Reading Rituals

At exactly 8pm every night Margaret Lea, the bibliophile heroine of The Thirteenth Tale (Diane Setterfield), begins her elaborate ritual of literary retreat:

"It was nearly time. I moved swiftly. In the bathroom I soaped my face and brushed my teeth. By three minutes to eight I was in my nightdress and slippers, waiting for the kettle to boil. Quickly, quickly. A minute to eight. My hot water bottle was ready, and I filled a glass with water from the tap. Time was of the essence. For at eight o'clock, the world came to an end. It was reading time.

"The hours between eight in the evening and one or two in the morning have always been my magic hours. Against the blue candlewick bedspread the white pages of my open book, illuminated by a circle of lamplight, were the gateway to another world."

I have lately found myself thinking more and more of Margaret's nocturnal ceremony (for lack of a better word). For Christmas, my parents got me Audrey Niffenegger's graphic novel The Night Bookmobile, in which a young woman discovers a mysterious mobile library containing each and every book she has ever read over the course of her life. When reading it I got to thinking about my own literary memories--where I read certain books, what I was doing, what para-textual associations they conjure up, etc.--which, in turn, led to my thinking about how and where I read. I envy Margaret's cozy description of halting everything at eight on the dot, settling down with her hot water bottle, and vanishing into "the white pages of [her] open book." For me, reading is usually accomplished in snatched moments--during the 10 minute bus ride to campus and back, while scarfing my lunch in the basement lounge of my department, waiting for my therapist to show up. Even reading before I go to sleep seems somehow stolen or temporary. Perhaps this is because, unlike Margaret, my bed isn't really mine but shared with someone else whose idea of lights-out-time might differ from my own. Perhaps this is because, now back at school and working hard, I am tired at the end of the day and often preoccupied with the tasks that remain to be accomplished. Margaret's ritual, like her life, is a solitary one with few responsibilities and my life, thankfully, is not. While the ideal of her monastic retreat is attractive, it is not altogether feasible. (And I suspect that Setterfield herself, a former harried academic with a family, imagined Margaret's ritual with a wistful "if only...")

In resolving to read more in 2010 I had to find a place for reading. Once upon a time, subway, bus, and plane rides meant headphones and music; lunch time meant scarfing something quickly, often at my desk; bedtime meant lights out right away; free time (haha) meant television. Now commutes are spent with books, lunch is an hour's break away from work (also with said books), bedtime is eased into, and free time (hahaha) is something I seek out and try to use thoughtfully. But surely I can do more than this?

As 2010 draws to a close I must ruefully admit that my goal of 50 books in 52 weeks has not been met. I got close, though, at 47, and will renew my resolution/challenge for 2011. But more than that, my hope for 2011 is to carve out a truer and more permanent space for reading in my life. This may not be easy: I don't even know if I'll be on the same side of the Atlantic in 2011, much less what my routines will be like. But if my year of reading has taught me anything it has been that dedicating time to reading for fun has given me a much richer existence than I had before. The books I have read have not only been my companions, enlivening dull commutes or dreary days home sick, my refuge, distracting me when I've been sad or stressed, but they have given me new lenses through which to view my life and expanded my conception of the world. Anais Nin said that we do not see things as they are but as we are. What is a book but someone else's worldview couched in a story? And by encountering so many different views and so many different worlds, I like to think that my perspective has become a little more balanced. I feel that I know so many more "people" now. It has also given me a lot more to talk about at cocktail parties.

2010 was a year of getting back on track for me after two years of wandering. I don't know if reading has anything to do with that; I rather think it didn't. Reading is fun and edifying but it isn't magic (unless we're talking about that dreadful Inkheart movie...oh Brendan Fraser, what happened to you). Instead I think that my increased literacy has been a part of my broader push to set and accomplish goals. So if 2010, while not the year of 50 books, was the year of goals and Getting There, I hope that 2011 will be a year of routines. I will hope to develop good work habits--getting up and going to campus every day instead of mooning about the house--to develop a fitness routine, to not get overwhelmed and throw my hands up but to methodically work through whatever tasks I have before me, and to find a place in all that just for reading.

(Image: Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Young Girl Reading, c. 1770.)