Do What Feels Good
A surprise bonus July newsletter! Because the rules of the newsletter are my rules for reading: do what you want. Do what feels good. I'm not doing it for money so I might as well do it for love.
I have been on a several-year reading slump only exacerbated by the pandemic. It's been so long that I've started to wonder if it isn't even a slump, just a new normal. But this year I've started to feel something like that old magic.
The magic isn't something that happens on demand. It's hard to explain. But it's a kind of flow state you can get into in a book. The kind where you stop checking your phone, you stop looking at the clock, and you end up giving over your brain and your time and your sense of reality over to a book. It's wanting to stop whatever else you're doing and pick it up again. It's reading in a long, leisurely stretch.
Early this year I read a few books in less than a day, this is one of the hallmarks of doing what feels good. It requires time. And if you start a book on a Tuesday you may just have to take it in small little bites until Saturday when you can throw everything else aside to finish it in one big gulp.
I get into this state most often with audiobooks, when I really love one I get very passionate about it, very wrapped up in it, perhaps because it hits my senses in a deeper way. It's part of why I've been chasing the perfection of the long long book this year, why I listened to Middlemarch and Lonesome Dove trying to satiate it. But it is not a thing that can come on demand. It has to involve some serendipity.
Last week I was on vacation. A real Do Nothing vacation. A No Plans vacation. I didn't even have to plan meals most days. Knowing that I'd have a lot of time, I brought along my copy of Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, the third Neapolitan novel by Elena Ferrante. If there are any books that are my soulmates, it's these books. I unabashedly adore them. I love them so much that I ration them out to myself to make sure I don't reread them constantly.
Perhaps it's strange to bring only the third book but this is part of my plan. Because I not only have to ration out the books to myself but the television adaptation, which is somehow nearly as good as the books, a real miracle. I have been in the habit the last few seasons of giving myself a refresher for a new season by reading the book of the previous one. This time I cheated because there is still no release date for the 4th and final season, though it could show up any day, but I just wanted to read the 3rd and so I did.
It was divine. Delectable. Perfection. Especially since it was at least my third time through (if you count watching the show's third season) and it still surprised and thrilled me. It gave me such big feelings, as it always does, I immediately wanted to pick up the 4th book and it was only because I literally did not have my copy that I didn't.
And after that I was on a streak. I read the new Elizabeth Strout (who wrote a previous one-sitting read), staying in my bed with it for hours. Then I totally changed it up with the new Karin Slaughter (I quit the Will Trent series a few books ago but I picked it up again and the new one is okay, thankfully). And then a short Scandinavian novel from an author I've really enjoyed (it was ultimately just fine not great, but I still read it in less than 24 hours).
I got home and had a few more days of nothing so I started another book, a July galley that I downloaded only recently and only because my friend Jamie enjoyed it. I wasn't sure it was for me. Reviews called it "heartwarming." I do not like heartwarming.
When I opened it up, it got worse. The dedication reads:
For the strangers I've met in long lines at the airport and everywhere else. Thank you for making some of the drearier moments in life feel magical.
If it weren't for Jamie's recommendation, I would have put it down right then. I detest long lines at the airport. I do not strike up conversations with strangers. I grieve for humanity in these situations, I do not reach out for unexpected companionship. And yet. I pressed on. Because you just don't know until you try and, well, it was another 24 hour read. (And a July release that didn't make the last send!)
From the jacket copy, I never would have picked this up in a million years. But it was a sneaky book! Yes, the basic plot is how a woman whose life is in shambles finds purpose by getting absorbed into a six-day wedding party with a bunch of strangers. And for the first little bit I was not sure, it seemed rather eye-rolly.
But the thing is that our protagonist, Phoebe, is not just depressed, she is suicidal. That's why she's here. And the book does not treat this as a blasé thing, as a plot point that will just lead us to some madcap hijinks. It takes Phoebe's situation seriously and we really understand why she's at this point. There is heft to it.
What Espach does with this is a little contrived, but there is real emotional truth underneath it. Phoebe no longer gives a fuck. Not about anything. Definitely not about what a bunch of strangers think about her. So when she finds herself talking to the bride of this wedding party, she is a different version of herself. And there's something about being this new version of herself that gets a little spark going inside her.
She doesn't kill herself, of course, that would not be a book with a cute cover. But she is not instantly a cheerful, fun person either. She does start to discover what it means to just no longer give a fuck and ride this wave for a little while before she has to go back to reality and consequences.
Along the way two things happen that are absolutely my shit:
1) Phoebe has long, emotional, vulnerable conversations with many people. These are not conversations with strangers in line at the airport, because after the first encounter with the bride, these become familiar characters even if Phoebe doesn't know them well.
2) These conversations help Phoebe learn and grow as a person to figure out who she can be once she turns her life back on.
I know it's corny but I love people growing and changing. It's why I love watching shows or listening to podcasts about therapy. Self-awareness is where I live 24/7 and it's comforting when I feel like I'm not alone in this.
I could barely relate to Phoebe, we have basically nothing in common, but I super relate to vulnerability and emotional honesty and so I was really in my element.
I had a lovely, magical reading Saturday with this book. I finished it right before I went to bed, feeling satisfied and pleased. It is out July 30 and I bet it'd be great on audio. In a lot of ways it reminds me of The Husbands, another of my magical reads this year, because there's that mix of lightness, propulsive plot, with a real emotional center that takes everything quite seriously and never becomes frothy.
I don't know, I think I might be back. I think I might be me again with books. I feel like me. I know that some of it is the books. Not every book can make magic. But a few in a row, even if they aren't all perfection (the Scandinavian novel was disappointing, actually, not nearly as good as her last one translated) has me feeling like a corner has been turned. Magic can exist if I can make space for it.
Who knows if this is something I did or something the books made happen or if it's a little bit of both. But I know better than to try to explain magic. The one lesson I've learned is to just keep doing what I'm doing, do what feels good, read what I want to read, quit what isn't bringing me joy, a real Marie Kondo approach to books.
Thinking I might get back into Edith Wharton. Thinking I might finally attempt to read The Power Broker. These might be terrible ideas coming only because I am drunk with success, but if so I'll promptly stop. The one thing I'm going to really work on is keeping the phone out of my reach when I'm reading in bed at night. One thing I did NOT do much of during this long week was doomscrolling. (The discourse was very bad, so it was not so hard.) That, I think, may be the one new trick that brought it all about.
I hope you are having a magical reading summer, friends. May your slumps be short-lived.