Satisfaction

Reader, do you have a moment to read a bit?

Here, check out this article by Helen Rosner: "When You Love A Book Because of Who It's From".

If you don't click the link, I'm going to give you the opening punch anyway:

For a certain sort of person, sharing a book can be as intimate and exhilarating as sharing a kiss — and as varied in its vernacular, from a drunken, late-night exhortation to crack open some John LeCarre, to an old friend gently floating the idea — across the suddenly endless expanse of a living room sofa — that you might, maybe, perhaps, enjoy a little Julian Barnes. Like a kiss, like a crush, like love itself, opening a book at someone else’s suggestion is simultaneously a solitary act and a shared one: We may travel these paths alone, but we visit common territory. 

When someone you love tells you about a book that he loves, it’s an act of revelation —intentional or not — that’s as intimate and vulnerable as being handed the keys to his childhood home. He’s telling you where he’s been, but even more than that, he’s trusting you to explore it on your own, knowing your steps will fall where his once did. (And oh, the thrilling signs and wonders that attend reading his own copy of the book: There’s a strange and profound power to holding the very same object in your hands that he once held and — by the same portkey — reaching, separately but identically, the same destination.)

The whole article is packed with love for books and the people who love them, as well as slipping in little things like portkeys and other winks. It's sexual, quite frankly, to read about reading, about devouring the pages and the words, about falling in love with the stories and the experience of reading what others have read.

Honestly, though, I've read a lot of people's favorite books. There comes a point in every relationship or friendship where you will read someone's most meaningful book, intentionally, or not. Or you'll re-read a book, now knowing that it means so much to someone else. Sometimes it changes my perception of the person and I might fall in or out of love with them a little, but almost never do I change my mind about the book. The book will be enriched, my experience will be enriched, but I won't love it or leave it for anything less than its natural qualities.

I've written in the past (past past) about reading other people's favorite books, but they don't have to be favorites -- just things that people give you, tell you to read because they are so great. So very great. And it's a scary thing, to pass that book along! When I love a book, really love it, it's so hard not to overdo it with other people.

You have to read this book. No, you have to. It's amazing. So amazing. Read the book. Read it! Did you read it yet? Oh my god oh my god oh my god. 

I start gibbering, like I do when I'm in love, or about to explode with feelings. When I can't accurately express how deeply something touched me or changed my life or just sucked away an entire weekend where I didn't do anything except read. You start babbling, book in hand, and people start backing away and they don't take the book with them HEY take the book you gotta read this book please just read it I'm bursting over here.

I'm not kidding when I say it's sexual. It's a bit like having an orgasm: You completely lose your damn mind and are incapable of rational thought or words but all you want to do is express how really really fucking awesome it is. And if you're standing there, doing that at someone who is not currently having an orgasm, and hasn't read enough of the dust jacket to get turned on (sexy, teasing dust jackets! Although they are often full of lies. Sexy, sexy lies) they are understandably going to get a little freaked out.

Maybe this doesn't happen to you, but I've found that the only way I can suggest books to people without being too much of a weirdo is to throw the book at them and then run away and pretend like I didn't just do what I did. This is a pattern in all of my life: I throw my deepest bomb of emotions at a person, and then act all detached like it didn't just happen and I'm not actually freaking out. It works well enough.

Oh, don't worry if you don't read it. I thought you might like it. 

Secretly thinking, Please please read this, this is so important to me and I want to share this feelings and this experience with you. If you tell me you didn't read it, or you hated it, I will probably have to reevaluate our friendship at its most basic level, and then go re-read my copy just to make sure its feelings haven't been hurt. 

Maybe this is irrational, but see also every aspect of life that involves vulnerability and human interaction, and then tell me what you think.



Here's what I'm reading right now:

A Truth Universally Acknowledged: 33 Great Writers on Why We Read Jane Austen 

edited by Susannah Carson

You may notice that my smile and hands are mirrored on the cover illustration. I did not plan this. Clearly, you can see why this book gets me. 

This is just a collection of 33 essays, both contemporary and historical, on why Jane Austen is so damn awesome and why we keep reading her novels. 

I don't need this book to tell me Jane Austen is great (although I have certainly learned some things about her and the novels that I didn't previously know or understand). I know she is great. I love her novels. I re-read them with occasionally alarming frequency. If we keep my previous metaphor going (sorry, I'm having one of those days. Metaphorically, of course) this book is downright masturbatory: pretty much only Jane Austen fans are going to read it, and derive immense satisfaction from it. Universally. 

This is absolutely a case of reading a book because of who it's from. Although she didn't write it, Jane Austen inspired it directly, and due to the fact that she is dead and gone, it is the closest I'll get to having new Austen material to read. People who love Austen write Austen when they write about her, and I love that. My University library has at least four solid shelves dedicated to Austen, down in the library basement. I always stop there in my browsing, sometimes just to look at the spines. 

Precious precious spines.

I hope everyone loves something as much as I love books (and Jane Austen, natch). What are you guys passionate about? Do you swoon over your drum kit? Run your fingers through the bristles of your paintbrushes? Do you have a favorite pipette, or your grandfather's T-square? Good! Keep doing it! Hold those things up and love them! Share them with your friends, and share your passions. Give yourself the satisfaction you deserve, savor the spices of your life, and never give up.