehand as some kind of “please don’t hate the new baby” offering from my nervous father. It wasn’t a great start. 

If you survive the initial years of fervent, primitive competition as kids (it’s not a given - my mother, on seeing her baby sister alone in the pram, buried her baby sister in gravel from the garden before being thankfully discovered by their surprised mother), you’ll face different obstacles as adults. You have your own lives to live, lives which won’t always cleave neatly to each other. It’s not always possible to have a good relationship with a sibling, this person everyone assumes will be your built-in best mate. But for me, without wanting to sound like a subpar north London lower league mafioso, it is everything. Having a sister is bliss. Or maybe having my sister is bliss. Someone who knows every single nook and cranny of your brain, who you can talk to in one word sentences, or not even a word but a noise which sounds like a word, a language you began to come up with some thirty years ago and have only added to since. A person so funny you bark with laughter at their worst effort. A girl so clever you can’t believe you share DNA. So yeah, it probably is mostly luck. Luck that she was born to my family and I didn’t bury her in rubble, luck we kept finding our way towards each other even when life was demanding otherwise and luck she gave up her nu metal phase which threatened to tear us asunder. Happy birthday Lizzie. I adore you. Critique THAT. 

Great doors, beautiful doors*

Recommendations -

This piece, on dissociative disorder, was very interesting. As someone who experiences derealisarion when highly anxious, I understand how the brain could enact something like this to protect one from difficult circumstances. 

And this piece, on OCD flaring up while pregnant, really spoke to me. I recognised so much of the behaviour the author writes about and worried I would face were I to have a child. 

As a massive Agatha Christie devotee, I liked this piece about her life very much. 

Do you like stationary? Are you one of those people who cannot walk past a pen display? Well have I got the shop for you…don’t buy everything all at once. 

Do you want a little treat? I bought this lip balm last week and I cannot stop applying it. It’s by Vieve, who are a Scottish outfit and cruelty free and who do very nice make up indeed. 

I’ve been really enjoying Sami Tamimi’s cookbook Boustany, which is all vegetarian dishes from his native Palestine. Tamimi, if you don’t know, was Ottolenghi’s business partner for decades. Definitely one to buy when it’s back in stock.  

*Ok it’s a window this week, but a window with a lighthouse!