I've heard that people who read for pleasure as adults very often had a parent who read to them as a child. What is it about settling oneself down into a relaxed position, in a bed or on a stair, and stilling all movement, inclining one's head to hear a story, that is so comforting? (Or it might be news, or a letter, or a poem.) Whatever the document and its intention, reading aloud - or being read to - is rare and rich. Reading aloud last week led me to a rediscovery of a writer whose oeuvre I intended to read in its entirety (and haven't). I read Bolano's magnum opus 2666 (a collision of Europe and Latin America, of detectives, whores, murderers, victims, and literary critics) first. Challenged by its girth, lured by the enthusiastic reviews, and tempted by the dusky sunshine of Latin American literature, I sat myself in the corner of Allegro's on a melancholic November afternoon and began. And then I read The Savage Detectives , which I thought a better book, ...
Reading, writing, traveling