HUMAN WRECKAGE

Ones for the Record Book

About four years ago I began to keep a list of all the books I’d read in a calendar year. This is a habit I regret not taking up 40 years ago. Not because I can’t remember what I’ve read (although the actual contents may be foggy), but because the simple statistical aspect intrigues me. I read 26 books last year. That’s my lowest total since I started to keep a record of my ongoing prosaic autodidactic education. I’ve been contemplating the reasons for my slump. There are a few.

I tend to read one book at a time now. When I was a drafted member of the workforce I always had two on the go, one on the night table and in my leather satchel for my commute. Transit reading frequently turned into engrossing misadventure. I packed works by James Lee Burke, Ian Fleming and John D. MacDonald. On downtown platforms designed to serve two lines I’d board the wrong train. If I got that part right, I’d miss my stop. It was something to pull my nose from a thriller or mystery novel to wonder where I was and what exactly was going on.

My preferred time to read now is bedtime. Some coffee and cigarette mornings I’ll finish the last 10 pages or so of a book that had made the inside of my eyelids too gritty the night before. Rereading the same sentence five times can be tiresome. I don’t read during the day because I’d rather be writing. Should I wish to avoid writing, I'm blessed to possess that rare and uncanny ability to stretch out the simplest five-minute household chore into hours. I have a PhD in puttering. To be ensconced in an armchair with a book when I should be puttering screams of laziness and procrastination.

Finally, there is the content of a particular book itself. I make an effort to limit or at least monitor my passive screen time, television or Apple devices. I’ve no qualms going to bed a couple of hours earlier than usual with a book for company. Alas, some volumes are not siren calls to the sheets. The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee, a biography of cancer, my last selection of 2021, is hanging me up. The book is an eloquent portrait of a grotesque reaper but I’m frequently forced to pause because of the grimness of the subject matter, my own family’s history and my ignorance of molecular biology. The most difficult book I’ve read since I began keeping track of titles is William Manchester’s The Arms of Krupp. Its thousand pages were not a deterrent. The family’s business was weapons, and in the dynasty’s later years an alliance with the Nazis and the utilization of slave labour for profit posed no ethical dilemma. I may not be able to define obscenity, but I recognize it when I can bear to read it.

The posthumous publication of John le Carre’s Silverview will be my first read of 2022. It is a slim volume and will be something of a melancholic exercise. All of my favourite authors are now deceased. Le Carre was also a particular favourite of my father’s, so much so that Dad’s Second World War Royal Canadian Air Force portrait is on a shelf beside my volumes of le Carre – many of which came from my father’s library. Though I’m aware of my father’s anniversaries, his dates of birth and death, more often than not it’s been a book by le Carre that prompts remembrance. Since he passed in 2014, Dad has missed four novels and a memoir. That simple and somewhat irrational fact saddens me. Still, Dad frequently reread le Carre. His unspoken lesson was that fine writing, like a great movie or record album, is meant to be enjoyed more than once.

I avoid new year’s resolutions like, well, the plague. But I do intend to read more books this year than last. And so, here’s to something old, something new, something borrowed and something recommended.  

meGeoff has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of all things literary since 2013. My novella Of Course You Did is my latest contribution to contemporary fiction. Visit www.megeoff.com to find your preferred format and retailer.