This year I added another writer to my MRE list. In truth, he was one of the writers whose stories provoked that kind of MustReadEverything commitment early on, but I didn’t have a word for it yet.
Authors who told the kind of stories that I wanted on my shelves were authors whose new books I yearned for. But it was still the stories I liked best.
I hadn’t lit upon the idea of finding something magical in an author’s general perspective on the world, on a way of thinking that made me want to support a person’s work as much as I wanted to read what they wrote.
A couple of summers ago, I reread Guy Gavriel Kay’s The Summer Tree. I borrowed the audiobook from the library so that I could listen too, and I was washing the dishes when I read that scene.
It’s somewhere in the middle – I wasn’t ready, I hadn’t remembered it happening so soon – and if you’ve read it, you know the one.
So that you know why I was standing in the kitchen with my hands dangling in the dishwater, Just weeping. It was sunny. It was summer. And I was overcome.
So when I returned to the book this summer, I knew that was in the wings. I expected it. I was prepared. And it was just as awful. On the fourth reading.
One reason not to make a list is the possibility of it being imperfect. Here’s a gap in mine, but consider it mended now.
Because that risk is also good reason to make a list. So it’s less likely you’ll miss something.
A seasonal list has also added a couple of titles to my stacks: the Toronto Book Award shortlist.
This year, I’ve read three of the contenders:
- Dionne Brand’s Theory,
- Cary Fagan’s The Student (my review will be published in an upcoming issue of PRISM international),
- Ian Williams’ Reproduction (my review is here and I’m extra-proud of this one, please have a look).
Mike Barnes’ Be With: Letters to a Caregiver (2019) is already in my bookbag.
And I’ve started to read Didier Leclair’s This Country is Mine (2004; Trans. Elaine Kennedy, 2018), but only enough to know that I definitely want to continue, no matter how busy this reading season is about to become.
Which brings me to another good reason for list-making.
A good list is like a good plan: an ordinary thing that can be extraordinarily helpful.
What reading plans are you making? What notes are you taking?
I hadn’t thought about your MRE list that way before – about it being ” a way of thinking that made me want to support a person’s work as much as I wanted to read what they wrote”. I love that. And I always love having a peek inside your notebooks. 🙂
Thank you! Mine are pretty functional – I see so many pretty ones online – but they get the job done!
Mine are usually just the plain ones, too. Which is why I’m really scared to use my new Alan Syliboy notebook!
You still haven’t started it? Maybe you need to choose a special notebook day or something? Hey…it’s the Equinox…that would be perfect! 🙂
I think I need a special reason or subject, rather than a special time. Like grocery lists, or something similarly exciting. snort
How about a commonplace book? With quotations from your reading and other interesting bits of this and that?