XENITH

One good thing about being back in school, you could say, is that it keeps a person busy. It seems like I’ve been reading almost nonstop since early September, which is honestly how I prefer to pass the time. I was pushing myself back into the habit at the closing days of summer, reading Madame Bovary, Nostromo, Beloved, and a few others I’m not recalling, and when the first day of school came, I was totally ready to plow through the first week, reading 730 or so pages of some of the worst writing I’d ever read—Dan Brown (it’s a humanities course on the 17th and 18th centuries—the book is just an acclimation device). Unfortunately, all these novels, plays, philosophical treatises, rants, dialogues, bigoted monologues, poems, and history that I’m reading for these two classes (the other being a course on American Indian philosophies) just aren’t quenching my thirst for literature. The novel was young in the 18th century; and let’s be honest—the poetry was stale. Reading Moll Flanders after Madame Bovary is like having a sirloin at a suburban Applebee’s after prime rib at Manny’s in downtown Minneapolis. They don’t quite compare.

The cruelty, of course, is that this is my reading season. With the onset of the cool October weather, I started having fairly intense urges to pluck a dense novel off the shelf and curl up in Poäng with the following objects:
• Blanket
• Black coffee or jasmine tea, depending on the time of day
• Cat
The list of books I’d like to read keeps growing, but I never have time for anything more than thumbing the pages of these selections. There have been a few books assigned by my professors that I’ve enjoyed, but they haven’t had the emotional impact that I’m looking for. I look for certain kinds of books—those that make my heart say “omg”—and what I’ve been reading lately doesn’t even make it forget to beat for a second.

Does anyone else look forward to the autumn and the winter for this reason? It’s rather sacrilegious in Minnesota to look forward to any aspect of winter, unless of course you wear plaid, but I make it no secret: it’s the season of the dense novel. My apartment building is 135 years old and has original windows; it’s going to be so cold this winter that there’s really nothing else to do but bury oneself in blankets, drink warm beverages, and read. After my last class on December 16th, that’s exactly what I’m going to do until the first thaw, whether it’s in March or May. Starting with Anna Karenina.

What books will you be reading?

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