Reading

I've written a number of blog posts about writing and my struggles with it, but I don't usually write about my other obsession - reading.  Perhaps it's because reading is as natural to me as breathing or eating.  I tend to take it for granted and I don't usually think about it or about how it affects me, but reading is the biggest and most enduring influence in my life.

I will often reread books.  In fact, I would say that for every new book I read, I reread three to five others.  There are a few authors whose books I've read dozens of times.  Rereading these books is like sinking into a warm bath - you know the sensation you're about to feel the moment your toe breaks through the water's surface and the anticipation of a sure thing makes the contentment that much richer and more enjoyable.

Oftentimes, I'll reread an older book and in the middle of a book I read a decade ago, I'll stop and see an exact sentence or turn of phrase that lead to specific events in my life.  I can trace entire passages of books to turning points in my life.  And this isn't the kind of association one forms between a traumatic event and a piece of music one heard at the same time. This isn't a correlation, this is a clear causality.  I will reread a book and realize that one of the character's action is what caused me to question my first marriage.  I'll reread another one and know, with absolute certainty, that a specific scene was the reason for yet another turning point in my life.  Of course not every big event in my life was precipitated by a book, but enough were that I know it's more than a coincidence.

I reread books not just for the comfort I draw them the familiar phrases, but also to understand where I am today and how I got here.  I reread them to figure out how I became who I am and to remind myself why I am the person I am.  But that's rereading...

Over the years, reading new books had become steadily more difficult.  I tend to be picky about what I read; the book has to hold my attention, it has to be written well, and it has to be something that I can relate to.  It doesn't mean that it has to be realistic, it just has to be a place where I can see myself and that's where I get into trouble.  If I get into a book, I sink into it and the more I enjoy it, the more difficult I find it to surface.

Sinking into a book means I have to let go of at least some measure of self-control that shades every waking moment.  The deeper I sink and the more I identify with the characters, the more I become them.  I take on their worries and their fears and their lives.  Their problems become my own to solve, their struggles invade and overtake my own.  I will close the book but I am now changed; no longer the same person who opened it days or hours before.  Each book that I become completely immersed in, changes me and not always for the better.    

Because I know that this will happen I try to avoid books that will be difficult to shake off, but as any dieter knows, the more you deny yourself that cupcake or bowl of ice cream the more it becomes the focus of your desire until you say to yourself, cringing at the lie, that it will be just one cupcake or just a small bowl of ice cream.  We both know that's not true.  We both know that it's never just one.

It's an un-winnable game - I won't read books that don't suck me in and I can't stand the consequences of reading those that do.  Of course, I could steel myself from falling into them the way I do when I watch movies, but then it's like going to the dentist - you know something is happening but you feel nothing.  What is the point of reading then?  For me, my obsession with reading started as a chance of stepping out of my life and for many years I read "happy" books that accomplished that exact purpose.  Through those books I left a life where every day brought pain the way sandpaper rubbing against raw skin does and escaped into books.  They were a balm and a drug and a way of distancing myself from a life I couldn't manage.

These days, I still occasionally read happy books, but they don't touch me and truth be told, they tend to irritate or at least annoy me because I can't feel or take them seriously.  The books that do touch me are the ones that stir up the sediment, the ones that take me days or weeks to get over.  These books are ones that I'll never reread because I'm too much of a coward to put myself through the agony the second time around; now that I know what's coming.  And yet, I cannot resist reaching for a new book, all the while consoling myself with familiar lies... This time I'll stay above the fray.  This time I won't fall into it headfirst.  This time I won't emerge with scars invisible to all but me.

Masochism comes in all shapes and forms, I suppose.