The Dangers of Loving Books Too Much

Sometimes, reading can be the literary equivalent of a torrid summer time love affair. Sometimes, you can't get enough. You stay up into the darkest hours of the night, fawning over one another, face to face, revealing yourself, your heart. Your world becomes tinted with the colours of the book and you begin to pull away from the realities of your life to sneak back under the covers with your beloved. You feel like a poet's lover, an artist's mistress, a genius' paramour. You live and die for each other.

And then sometimes, you'd just rather sit in a chair and stare at the damn wall! I'm trying to understand this. Occasionally, I feel shame because as a English Literature Major, I should have a swingin' love life when it comes to books. I should be devouring books like Mae West devoured men. I should be putting out a sign that says Open for Business, totally indiscriminate about what I read and what proverbial diseases I walk away with after the affairs have cooled. But sometimes picking up a book feels like too much of a gamble and my heart cries out, "Don't do it, it'll just end up hurting you!"

And maybe I'm misguided in thinking that it's the bad books that have the ability to emotionally hurt you. You read a bad book, you just put it down and start a new one. All you stand to lose is your time. Maybe it's the books that skillfully give voice to the parts of yourself that you thought to be speechless which have such high potential for emotional vulnerability. What you stand to lose here, is yourself. Books that are emotional excavators are the ones that we claim to be the most worthwhile and the most dangerous.

Wait. This means I'm scared of reading good books?

A couple years ago I was waiting to get the go-ahead for some crazy sinus surgery that couldn't come fast enough. My plan was to have the surgery, recover, then zip off to Asia for the trip of a lifetime. I had plans to meet up with a few friends but the majority of the trip was going to be solo. But as departure day got closer and closer I became more and more anxious and upset. It wasn't because I was scared to go, it was because I was scared to come back. I was scared that I would be so changed as a person when I came back, the life I was living before I left wouldn't match who I would be. I thought that this trip would change me so much, that my world would be in such disconnect, I'd be forced to become someone else. Most people get anxious about getting robbed in the back alleys of Bangkok or missing their train in Japan. I was worried that I would lose myself. It's the same worry that I have when I pick up a book. At the outset, you don't know what will become of yourself as you read and long after you set the book down. Reading is dangerous and wonderful and the most dangerous writing is often the most wonderful.

This whole post has been a round about way of explaining why I don't have another book review yet. But I will soon. I am deciding between The Sentimentalists by Johanna Skibsrud or The Rain Ascends by Joy Kogawa. Both books threaten to lure me in under the covers, whisper to me that I'm the only one, and then tie me up in a burlap sack and boot me head first out of the passenger door. Oh well. I've chosen this life and all I can really do is tuck and roll.