As I was reflecting on the books I have read over the past eighteen months and deciding on which I should choose to include in the A Writer Reads section of this website, a thought struck me: I am a literary sloth – the very definition of what childish Dan in One More Time would call – a LazyBones. The paltry collection in my Already Read pile seemed to indicate that I am a very slow reader indeed – never managing to devour and pontificate on something fresh off the press. Far more likely to get around to reading your masterpiece fellow authors – a good year after it’s released.
This disappoints me. Am I a complete wastrel? Or just a bad time-manager? I know that in these past eighteen months, I have published two books – wrote and researched one in its entirety from scratch, buried two parents, dealt with all their administration, cleared out a house, executed two wills, kept my Border Terrier alive, fed and exercised, myself likewise in reasonable condition, the house warm and sanitary and the bailiffs on the other side of the door. I am no slouch.
But reading – like a lot of other activities – has become competitive. It’s no longer a leisure activity; it’s an operation in one-up-womanship. I choose to alter the gender of that noun deliberately as I think it is mostly the female of the species who engages in this practice.
When did this happen? Reading used to be a leisure activity – something you did on a wet Sunday afternoon by a big fire with a hot whiskey on your side-table. Or during that last hour in bed before you nod off.
For the seriously time-challenged – and I include myself in this – it was something you looked forward to catching up on during a ten-day holiday lounging on the beach or by the pool, when you actually could read all day – with no interruptions. On my many trips to Italy, the natives are always fascinated by why foreigners bring books – sometimes hardbacks – to the beach with them. They could never see the appeal, when you had the blue Med in front of you.
Although it was invigorating and fresh to hear the views of the all-male gatherings on the recent excellent RTE The Book Club programme, historically book clubs have been most popular among women.
But when I think of competitive reading, it’s generally not in-person book clubs I’m thinking about. They tend to pick a manageable book to be read over a reasonable time-frame and welcome a healthy mix of views on what the participants think of it, dotted through with general news and an adequate draught of white wine to keep the vocal chords lubricated.
Competitive reading is, I think, at its worse in On-line book clubs. They can encourage people to project themselves, their erudition, their knowledge onto the other members – through their recommendations. Of course some people are genuinely sharing a book that they thought was fantastic and enjoyed thoroughly, but others – particularly authors – are –wary of endorsing something they think might impact negatively on their own profile, while others consciously choose something that elevates their status in the reading of it. I could be guilty of that last one myself.
But the thing that upsets me the most are the ‘Challenges’: read a book a day or 500 a year! (I exaggerate for the sake of illustration!) It might take a writer at least a year to get a book down – yet Janey doing the ‘Challenge’ can dispense with it in eight hours. This ‘skimming-over’ – this speed-reading when it’s not your day-job – has fed into the commodification of literature. Books as commodities with no intrinsic value or art or beauty within. Just ‘pulp fiction’ – expected to be churned out on a yearly basis – often to the detriment of the quality of what lies between the covers and certainly to the loss of many good trees which don’t deserve to be sacrificed.
I think my ‘below-par’ score for the sum of books that I have read during the past eighteen months probably is an indicator – not of my indolence, but instead of my desire to really read what other people have taken the time to write. I read like a writer; loving the balance of a sentence – frowning at one that sits awkwardly – or is, let’s face, just plain ugly and shouldn’t have been allowed to stay.
My challenge is not how many books I have ticked off my list, but how long will the characters, settings and wonderful scenes from those that I have completed, stay with me in the future.