Is it just me, or are books a little boring at the moment?
As a booklover, it pains me to say it, but I’m feeling a little bored by the books I’ve been reading lately.
I’ve just finished reading a new release by a well-respected Australian writer and I wanted to love it. And sure, it was clever. It captured a time and place that seemed familiar and cosy. However, I felt entirely unmoved by the story and it’s a feeling that has become familiar.
After finishing a book, I put it down and forget it almost immediately. It is not an option to leave a book unfinished, as that is something I very rarely do, and it’s not that these stories aren’t enjoyable. It’s just that they don’t ignite any big feelings of fear, sadness or joy in me.
Instead, they are calm, comforting, and sometimes lovely, but entirely forgettable.
The last book that I read that really made me feel something was Melbourne writer Jennifer Down’s Bodies of Light. It was a challenging read, and brutal at points, but really made me feel the pain of another human.
Bodies of Light follows a girls as she is thrown between foster families after the death of her drug-addicted mother, and later, her father.
It reveals the childhood that leads to an unstable adulthood of emotional instability, and hope despite those harsh beginnings. I was drawn into the life of the main character, Maggie, and hoped and wished for her happiness, or at least, peace.
I felt similar when reading equally devastating books like Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart, A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara, A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry, Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver and The Choke by Sofie Laguna.
These books are impossible to put down as I find myself so invested in the stories of the characters – I’m cheering them on, even as I can see how dire their circumstances appear. I love the triumph against the odds, or the redemption of the hopeless. Fearful of their disappointment, I cannot stop reading before I know they’ll be ok.
But lately, my reading hasn’t led me anywhere so bright and brazen. Instead, I’ve been invited into smaller stories where tiny insults and minor disappointments are amplified in the minds of protagonists who expect much from life and suffer the inevitable insults of life.
And I get it. Sometimes, I love a soothing, comforting read that deals with the emotions of everyday life. I like to feel the familiarity and validation of a protagonist who is just as human, and as flawed, as me, and understands my struggles.
I enjoyed the meditative quality of Charlotte Wood’s Stone Yard Devotional, and the quiet and calm characters within. I recognised their petty frustrations and irritations and was pleased to see them on the page. They made me feel better about my own annoyance at an unwanted visitor or shame at my schoolyard insensitivities. As David Foster Wallace said, these books have the ability to make you feel less alone.
Similarly, Robbie Arnott Limberlost was beautiful and had a real sense of place in the natural world. However, a few weeks later I can only remember the boy and the boat (I’m sorry, Robbie, my memory isn’t what it was – let’s call it perimenopause).
These stories hold a place close to my heart and I will continue to seek them out, but right now I’m ready to be taken outside my life and into that of another, far from mine and facing challenges I haven’t imagined. I want to ache for a character, and to cry for them, and pray they will rise against the odds. I want a book I can’t put down.
Let me know if you have any suggestions and I will be forever grateful for the pain and angst you have brought down on me.
