In my consumption era

I began the year with a new approach towards reading: “Just read enjoyable books.” Easy words, short sentences. Or, if they were long, sentences that dragged me along for the ride, buckled me in so I couldn’t fall off. I didn’t want to be bogged down with invented words or peculiar English. I wanted to read. I wanted to read a lot, I wanted the words to flash before my eyes, I wanted the pages smoldering with how fast they turned.

The new mindset arrived in my final semester of undergrad. The thought of concluding that section of life planted an anxious seed in my mind, germinating its little roots and sinking deeper into my brain.

January Eleanor felt some type of way about this approaching cliff of graduation – maybe more like a curb, but still a drop – and fixated on regaining some form of her younger self. I grasped for the little me who first realized she was good at school, that she didn’t have to put effort in but did anyways. The one who stayed up late reading, practically eating books, her mornings peanut butter toast and her nights pages of text.

The “enjoyable book” mindset has since proved a success. My book count for the year, now collected in a neat Notion database, has risen to 36 so far. My mind feels more open, in a way I can best describe as having more rooms to access. When I run into a book I don’t like, with rooms I find I don’t need, I move on. The good novels I stick around for. I wander throughout the building presented before me, magnifying glass to the details before sprinting through a doorway to the next room in my path.

Some standouts

Remainder, Tom McCarthy

Piranesi, Susanna Clark

The Library at Mount Char, Scott Hawkins

People from My Neighborhood, Hiromi Kawakami

Fever Dream, Samanta Schweblin