I'd Rather Be Reading

by Anne Bogel

Cull duplicates. If you have two copies of a book, keep the prettier one.

  If you can’t bring yourself to get rid of your duplicates, buy a third copy. When it comes to books, two is the loneliest number. Multiple copies of a single title are acceptable. Many, many multiples are preferable to two or three; excess makes you look interesting. Your friends may use the word obsessed, but they can’t deny your obsession is interesting.

  Start a collection. Signed copies or first editions are popular choices, but not the only ones. Find all the copies you can of your favorite novel—including reprints and foreign translations—or all the works of your favorite author. Collect by “list,” gathering together all the winners of the Pulitzer Prize, or the Hugo Award, or Newbery. Accumulate all the copies you can on a topic of interest, be it cottage gardening or personality typing or the National Park System. Or purchase books of the same collection, because they look well together on the shelf: sophisticated clothbound volumes or cheerful Harper Perennial Olive Edition paperbacks, colorful illustrated classics for children, or gorgeous leather-bound classics for grown-ups. Group your collection together on your shelf. If you organize by alphabetical order or color, this will destroy your system.

  Reconsider your system. Consult #4.

  Remove the titles you don’t like from your shelves and drop them in the nearest Little Free Library. But if you have more shelves than books, keep them for now. Less-than-cherished books are better than no books.

  If you have more books than shelves, consider that any shelf holding books is a bookshelf.

  If you still have more books than shelves, build more bookshelves. Author Anna Quindlen, who is to be trusted on such matters, wrote, “I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.” We are readers. This is how we decorate.

  9

  Book Bossy

  Once upon a time, a dear friend suffered a breakup—a horrible breakup that’s certainly five times worse than whatever you’re imagining. In the aftermath, I wanted to make her feel better. And reader, I did a terrible thing. Well-intentioned, but terrible. I sent her a book. Well, two books.

  Of the first, I regret nothing. I’d stumbled upon a review online about a new book on a subject that fascinated and perplexed her; I was fairly certain she wouldn’t know of this new book’s existence, and I thought it was the right amount of quirky and strange so that even if the book proved to be forgettable, she would feel that I had not forgotten her. We’re both longtime believers in bibliotherapy. Maybe it would distract her from her heartbreak for a time.

  But the second book? Alas, I sent her a book I thought would be good for her, that she should read, that would make her a better person. A book that would be character-building. A book I didn’t necessarily think she would like, but thought she should like. It was a statement about the kind of person I thought she should be, not the kind of person she was or wanted to be. If my first book communicated I love you and I’m thinking about you, the second one shouted, But can you pull it together already? Not that I saw it at the time, because I was too busy being an idiot.

  I wanted what was best for my friend, and my book recommendation—if you can call it that—reflected that. But because of its subject matter, that book also reflected that I thought her life was a Big Fat Mess at the moment, and she should do something about it.

  This was not my proudest moment. You shouldn’t tell a friend how to live her life, unless she asks—and even if she does, proceed with caution. This I knew. But I didn’t perceive that giving books is no different. You shouldn’t tell another grown-up what to read, or when, or how. Unless they ask, even the best book recommendation—with everything it telegraphs about your opinion of the reader—can feel like the literary version of unsolicited advice: unwelcome, unwanted, unhelpful.

  I’d been bossy. Book bossy.

  When my family moved to a new zip code last year, we faced the daunting prospect of moving our entire book collection. We don’t own as many as some people do, but moving books is no fun, and to move fewer of them, I returned many titles I’d borrowed. We pass books around our friend and family circles all the time; ours is a lending lifestyle. As I piled the stack of books to be returned in my entryway, I noticed they had something in common: I hadn’t read any of them.

  One title was about a specific social justice cause a friend wished I would join her in championing. Another was a novel she thought a devoted reader like me should have crossed off her list by now. One was about a hobby a friend thought might make me happier if I took it up. Another was about the benefits of daily meditation. They were books my friends wished I would read or thought I should be interested in.

  Others I’d asked to borrow, even had made a special trip out to pick them up. In that case, I was the one wielding the insidious s-word, internally, thinking I should have read that title or author by now, or should be more knowledgeable about that specific subject.

  Should is a dangerous word, a warning sign that we’re crossing an important boundary and veering into book bossiness. Should is tangled up with guilt, frustration, and regret; we use it all the time, many of us to speak of the ways we wish we could be more, do more, or just be different. Or that we wish our friends could be different, and they would if they knew what was good for them.

  Should is bossy.

  Not all book bossiness is equal: in the lower levels, “bossy” looks like bookish enthusiasm gone ever-so-slightly awry. Most of us don’t set out to give orders to our fellow readers about their reading lives, but that’s where we end up. This stage is characterized by unsolicited book recommendations, whether delivered in person, by text, or email, but always out of the clear blue.

  Mid-level bossy territory: taking an unrequested book to a friend, dropping it in the mailbox, bringing it by their house, placing it in their hands over coffee. This stage may be escalated by any conversation involving the follow-up question, Have you read that yet?

  Advanced book bossiness is characterized by specific and unsolicited troubleshooting of any aspect of a person’s reading life. What books should they read to fill the woeful gaps in their education, or cure the glaring issues they’re clearly having in their personal life? Which author’s collection must they absolutely buy next because their home library can’t be complete without it? How are they supposed to feel about a certain work? This stage may also be characterized by the strategic perusal of a reader’s bookshelves, with commentary on what’s worth reading and what isn’t, and why, often accompanied by shakes of the head, gasps, sighs, tsks.

  When I’m book bossy, I want to see myself as helpful, or knowledgeable, or loving, or smart. But what I’m doing is making judgments, delivering reading recommendations for books that will never be read, not because they weren’t on point, but because of how they were delivered.

  When I’m book bossy, nobody reads what I recommend—even if the book is a perfect match for a reader, even if she thinks her life will be better for reading it. And I don’t blame her. I feel this way too. I suspect we all do. The harder I push a book on a reader, the less likely she is to read it. And nowhere is this truer than in my own home.

  Take my kids, who love me, and do much of what I suggest—but not when I boss them about the reading life.

  My kids are avid readers. They read regularly, and widely. I don’t coach them on what to read, but they know they can ask me for recommendations. If I want one of my kids—or anybody else’s kid—to read a book, however, the last thing I’m going to do is tell them, unsolicited, that they should read it. (And if I push too hard? Forget about it. They won’t touch that book for years.)

  But they will read just about anything—happily, and of their own initiative—if they think it’s their own idea or their own decision. So I let them decide. I might mention to the school librarian that I think they’d love a certain title, or that a certain friend enjoyed it, but I will not tell my child he should
read it unless he asks. And even then I won’t use the bad s-word.

  Readers want to discover what they want to read, and they want to discover it for themselves. Maybe imagine you’re a girl devoted to The Rules—playing it coy, playing hard to get—who knows what she wants but isn’t afraid to put you off to ultimately get it. The Rules may be full of suspect advice for your dating life, but it’s proven to be a good strategy for the reading life.

  10

  Bookworm Problems

  Your library holds all come in at the same time. You have reached your limit on library checkouts, but nine books are waiting for you on hold. You must decide which books to let go of to remain in the library’s good graces.

  You check out more library books than you can carry. You check out more library books than can fit in your tote bag. You forget your tote bag. You visit the library in rain that’s coming down so hard your tote bag is powerless against it. You don’t live next door to the library anymore, so you don’t pick up your reserves every day. You don’t pick up your reserves for a week, and your stack is enormous. You pile the stack in your passenger seat, and your car yells at you because it thinks you have an unbuckled passenger.

  You take five books to the pool because you can’t decide what to read next. You can’t comfortably manage your purse because you shoved three books in on the way out the door, unable to decide what to read next. You pack twelve books for a five-day vacation because you can’t decide what to read next.

  You’re in the middle of a great book, but you need to go to work. Or to dinner. Or to bed. You’re in the middle of a great book, and you forget to eat dinner. You keep reading “just one more chapter” until 2:00 a.m., and you cannot keep your eyes open the next day.

  Your favorite book becomes a movie, and you’re terrified to see it because you’re fond of the way you picture the characters and hear their voices in your head. They make your favorite book into a movie and delete your favorite scene. They make your favorite book into a movie and it’s terrible.

  You are one-third of the way into a good book, and you realize you accidentally purchased the abridged version. You realize halfway through a book that it’s part of a series, and you inadvertently began with book four. You finish a book with a cliff-hanger ending, immediately look for the next book in the series, and realize the author hasn’t even begun writing the next installment. The anticipated publication date is four years away.

  After much anticipation, your favorite author’s long-awaited new title finally comes out. It’s terrible.

  Airplane travel is required, yet the airline frowns on you lugging the crate full of books you typically stash in your trunk for road trips on board.

  You realize halfway through a boring flight that your new ebook purchase didn’t download. Your Kindle battery dies halfway through a long flight. Your Kindle battery dies right when you get to the good part.

  A delivery truck falls over in the middle of Pennsylvania, and your books are on it. An ice storm incapacitates the shipping hub in Dallas, and your books are in it.

  You finally persuade your friend to read your lifetime favorite book. She gives it three stars. You persuade your husband to read one of your favorites. He pronounces it “fine.” You cannot, no matter how much you beg, plead, or wheedle, convince your book club to read your favorite book. You cannot, no matter how or what you try, persuade your child to read your favorite childhood book. You convince your child to read your favorite childhood book, and he begins, but then says, “I just can’t get into it.”

  Your To Be Read list holds 8,972 titles, and you want to read every one. Your TBR list is unquestionably too long to finish before you die. Your TBR list is longer than your arm, but you still can’t decide what to read next. You have countless unread books at home, yet you feel like you have nothing to read. You have countless unread books at home, but the only book you’re in the mood to read won’t be published for six more weeks. You have countless unread books at home, but you can’t resist buying one more.

  You don’t know how to pronounce a character’s name, and you can’t truly know the character until you know for certain you’re saying the name right. You want to tell the world about a great book you read, but you don’t know how to pronounce the author’s name. You want to tell the world about a book you loved, but you fear your friends won’t be able to see past the terrible cover. You want to tell the world about a book you loved, but the title is stupid. You realize midsentence that you have no idea how to say a certain word out loud, because until now you’ve only said it to yourself, in your head, while reading.

  You fall asleep reading, and you wake up hours later with a terrible crick in your neck. You’re reading in a moving vehicle, and it’s making you queasy. You consider switching to the audio version, but if you do, it will take you much longer to get to the ending. You keep reading.

  You decide to buy a book, but the only edition available is the movie tie-in edition. You want to buy a friend a Drop Caps hardcover as a gift—one of those gorgeous, expensive classics with the monogram on the cover—but the one with their initial is a book you both hated, or the color is brown. Your bookstore is having a three-for-two sale. You easily find the first two, but you cannot for the life of you decide on a third book. You buy nothing. You regret it later.

  You find yourself alarmingly invested in the lives of fictional characters. You refer to fictional favorites in conversation as though they’re your friends, and your real friends don’t know who you’re talking about. Your explanation puzzles your friends. You know you refer to a favorite book irritatingly often, but you can’t stop.

  Someone asks you to name your three favorite books, and you can narrow your list to only five. Or seven. Or seventeen.

  You can’t put the book you just finished behind you because you still want to live it. You have a terrible book hangover, and it lasts three days. Ibuprofen does nothing for it. You’re sad because whatever you read next can’t possibly be as good as the book you just finished. You despair because nothing you read can possibly be as good, ever again.

  You finish an amazing series and need to grieve that it’s over. You need to mourn the loss of a beloved character. You wonder why these events have no cultural markers, because you definitely need one.

  Your home is a disaster except for your bookshelves, which are immaculate. Your house is a disaster because books cover every surface. Your house is a disaster because a clean house is a sign of a misspent life, and you spend yours reading.

  You’re at a killer used book sale and can’t remember if you already own a certain title. You decide you do and come home. You were wrong and regret your lost chance. You decide you don’t and come home and shelve your newly purchased third copy. You accidentally buy two of the same book at the book sale.

  You have more books than shoes. You have more books than bookshelves. You do some quick math and realize how much money is tied up in your book collection. You suspect your books equal the gross domestic product of a small nation.

  You accept that it’s time to cull your personal library. You lovingly handle each book, determining if it brings you joy. It does. They all do. You are full of bookish joy, but still woefully short on shelf space.

  11

  The Readers I Have Been

  I feel certain of this: I wouldn’t be the person I am today if I weren’t a reader. I don’t just mean because I enjoy reading or spend so much time with my books. I mean that from an early age, and without consciously intending to, the ideas I got from books formed the interior architecture of my mind. As I read, unbeknownst to me, my brain was busily constructing a framework from the ideas in the pages, a framework I would continue building on and refining for years to come. At this point in my life, I’m mostly moving the mental furniture around and hanging new art on the walls, but every so often I add a new room, or move a support beam; occasionally a load-bearing wall needs to be relocated. But I’m long past the point of starting from scrat
ch; I can work only with what’s already there.

  I can’t name every title or author whose words are bricks in my mental house; their words snuck in too long ago or under the radar of my consciousness. But some authors occupy such an outsized place in my mind—their words have been so formative—that I can almost point to the specific bricks their works put in place. One of these is Madeleine L’Engle, who first won me over when I was a kid meeting A Wrinkle in Time, and later when I was a young mother. I began reading her memoirs at the urging of a friend, and when I encountered her phrase “the tired thirties” to describe the decade between thirty and forty, during which she would often literally fall asleep with her head against the typewriter, I knew she could be trusted. L’Engle knew a thing or two about the stages of a woman’s life, and she wrote frequently about the process of growing up and growing older.

  L’Engle once wrote, “The great thing about getting older is you don’t lose all the other ages you’ve been.” She writes in The Irrational Season, “I am not an isolated fifty-seven years old; I am every other age I have been, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven . . . all the way up to and occasionally beyond my present chronology.”

  Every adult has arrived there by passing through their childhood, then teens and twentysomethings. But according to Madeleine—and I’m inclined to believe her—not every person can access their inner child, teen, or twentysomething.

  Surely you’ve had the experience of meeting someone and thinking, It’s impossible he was ever a child. Is it wrong to hope I’ll never be one of them? I’d like to think I can access my inner four-year-old—curious about the world, skeptical of her little brother, innocently kind, occasionally cruel, always trusting. My inner seven-year-old—full of imagination, turning the creek bed behind my house into a fantasy kingdom ruled by mice. My inner seventeen-year-old—falling in love for the first time, feeling very grown-up making decisions for her future, and at the same time, very young. And now, when I occasionally have moments when I glimpse what I might be like at forty-five, or sixty-eight, or ninety-two, or any of the years to come.