November 2020: Reading Logs
In elementary school I kept a reading log. It was always for class, and looked different every year.
In the fourth grade there was a paper we filled out each time we finished reading a book. “What did you learn from this book?” the paper asked. Me, a stubborn 10 year old who had used her Scholastic Book Fair money to buy a slim paperback of Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven,” wrote: “I learned that a book could be very short.”
In the sixth grade our reading log was a weekly grid where we logged how many minutes we read each night. The assignment was to read for thirty minutes, and I took this seriously. I can remember sitting on the couch and looking at the clock on the VCR to track my time: 30 minutes, exactly. It was such an accomplishment, to be able to fill the weekly grid and watch the minutes turn into hours, the pages turn into books I had finished reading.
I have a lot of childhood memories of reading, sensory memories, even if the sense is just of sitting still, knees tucked to my chest, the book balanced in front of me. What I loved most about reading was the absolute escape. When reading, my mind turned off, the hamster wheel of kid worries stopped. I could be in my bedroom, in the discomfort of my own life, and also not be there. Reading was my first binge.
Recently I was reminded of this relationship to reading because I’ve returned to it these last several months: reading as escape. When I can no longer stand to gaze at a screen, when I want to numb out from the current landscape, I will read. There are nights that I got into pajamas and into bed at 8:00pm with a book and called it a day - if I was in the bed, then the day had to be over. If I was reading a book, then everything else in the world had to stop.
It’s a harmless binge, but it also makes me aware of how much energy it takes for me to read the books that really want to change me. My writing students are reading the poetry of Ada Limón the fiction of Kaitlyn Greenidge, the memoir of Kiese Laymon. These are words I cannot binge on, but rather words that slow me down, pin me to the rawness of what it means to be living right now. We’re reading to become better writers, which requires such a devotion, so much attention, so much being present. I can feel the exhaustion of the pursuit, especially when paired with my day job, the dishes in the sink, the notifications in Twitter, the voicemails to be responded to. I still want reading to be the activity that falsely tells me I have paused the world.
Like many people, my sleep has been shit recently. Which is how I’ve found myself on recent mornings, at four or five a.m., alone in the living room, finishing reading Luster by Raven Leilani or Nothing To See Here by Kevin Wilson or Every Body Looking by Candance Loh. There’s the moment of closing the book, then immediately wanting to track it as an accomplishment, to choose the next novel, to escape again. This morning I started re-reading What It Is by Lynda Barry. She draws her younger self, captures the escape of reading, and it confirms for me that this is how I am surviving right now, reading one of the pillars of how I will make it through this week, this season, this year.
If you, too, are reading to escape, and would like a book recommendation, write back and tell me what you’ve been craving and I will be happy to recommend some titles. For me one of the marvels of the pandemic has been how books have continued to be published, continued to be written, continued to be sold and edited and produced and celebrated. It gives me something to look forward to.
xo,
c
PS - Some newsletters I’ve been really enjoying as of late:
The Reading by Yanyi
What It Is I Think I’m Doing by Kaitlyn Greenidge
Astrology for Writers by Jeanna Kadlec
Dear Sugar by Cheryl Strayed (she’s back!)