girls just wanna (read and) have fun
on reading more, reading better, and how authors want us to read
1. stop saying you don’t have time to read
we’d all like to read more. and we’d all like more time to do the more reading. as someone who does read a fair bit1, i’ve been guilty of this too, in phases. but unsurprisingly, it’s just relative time allocation & prioritisation. enjoyed this fun read of a woman racing to finish a book before her book club meeting. spoiler? she did have the time afterall.
back in school, i remember reading an interview of Umberto Eco where he spoke about this concept of “interstices”. decades later, it’s stuck with me. this is why i always secretly enjoy when people are slightly late to coffee dates or lunches or meetings. i can enjoy the interstice :) here’s his iconic quote:
2. you’re telling me reading is cool again?!
well, not to say that NYT or The Atlantic or New Yorker necessarily capture the pulse of young people, but it does indicate a cultural phenomenon worth observing en masse. for instance, remember when they called GenZ’s return to wired earphones?2 i’m here for it. which is why this excites me. book & literary festivals are picking up among young indians.
“Reading is an addiction,” he said. “If you start reading, you cannot stop at one.”
and not only as a platform for the literary elites (which has historically exluded non-english speaking audiences in early JLF-days), but with an earnest focus on social justice and perhaps even a subconscious war fighting back screen addictions.
Prarthana Manoj, a 24-year-old who has moderated panels and volunteered at literature festivals, said that young attendees were more curious about topics like class, caste and gender.
“Even if they haven’t read a lot, they are trying to be more inclusive,” Ms. Manoj said. “They have these genuine questions, and you’re like, OK, this is a beautiful crowd.”
CLICK TO READ: The Hot Place to Be Seen for Young Indians: Book Festivals
3. the age old adage of “show, don’t tell” and why it matters
everyone and their aunt and their aunt’s friend has an opinion on Sally Rooney. but it isn’t the Liberal Themes, the frustrating character tropes, or even the predictable resolutions that interest me. i get it, she’s cracked the ‘millennial reader’ code. i even enjoyed Conversations with Friends a lot (love me some messy affair drama).
buuut what’s up with authors being patronising? why are we being told this-is-exactly-how-it-goes?
How do I know these themes?
Rooney tells me. In the book. Quite openly, actually.
And that, my friends, is the strange thing I’m noticing in novels these days.
Authors are just coming right out and telling you what the themes of their novels are directly from the narrator's mouth. They’re explaining and overexplaining themselves and their messages without restriction, without giving readers a chance to reflect and think critically. My assumption is that this is done intentionally. If that’s the case, I’m curious why authors have stopped trusting readers to figure out these themes on their own.
this terrific essay addresses this question beautifully:
and of course Donna Tartt is the perfect example of how to do it right!
When I was rereading Secret History, I was doing so with the intent to find passages that were intentionally or unintentionally leading. Something that would disprove my thesis and maybe show me that I was overthinking and overreaching in this argument. But there was nothing. Zero. There’s not a scene I can quote that explicitly tells the reader what the themes could possibly be about. And The Secret History is written in first person, so it would’ve been easy for Tartt to over explain. But Tartt is a master of prose.
side note, but very important plug: GO READ THE SECRET HISTORY (select reviews that accurately describe the experience):
4. author interviews and why a ‘good’ one is ridiculously difficult
if not the whole schbang, you may have at least seen clips of Dua Lipa (yes, global celebrity pop star) doing author interviews. and she is so, so good. this was one of the best videos i saw last week. and it really gets to the heart of what it takes to do a ‘good’ interview:
and the same youtuber also wrote this piece to supplement the conversation from the other side. which is, what’s in it for the authors.
Elena Ferrante gives a very occasional email interview, but believes, “books, once they are written, have no need of their authors.”
growing up, i was a huge fan of Milan Kundera who was mostly out of the public eye until his death recently in 2023. at best, there are 1-2 documented interviews of him. so elusive, so mysterious, and perhaps what drew me more to the complexity of his philosophical fictions, since they were entirely removed from Kundera The Author (but is fiction really ever devoid of the author? Kundera’s exile from Czechia for his “anti-communist” stance were, inadvertently, peppered in nearly all his novel’s settings).
Most of us don’t have the privilege of studying these books in college. We’re reading them quickly, in between changing the baby’s diapers and checking the box score. Is it really so bad if we want the author to help us unpack the novel a little? After all, they know the novel better than anyone else.
Great novels are the result of a mighty effort. And learning the contours of that effort can help us understand just what the novel is and wants to be.
5. a little whimsy with a side of a passionate recommendation
i adored this little piece on the bedside table and what books are there, should be there, deserve to be there, and what our beside table perhaps tells us about the state of our reading (mine: chaotic).
It goes without saying that the books had to have an alluring jacket to qualify for a placement on the bedside table, but, Dear Reader, unlike the perfume bottles, the books were not just for show: the contents had to be as beautiful an experience for the mind as the jacket was for the eyes.
until next time & new reads!
🌻
~ rufus
i did a roundup of my 2023 reading here: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/yadavrhea_readingchallenge-bookcommunity-yearinreview-activity-7149036675254460416-LBQG/
if you don’t know what i’m talking about: https://in.mashable.com/tech/25678/why-gen-z-is-plugging-in-wired-headphones-and-tuning-out-airpods
The one about having time to read books is going to linger on my mind for a while. I’ll try to come up with a better list of excuses soon.