Skip to main content

Chomping on the Bit


Maybe it's in poor taste, but I just need to rub my fingers together a little and cackle. It's been 42 days since Ash Wednesday, since I decided to give up buying books for Lent. Several years ago, I read that Lauren Winner gave up reading books for Lent and I thought that might be a severe enough discipline for me to undertake. Then I imagined how wretchedly I would behave, how my mind and eyes would atrophy, how all my worst habits would appear, how my community would suffer. Also, how I would be a terrible bookseller.

So, I gave up buying books. Perhaps it doesn't seem like a big deal. But listen, I have an addiction. I buy at the very least two books a week, and have since I moved to Seattle last June. On those days I go to Goodwill, many many more. Buying books has always been a rush, an ecstatic burst of energy and enjoyment: bright eyes, sporadic conversation, constant touching the book covers, smelling the pages. There are worse things to be addicted to, and I find people with vices interesting and companionable. But still, I wanted to see if I could discipline myself to deny that rush for Lent. (This was when I thought that Lent was supposed to be 40 days, before I knew I had been tricked by 2009, which causes Lent to be a total of 46 days.)

But now, as we are in Holy Week approaching the big day, I think ahead in anticipation - to the early breakfast with friends, the celebrative high point of the Christian year, and to buying a copy of Ted Hughes' The Birthday Letters. I also look to the future with a sense of dread. I can easily say no to buying books now on principle. It will be harder when I have moderation and economy, and not Lent, to blame. I reflect, also, on the time I have recently spent without purchasing books. The difficult trips to Magus Books to window shop, my new love of the Seattle Public Library and it's magnificent collection of circulating books, reading books that had been gathering dust on my shelves.

So, I'm almost there. Holding thumbs, there's only three days to go. A happy rainy Easter to all.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My Mad Girl

[A Question I am Not the First to Ask: What is it about women and madness? Are they more susceptible to delusion than men are? The subject of many books and hypotheses, we wonder if madness dogs the steps of creative women (eg. Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf, Charlotte Perkins Gilman…) Is it a biological coincidence or a recurring phenomenon? Is it socially reinforced? Do men fear the hysterical women? Is it the uterus (Greek “hysteria”) which turns the brain?] The reclusive writer, the late Janet Frame, winner of all of New Zealand’s literary prizes, spent much time in institutions and in therapy and, as far as I can tell, her novels commonly include themes of estrangement, mental health and madness. Frame considered her 1963 novel Towards Another Summer too personal be published in her lifetime. As she’d already written an autobiography ( Angel at My Table , made into a film by Jane Campion) and been this subject of several biographies, this is telling. Towards Another Su
4 comments
Read more
Attention poetry mavens: any suggestions for good contemporary poets (either in general or particular collections)? Have sudden appetite but very little idea where to start. Any advice welcome!
6 comments
Read more

Before I go

I'm at the airport with too many bags. A last minute weigh in required me to pull all my books out of my bags and redistribute the weight, while the service representative had to call Iceland (where I pass through en route to London), and the fifty pairs of eyes behind me glared and grew glassy. Though this morning the weather was pure, clear and copper-sunned, the fog has descended so low that the tips of the trees are nearly obliterated. This is Seattle. This is the city I know. Here's something I wrote a month or so ago, an ode to this city, its literary scene, and its inhabitants. When I graduated from a small Midwestern liberal arts college with the music degree I knew I might never use, I felt lost looking for What To Do Next. Despite the pressure I felt alongside my friends – future accountants, teachers, and doctors - to map out a life just so, a much respected professor suggested that each step in one’s life seems microscopic, a darkened footpath occasionally lit by a
4 comments
Read more