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Recently,
I had the "pleasure" of moving: That joyous occasion where
I discover into exactly how many boxes the sum total of my
existence can fit and I remember just how heavy the refrigerator
is. In addition to the standard ordeals of relocating my entire
life, nature deigned to make the selected weekend the hottest
Southern California had experienced to date. And my new apartment
has no air conditioning.
While
I now live further away from the beach, the move has had several
positive effects. Among these was the ability to peruse my
book library as I boxed them up. As I moved tomes from my
"read" shelf, I could briefly reflect on what I liked about
each book as I packed it away. It was a bit like a scrapbook
of the literary worlds I've visited, and I didn't even need
to spend tons of money on special scissors and ridiculously
expensive paper.
 More
exciting than packing up the "read" books, however, was moving
my "to-read" shelves. When it comes to books, my eyes are
definitely bigger than my stomach. I have roughly one hundred
"to-read" books beckoning me with their storybook siren song
whenever I walk into my bedroom. As the book count grows,
it acts as a constant reminder that I spend too much money
on stuff I don't need (such as books when I already have so
many I need to read), and waste too much of my free time playing
Facebook Scrabble with my mom and clicking refresh on my email
account when I could be reading. It certainly doesn't help
that I read at the pace of a stoned turtle (the THC Terrapin?).
As I
packaged them up, I was able to make mental to-do lists of
what I would read next, enjoying the shelves with renewed
excitement. I don't remember owning Orson Scott Card's Speaker
For the Dead, but I loved Ender's Game, so that
makes sense. And why have I still not read Anansi Boys,
considering how much I loved American Gods and Neverwhere?
And I remember when I got The World According to Garp
because my friend Jessica kept saying how much I reminded
her of the protagonist, and I had to find out if that was
an insult or not (I still don't know, but I suspect it is).
And why didn't I immediately read Lolita when I ordered
it? I was so excited about that one (in a way that doesn't
make me a pedophile).
 However,
the to-read shelves also contain some books I will probably
never read: books I tried and failed to read, books that seemed
like a good idea at the time, and books that are simply too
long to tackle because I have so many books to read. For instance,
when the hell am I going to read Moby Dick or War
and Peace? Who do I think I am? I suppose I was on a high
from reading Gravity's Rainbow and Infinite Jest
in one year, and I felt I could take on any of history's forbiddingly
hefty books. Of course, then I tried to read Ulysses,
which slapped me around like it caught me groping its daughter,
thus putting an end to my "hard book" streak. Now Melville
and Tolstoy languish on the shelf.
Will
I ever read War and Peace when I know I could read
at least three other books that I would probably enjoy more
in the same amount of time? The safe money is on "no."
Until the day I decide to prove myself wrong, however, it
will continue to look good on the shelf. The next time I bring
girls to my apartment, I'm sure they'll be impressed.
Keeping
history's literary heavyweights company on the shelf are books
like The People's Business: a treatise on the wrongs
committed by corporations, as well as how a concerned citizen
could help fight future injustices. Clearly I'm a bit of a
bleeding heart hippie to purchase such a book in the first
place, but now…well, now I wonder when I'm ever going to want
to spend several nights of my leisure time dwelling on such
things. I can already see the conversations I'd have with
my friends:
FRIENDS:
Oh hey, Kyle. We're going out. Doing anything tonight?
ME: Oh…you know, just reading about how corporations
have imperiled our ideas of citizen-powered democracy
and created an economic inequality that undermines our
faith in a shared sense of prosperity.
FRIENDS: So…you're busy?
 Not
that I don't read both classics and nonfiction on "dry" subjects.
If I feel I'm becoming too mentally lazy and reading too much
"fluff," I'll feel guilt that I'm not exercising my brain
more. Too many Buffy-related comic omnibuses in a row
and I'll throw in some Mark Twain (which both allows me to
do better on Jeopardy! and helps rectify the lackluster
public high school education I received). And, much to my
dad's confusion, I was reading a copy of bell hooks's Feminism
Is for Everybody—a very thoughtful Christmas gift
from a gal I dated—on our last family trip.
Admittedly,
since I read mostly for relaxation and entertainment, the
books I select tend to be of a lighter ilk. Classic literature
and heady nonfiction are, I will admit with a bit of shame,
often exceptions to the rule. And the rule seems to be this:
Kyle is a low-brow nerd who occasionally deigns to read books
where someone on a superskateboard blows up a team of ninja
mummies.
While
I feel little shame in the things I enjoy, flipping through
my to-read books brought my tastes into sharper focus. The
shelves contain, interspersed amongst the zeniths of literature
and the writings of those attempting to enlighten the world,
at least three books about ghosts, a couple on physics, one
involving Nazis/vampires, a handful of books dealing with
time travel, and one that I'm very excited to read about a
crime-solving wizard. I got a bit of an amused sense of satisfaction
from how stereotypically nerdy I can be and a bit of a giggle
about how any gal I date is going to have to put up with my
talking about time-traveling vampires. It made me happy for
some reason. Maybe just touched by how sweet those lasses
are going to have to be to put up with that nonsense. Thanks
for being such sweethearts, future girlfriends.
At the
risk of sounding like a This American Life cast-off,
the move has offered me an odd sense of insight. Am I one
of those people who refuse to read anything that isn't a bold
and nuanced post-modern look at the interpersonal lives of
Central American laborers? Or am I one of those people who
only read things that are so easily adaptable to sloping-brow
blockbusters that they may as well have stage directions on
the page?
Without
meaning to proselytize, I'm thankful I don't fall in either
group. I'd fear that without reading the "lower" books, I'd
become stuffy and dull. And without the "heady" books I'd
be willfully lowering my cultural (and perhaps actual) IQ.
One
version of me would take himself too seriously and become
pretentious, and the other version would be throwing away
the God-given intelligence he'd like to think he possesses.
I'm happy to realize that I'm pretty well-rounded. But what
do I know? I'm currently reading a book with an essay called
"Why I Used a Day-Glo Magic Marker to Color My Dick Yellow."
(June,
2008)
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