My life today looks very similar to my life six weeks ago. The adjustments I’ve been forced to make are relatively minimal. What I didn’t realise, I know now, is just how many hours there are in the day. Especially when you’re rested enough to wake up early naturally and you can’t go anywhere to kill time. So I read. Book after book after book. I’ve always been a reader, but the rate at which I’m now finishing books borders on alarming. (Often, it’s one per day.) I need new ones to replace them, which is also a bit of a concern. Mainly because I ran out of space on my bookshelf long ago, but with the libraries closed, I can only buy books.
So, welcome to the first edition of Quarantine Book Club. The best part of spending six straight weeks at home is that I’ve checked so many books off my reading list, and reread some old favourites, too. I haven’t loved them all – but what I don’t love, someone else might. That’s part of the fun of a book club. If you’ve read any of the six books below, I’d love to hear your thoughts about them in the Comments!
(And if you’re curious about what else I’ve read, you can see my whole list on Good Reads.)
A Good Man – Guy Vanderhaeghe
This book caught me by surprise – it’s a lot of things I don’t normally like reading about, combined in one book: cowboys, Canadian history, fictionalised politics and life in the country. Despite that, the story pulled me in quickly and held my attention until the very end. A Good Man is part of a trilogy, in my opinion, stands as a work on its own – perhaps not quite the masterpiece it is often hailed as, but certainly a very good read.
Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
I’ve loved to hate Lolita since I first read it in eleventh grade. The plot is both fundamentally repulsive and uncomfortably realistic. But the writing – oh, the writing. Nabokov was a master of the English language, which was, in fact, his third. It’s actually the afterward that he penned for this book that I love most of all, but the whole thing is a true must-read.
101 Essays That Will Change the Way you Think – Brianna Weist
About mid-way through this book, I came up with an alternate title that I think suits it better: 101 essays in Which I Tell you That you’re Thinking Wrong and Explain How to Think Right. The writing style is pedantic and ill-suited to a full-length book; in a magazine, one of these essays would make interesting light reading, but reading more than five in a row becomes painful. As the book goes on, the author seems increasingly desperate to reach the required 101 essays – the themes begin to overlap and the language becomes increasingly vulgar, with swears employed in place of adjectives.
I still like the idea of this book, but I expected it to be very fact-based and researched, neither of which it is; the author relies primarily on her own (evidently limited) life experience to dispense advice. With that said, I don’t think I am the target audience for the material. I know many people who really enjoyed this book, and you might, too.
If you See me, Don’t Say Hi – Neel Patel
I bought this book on a whim two summers ago – and my instinct for choosing a book based on its cover was never more spot on than on that day. I devoured the collection of short stories the day I brought it home and again, all in one day, just last weekend. The book isn’t long, but that almost makes its impact that much sharper. Every story is simply written and evocative that even as the author breaks your heart, he manages to make you feel joyful, too. Some proved so memorable that I knew how they would end as soon as they began, but I didn’t mind a bit. I know I’ll reread this collection again and again.
Collection of Sand – Italo Calvino
Where do I begin? Italo Calvino died just days before I was born in 1985. He was a writer who defined an era, both prodigiously talented and almost endlessly prolific. It was partly his ability to see and describe detail that made his writing so exceptional. There isn’t a single book in his oeuvre that I don’t love. (I’m hard at work trying to collect them all.) Collection of Sand is a series of essays about museum exhibitions he saw and travels he took. Few writers could make museum exhibits relevant forty years after they ended, but such was Italo Calvino’s immense skill. This book captured my imagination. I could see what the author saw as he wrote about it, and react to it with him as I read. If you have a general interest in, well, life, this book will not disappoint.
The Duino Elegies & Sonnets to Orpheus – Rainer Maria Rilke
My love for everything Rilke wrote is pretty well-documented. He’s been my favourite poet since the day I picked up one of his books, quite at random, in the school library in twelfth grade. I can’t begin to describe all the ways in which his work continues to enrich my literary life. There is nothing he wrote that I don’t love, and this book was no exception. I tried to read it slowly because it was so good, I didn’t want it to end. And when the ending came, it felt far too soon.
Happy reading!
While I haven’t read any of the titles you mentioned here, I love the idea of a quarantine book club, and today I went over to Goodreads to make my own account. Also, Calvino is one of Victor’s favourite authors and he’s read me a few of the short stories, so he’s definitely on my “to-read” list now. And don’t you just love it when you pick up a book on impulse and wind up devouring it and loving it to death? I had that recently with a Japanese novel (Before the Coffee Gets Cold) and it’s just the best feeling.
I’m embarrassed to say that in these six weeks I have not read a single book. Not that there are a lack of them at my disposal, in addition to being able to borrow from my library digitally – but I haven’t felt captured by anything I’ve picked up to get more than 20 pages into it. Though I was captured upon seeing “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” on your stack, it looks familiar, like I picked it up at a book fair years ago because I liked the title (and the dog), but did I read it? I suppose I should see if it’s in the house.