If you'll think back all the way to the prologue, you'll remember that I had two goals for starting this blog: to read a greater variety of books and to reduce the clutter in my home of books I would never read. The idea was, I mean is, the plan still is to get ONE book a month and to read that ONE book and write a review about it.
I did something bad this month. But damn if it didn't feel so good. It felt so good to be breaking a rule and getting a book at the same time. I was on a walk through Beaufort and the sun was shining and I had already passed up one LFL and so my willpower was completely gone by the time I passed the second one. I picked up a thin book with a title I would never be able to pass by in any universe, A Cure for Dreams. I walked it all the way back to my truck where I stowed it in my purse and tried to pretend it didn't happen like when I eat an entire half-gallon of ice cream and put the carton under a paper towel in the garbage can.
From the LFL website: Lat: 34.7143743 Long: -76.6599739. Close to downtown, right on the water, available to tourists and residents. great place to pick up a book for rainy day reading while on vacation in the area, . ENJOY, Dan and Fran
A week or so later, BAM! The exact same thing happened. I was in Beaufort again, on a different route, but everything else was the same. Sun shining, passed up one LFL, then stopped and found another little book, A Virtuous Woman, by Kaye Gibbons, the same author as A Cure for Dreams.
From LFL website: Lat: 34.7133906, Long: -76.6542975. Our library is blue, with a silver tin roof. It sits close to the fence, please visit. Sometimes our canine family member, Milo is in the yard. He is friendly and often barks when we have visitors. Feel free to throw him a treat or just say hello. Enjoy!!
Immediately, I decided that I could atone for my initial sin of grabbing that first book outside the confines of the rules of this blog by grabbing a second book outside the confines of the rules of this blog (two wrongs do sometimes make a right, I don't care what anyone says) and writing a Kaye Gibbons themed blog post. That made me feel a little better about the whole thing, kinda like this blog post was fate and who I am to argue with fate? I can't even win an argument with my husband, much less fate, so I took that second book too and here we are.
I don't have much to tell you about the walk because they were honestly just two normal, probably boring to you walks about Beaufort. Nothing out of the ordinary happened, which is OK because an ordinary walk around Beaufort is one of my life’s true joys.
I decided to read A Virtuous Woman first because it was the shorter of the two. I took it to the beach with me, set out my chair, applied sunscreen to all exposed skin and settled down for a relaxing day at the beach which was ruined with the first sentence of the book.
"She hasn't been dead four months and I've already eaten to the bottom of the deep freeze."
Sentences like that will kill you dead.
Just sit for a minute and think about that sentence. Close your eyes and feel it. Think about everything you know about this couple already. Think about the love and the loss and the casserole. I mean, shit, life itself is nothing but cycling through episodes of love and loss and casserole until you die. Kaye Gibbons wrote a sentence that captured two entire lives in 17 words.
Both of the books were fairly short, but covered entire lifetimes of ordinary people. And both books sent me into a spiral of self-reflection, self-doubt, several separate existential crises, and all sorts of other mental minefields that a middle-class white woman is seemingly required to enter into on occasion to keep from feeling guilty about being too comfortable in their very comfortable existences. Eh, honestly that’s only partly to blame. Let’s give mental illness her due.
These books made me ask myself two very big questions.
1. Am I still a Reader?
2. Am I living the life I want?
Let’s tackle that first question first because I think it is the easier of the two to answer since it is a yes or no question. But really, these questions are essentially the same thing. In order to answer them, I had to think about who I wanted to be when I was younger, who I am now, and who I want to be in the future. I will eventually review these books, but for now suffice it to say they were powerful enough to make me write a blog that probably should have been a series of therapy sessions.
Back to the beach day where I was reading A Virtuous Woman with a jar of chardonnay in my hand and my toes in the sand.
I quickly realized that this book was too dark (well maybe just too close to real life) to be a fun beach read.
I did not want to read this book. It was well-written. The characters were powerfully drawn without the least bit of convenient fictionalization noticeable. I was interested in what happened in their life that made it worth writing a book about and I wanted to know why Ruby died so young. Even with all those inducements, I did not want to read this book, especially not on the beach.
I had planned to read for enjoyment at the beach and found that I was reading a good book, but not enjoying myself. That is what spurred the first question. You could say that it made me question my shelf-esteem (please think that’s as funny as I do, I am begging you to laugh at this with me so I don’t have to question my self-esteem as well).
From before the time I could read I've been a Reader. Listening to audiobooks was my favorite pastime when I was a small child, although the narrator always sounded suspiciously like my mother. My parents used to ground me from books when other kids would get grounded from TV or seeing their friends. I would have to sit in the living room and watch TV as punishment for whatever crime I had committed that week.
For almost as long as I've been a Reader, I think I've liked calling myself a Reader as much as I've liked the act itself. I like what it says about me that I read, I like what other people think about me when they find out that I'm a Reader. I remember with some little pride and a great deal of shame how I reacted to the Accelerated Reader program in my elementary school. I would go home and plow through book after book after book, so I could be the top reader in the school. The longer the book and therefore the more AR points it afforded me, the better I liked it, regardless of whether I actually enjoyed reading the book itself.
This is a pattern that continued throughout my growing years. I've mentioned this before to you, but its relevant here so I'll mention it again. I would crawl on my hands and knees, dragging myself through books by Tolstoy and Dostoevsky in high school. Did I enjoy those books? I think I liked Anna Karenina and I know I hated Crime and Punishment. So honestly, I think I just liked carrying those books around with me and telling people that I was reading them more than actually reading them. My tastes in the classics weren't all driven by the need for others to think I was smart. I did truly enjoy Dickens and Austen - authors whose books I find myself rereading year after year.
From elementary school on, I was concerned with the optics of my reading. Although my reading habit wasn't entirely about other people -- I did and still do love getting lost in another world and I would read all the time when no one was around to see me -- but I was actively cultivating my image as a Reader and that was influencing the types of books that I read.
Where did I get this idea that reading, being a Reader, made me smarter and just flat out better than people who weren't Readers? And if Readers are just better, then there must be some strict rules about what it means to be considered a Reader. As Emma pointed out to Harriet, Robert Martin could not be considered a well-informed man just because he read the agricultural report.
Since starting this blog, I have been forced to examine my (non-blog related) reading list and ask myself what those preferences mean about who I am.
I have been struggling to finish many of the books that I have picked up from the LFLs, some of which I know I would not have finished if I didn't have to write a blog post about them. I have read a greater variety of books since starting this project (goal 1= met), some from LFLs and some audiobooks, and I have even enjoyed a few of them immensely. Good or not good, very few of these books have I torn through with the voracious hunger I have for the romance novel. I pride myself not only on being a Reader, but also on being a quick reader, a devourer of books, the Joey Chestnut of reading.
The fact that I couldn't blow through these books, the two I read for this post and the others I have picked up since starting the challenge in January, made me question myself. Am I really a Reader if I can't read this book quickly? Am I really a Reader if I would rather do anything else than read this book? If I was really a Reader, wouldn't I want to read anything at any time as long as I'm reading? It truly made me feel less than, less than my former self, less than other illustrious Readers that I only enjoyed reading quick, easy books with formulaic plots and a little more steam than even HBO is allowed (although Bridgerton would make even some of the most graphic authors I've read blush).
Trying and failing to read and enjoy those other books, more than the fact that I'm not a genius (full transparency, I tried to spell genius 3 different ways before using spellcheck and if that isn't irony and my point proved then I don't know what is) doctor saving lives and making millions of dollars on patents and having literary discussions over absinthe with a group of people wearing black turtle necks on Wednesday mornings, really drove home that I may not be as smart or as special as I thought I was.
In order for me to continue to fit into the category of Reader, I have to change my concept of readership. I have to allow for a greater variety of book preferences into the club I had once thought more exclusive. I have to admit that if you can't read a book a night, because of time constraints or emotional states or whatever, that you can still be a Reader. With changing my concept of readership then I must also have to change my concept of myself.
If I am both the author and the main character of my book, is it a book that I think others would be impressed that I was reading or is it a book that I would actually enjoy reading?
That’s the crux of it all. That’s what I’ve spent the past several weeks turning over and over in my head, trying to figure out by writing draft after draft of this post. And here’s what I’ve come up with.
1. I am not better than anyone else. That's been drilled into our heads since always, but how many of us actually believe it. How do people get out of the bed everyday and face the world without thinking they are somehow above it all? Wes listens to a lot of sports commentary, which means I also listen to a lot of sports commentary. One thing athletes are criticized for by the media is their inflated view of themselves. Athletes will say in interviews that they believe they are the best player in their position in their sport. Obviously, not everyone who says or thinks they are the best is actually the GOAT, but I will never criticize an athlete for saying or truly believing that. Can you imagine lining up against a big, scary, probably foaming at the mouth lineman without that kind of confidence? That's how I was getting through life. I was facing the giants by believing myself above them. If someone didn't like me, I could soothe my hurt feelings with the knowledge that I was smarter than them and so I shouldn't care what their opinion was, it shouldn't bother me what vapid, shallow, stupid people think about me. Same goes for people who are prettier or thinner or richer or nicer or more patient or more well-liked or better Christians than me. Yeah, maybe they do win in that category, but altogether, all things considered, I would come out on top because I'm so smart. I am a Reader, after all, so I know so much about the world and the human condition and I totally understand things in a way they just never will so let the poor little thing have her perfect eyebrows and winning personality.
I don't have a good answer yet for how to live without thinking you are above it all. Coming to terms with your own insignificance isn't easy, but it is helpful in that I feel so much more freedom in making decisions and interacting with the world without the burden of proving to everyone else what I thought about myself.
2. Being a Reader doesn't make me special, but it is a way to express my identity. Back in the day, I was reverse engineering this idea. I was reading books that I thought would get me closer to the person I wanted to be, books that I thought were what a smart person would read. Now, I'm reading books that I naturally gravitate toward. The identity crisis came when I realized that those two types of books, books I thought I should be reading and books I actually wanted to read, were not the same. In my head, I should be a really smart, well-informed, person who actually enjoys memoirs and biographies and non-fiction books about climate change and etc. But I don't like those books. Or I should say, I don't like those books all the time. What makes me, me, is that I'm a 30 year old women who loves fantasy novels written for young adults and also crocheting in my free time like a granny. What makes me, me, is that I like to read really trashy romance novels after a bad day at work instead of watching TV to wind down. What makes me, me, is that I will always be somewhere in the middle of a book by Jane Austen or Charles Dickens or a Brontë sister no matter what else I'm reading.
3. Reading can teach you things, but is isn't the only way to be intelligent. Or, said in a more general way, there is more than one way to have a good life. This is a big one to me. This lesson is one of the freshest cuts to my ego but also one of the biggest reliefs to my shattered sense of self. When I was younger, there was this perception that I was smart (maybe only held by my parents/a few teachers/family friends, but still it was said to me enough that I believed it) and there was this spoken assumption that of course that meant I would be either a doctor or a lawyer. And when I made a C in chemistry freshman year of college there went my dream of being a doctor and when I found out that being a lawyer was less like a Grisham book and more like counting your time in 7 minute increments I gave that dream up as well. My college academic advisor was a psychologist and I liked him and I liked Intro to Psych and so without too much thought, there was my major. And what can you really do with a bachelor's degree in psychology besides go get a doctorate and then give other people bachelor's degrees in psychology and so that's what I started to do. Only I hated it and I didn't try very hard because I hated it. I mean, I got published and I did OK in my classes, but I wasn't breaking any ground or changing the world or anything that really good psychology researchers do. So I quit. I gave up the dream of being Dr. Page Dobson and I thought that meant that my parents and teachers had been wrong about me this whole time. I wasn't that smart if all I could do was get a Master's degree and then work a regular job like everyone else. But here's the thing. I may not be a doctor in the medical or academic sense and I may not read high-brow literature or important non-fiction every day, but I am smart (just not a genious, genuis, genius) and I do have a good life. I hope I will always remember, and always have the courage to act on, the fact that there is no one best way to live and that the choices I make, from the big ones like what I do with my career to the smaller ones like what I spend my time reading, should be about what make my life better and not what I think I should want/what I think would impress other people.
3 lessons in 30 years. Yep, seems like I'm on track.
Now let's turn to some book reviews. I read A Virtuous Woman and A Cure for Dreams by Kaye Gibbs. Both these books are in some respects, just another version of the story I've told you here: southern women coming to terms with the life they have versus the life they thought they were getting.
A Virtuous Woman
This book had me from the very first sentence. It tells the life stories of Ruby and Jack, spanning the decades from right before their marriage to Ruby's too-early death.
Chapter 1 is told from the now-widowed Jack's POV and gives us a 3 page overview of his wife's illness and death. Jack gives us such a clear picture of Ruby's wasting away in the hospital with lung cancer that when Chapter 2 opens from her POV, it is shocking. It is a reminder that no matter how long or short the lead-up to death is, it is always hard for us to grasp how someone could be here and well and making casseroles one second and then what feels like the very next second, be it months or years or minutes, they just aren't here anymore.
The chapters alternate from Jack to Ruby and jump around in time as well. This works well as a literary device because every time I finished a Ruby chapter, I would ask myself, "Is this the last time I'll hear from her?" It made me cherish the time I had with Ruby, savor her every word. I didn't do that with Jack's chapters, after all, he's still alive to write another one. Isn't that what we do with people, too? We often take for granted the people who are young and healthy because we'll have more time to spend with them, we just know we will see them again, that they'll be here the next time we need them to be here.
Jack and Ruby have a hard life. They aren't rich. Jack never was rich and Ruby isn't now that she's with Jack. In the first chapter, Ruby asks for a cigarette on her death bed and Jack thinks, "... hard as that woman worked to get over too good a life then too bad a life, what a pity, what a shame to see this now."
That line and what follows concerning Ruby's life is one of the reasons that I found myself really thinking about my own life after reading these two books. Ruby had to get over the life she had and the life she thought she would have in order to be content with the life she was in with Jack. I think we all have to do that. We all need to let go of the life we coulda/shoulda had, the life we thought we wanted, the life that would have impressed other people in order to really be content with the life we have AND in order to choose the life we really want. Because Ruby chose her life with Jack, she chose not to return to her rich family and she chose to be a housewife instead of work because she knew those were the things she could live with.
This book was a difficult one to read. All the bad things that happened to these characters, all their unfulfilled hopes were really difficult to read about when I was just trying to get through my own bad day and deal with my own unfulfilled hopes. I think that is the biggest reason for why reading romance novels is preferable to me most days over "real" books. Books like this one, so true to life, are harder to read now that I have adult problems in a way that they weren't when I was younger. It is much easier to slip into a completely different world, like a YA fantasy book, or into a world where you know it all works out in the end, like a romance novel, after a hard day at work than it is to read about a woman dying from lung cancer and her husband eating her frozen casseroles for 4 months straight.
By the end, I was crying. Crying over the loss of Ruby, over Jack's attempts to live without her, over my own worries about what my life would look like at its end. A beautiful and clear snapshot of what it means to live a life that you don't want to leave, even if some would call that life dull or ordinary or full of unfulfilled potential.
WOULD I RECOMMEND THIS BOOK: Yes, if you have been looking for a fictional lens through which to examine your own life and appreciate that you are still here to experience all the love and loss and casserole that this world has to offer.
A Cure for Dreams
Like the previous book, this is a chronicle of the lives of two people - a mother (Lottie) and daughter (Betty). The book is mainly told from Betty's POV, although Betty's daughter both introduces and concludes the book with a short letters.
Lottie and Betty's lives are filled with the burden of being poor and with being women when that didn't mean much, but this book is not at all heavy like A Virtuous Woman. The misfortunes of the characters, Lottie and Betty but also the supporting cast of family and townsfolk, are told in an amusing, almost satirical way that was reminiscent of a Dickens novel. In fact, the chapters had titles (e.g. Of the mother and daughter's curious excursion from Milk Farm Road with a full account of the Irish calamity) that put me in mind of David Copperfield's (e.g. I begin life on my own account and don't like it).
This book was therefore more entertaining and easier to read than A Virtuous Woman. I could read it after a long day at work because, despite dealing with themes such as gender inequality within a marriage, murder, suicide, and The Great Depression, it was not heavy. I don't remember guffawing necessarily, but there was a shade of ridiculousness to the thoughts, motivations and actions of these characters that I found more amusing than devastating.
Although written in different tones, Kaye Gibbons teaches us the same lessons in both books: Your dreams may not come true or you may decide your original dreams aren't what you really want, but regardless of circumstances, you get to decide what to make of your current reality.
WOULD I RECOMMEND THIS BOOK: Yes, if you like the style of Dickens but want to read a much shorter book in which the author was not paid by the word and therefore was able to tell a much more succinct story.
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