I Keep Buying Books

Colson Whitehead (a favorite)

I have slowed down some, buying books. I told myself some time ago that I really needed to do this. We’re out of room for them, and my memory’s not as good as it used to be. Joyce is now reading a book I read a few months ago, and I remember hardly any of it now.  I recall liking it—that’s about it.

I’ve continued with an old, old habit—reading an author’s complete works—a habit I learned at Hiram College back in the mid-1960s, a habit, as I said, that continues to this day. I suppose I could read them on Kindle or get them from the library. But I don’t. I buy them all, all first printings, sometimes signed. It’s kind of a sickness.

A few years ago I quit buying snack-food fiction—mysteries and the like. I buy them on Kindle (a bit cheaper) and read them at night when my energy wanes—which occurs earlier and earlier these days.

I don’t mean to diminish the quality of some of those books by referring to them as “snack-food fiction”: I mean only that I gulp them down, not pausing to take notes or think too much. Books by John Grisham, Scott Turow, and other mystery writers. I admire what they’ve accomplished. 

But when I identify a writer I really like (Paul Auster, Elizabeth Strout, Anne Tyler, Maggie O’Farrell, Ian McEwan, and many others) I just have to read it all. I can’t help it.

Right now it’s Tyler.  I had not read much of her work, but once I started, I felt that old familiar buzz commence, and off I went into Tyler-land, from which I will not emerge until I’m finished.

This week some new books have arrived by Auster, Ian Frazier, Colson Whitehead, and some others, so I’ll be reading them—and very soon.

Can’t let myself slip behind ...