Showing Up Again After More Than a Year

Where did you go? Out. What did you do? Nothing.

The greatest gift is the passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind. It is a moral illumination.
—Elizabeth Hardwick

When I put my nose in the pages of the book I’m reading right now, I smell a room that has just been painted. I imagine yellow-gold walls, a room waiting to be lived in. The book is new, just came out: Elphie by Gregory Maguire. The words on the pages have no smell of paint, but my imagination picks up the swamp, mud, reeds, and—from my childhood roaming in places I was told not to go—polliwogs. The words in this book show me homes with dirt floors and no walls. I see the young Elphaba from Maguire’s Wicked, and the armless sister, Nessarose. Elphie drags Nessa behind her in a wheeled cart that bumps over rough terrain and, like me in my childhood, they are going places they were told not to go. Elphie may be green—literally—but she is also every kid who has ever been warned: Don’t! In her teens, she is every mother’s nightmare, or would be if her mother were still alive. She is willful and reckless and thinks she knows more than she could possibly understand at 13 years old. And so the story is an adventure.

But the green girl . . . will believe she invented her own character for herself out of a lack of suitable guidance. But who cares whether she gets it right or not. Maybe it doesn’t matter how we’re made, in the end; it matters only who we are.

I’m reading again after a long dry spell. Since I last wrote, I’ve dropped down into many Golden Age mysteries—like popcorn, one after another, no nutrients. Then after January 20, when the world tilted again, I re-discovered Middlemarch (George Eliot), and every day I lost myself in a land as imaginary as Oz, a town colored in muted tones and peopled by colorful characters. I was so happy to be reading a book that runs about 800 pages and in no way reminded me of current events—which seems to be the base of my reading requirements since Jeeg died.

You probably know that feeling we readers get when we come to the end of a really good book, and even before we close it for the last time: we’re already getting anxious about what to read next. For me it’s a panicky feeling: Oh no! NOW what am I going to read?! I felt that way after Middlemarch, so I tried Bleak House (Dickens). It was too bleak. I set it aside. I escaped into more mysteries until I couldn’t stand to read another one—bloated on who-done-its. A friend recommended Orbital (Samantha Harvey), and the only flaw I discovered in that book was that it’s short, so I was in and out of that dreamy world too soon.

My granddaughter is a big fan of the recent genre called “romantasy,” a blend of romance and fantasy. And she curates recommendations, knowing I don’t want to read romance novels and have no interest in the sexual escapades of he/she or even she/she. When she was 12, she told me I must read Twilight, and I did. It was a fun read, and I loved the setting—foggy, coastal, redwood forests—and since I have loved vampires since I was 12, I was willing to give it a go. The best thing I got out of Twilight? the start of talking about books with my granddaughter. So when she suggested I might like Fourth Wing (Rebecca Yarros), I demurred. Yes, there is romance in it, and he/she sex, but when I am reading a book, as opposed to listening, I can easily skip those pages—and I did. I read a sample first and was hooked in the first 10 pages, and there I was, dropping down into another big fat book with a compelling story. When I finished the book, I was in that book-fear state again, and in that state, I went to a bookstore with my granddaughter, which is a little like going grocery shopping when you’re hungry: not a good idea if you’re trying to stay on a budget. I don’t usually binge-spend on books, only because I try hard not to, but that day I left with four books: one was a dud, one is a writing exercise book (I’ll tell you about that one in another post), one is written from the points of view of three dead people (I’ll try it later), and one was Elphie. Bingo!

I read all of the Oz books when I was a kid, and more than once I’ve read Maguire’s reimagining of Oz in his four Oz books: Wicked, Son of Wicked, A Lion Among Men, and Out of Oz. I am an Oz fan and a big fan of Gregory Maguire, so how could I not buy Elphie? In hardback. Not cheap. It’s another short one at 275 pages, but it satisfies my need for escaping our political landscape into a well-written book that takes me into a land I know well with a complex character who makes me think.

But she’s full of all the things there are no words for, the great inchoate passions that are reduced, as we grow up, to the smaller things language allows us to say.

I’m curious: What books are you drawn to these days? Would you say you’re reading for escape? Pleasure? Learning? Do you have an inner—let’s call it a list—of what you want in a book? Please share.

Here’s my latest list:

• Must be well-written and well-edited.

• Must not depict heavy panting lustful romance/sex. Well, ok, but I get to skip those parts.

• Must not make me think about what is going on in the world right now (it’s my list—I get to choose when and how to bury my head in the sand / a book / ice cream)

• Must have some characters I like / love / admire who are compassionate / kind / thoughtful.

• The bad guys get what’s coming to them.