Earlier this month, my husband, Robby, and I went on a 10-day vacation to Ireland—something we’d been anticipating and planning for years. It was our first just-us vacation that was longer than a three-day weekend since our honeymoon in December 2019 (yes, we threw everyone’s last big party before the pandemic; thankfully we catered from Frankies).
That honeymoon, in Hawaii, was ideal for endless pleasure reading on the beach and by the pool. It was also fairly early in my time as a freelance book critic, before the majority of my reading was geared toward assessing whether or not I wanted to pitch on a book, or assessing that book for a review itself.
As I was packing for Ireland, I whittled down a big stack of books that I have wanted to read for a long time but haven’t gotten around to because of my work as a freelance critic—books that came out years or decades ago, books that I have no reason to write about or consult for research. I ended up taking three with me, along with my NetGalley-laden Kindle and some magazines: David Grann’s Killers of the Flower Moon, Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich, and Elena Ferrante’s The Story of a New Name (the second Neopolitan novel; I read the first more than a year ago). I read only the magazines (on the plane) and the character schematic at the front of The Story of a New Name.
A big reason why I didn’t read more is because our Irish vacation was far more active than our Hawaiian honeymoon—we traveled across the northern half of the island quite a bit in our 10 days, and did some ~light hiking~ at places like the Giant’s Causeway (hands-down the most awe-inspiring place, nature is wild) and the Cliffs of Moher. I was totally beat at night and content to watch bonkers British and Irish television before bed (Robby and I are now obsessed with the UK version of The Chase).
But a few days into the trip, when I still had no desire to crack open a book, I realized that I wasn’t reading because I was on vacation and reading comprises a huge chunk of my job.
This isn’t to say that I find reading the books I review a slog—I almost never do, unless the book deserves a pan—but somewhere in the last six or so years, my relationship to books has shifted dramatically. I find it hard to remember what it was like to go into a bookstore or library in my before-times and choose what I wanted to read (which is to say I find it hard to inhabit the perspective of regular readers!). It’s also a trying time for books1 and criticism, as I’ve written about here recently. It’s been hard to turn off my anxiety about these industries and get pulled into a book.
And then there was the depressing and frankly frightening reality of returning to the States in the midst of speech repression in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s killing2—I read about Kimmel’s suspension at 5:00 AM on the morning we flew back. Suffice to say that I read nothing but the news and magazine articles in the week after we returned.
Then, this past Saturday, after two activities that I can pretty much always count on to clear my head—ballet class and baking (these cinnamon buns)—I decided to sit down and try to read Ferrante instead of doomscrolling. Reader, it worked. I found myself fully absorbed in Lila and Lenù’s Naples and Ischia and out of the well-worn grooves of my own frustrations and worries.
I don’t have any prescriptions to share here, but I do have a small reflection. Even in this time—perhaps especially in this time—books have so much to offer us. Reading can be a necessary escape, a respite, but it can also give us fresh eyes to understand the world we live in. I’m glad to have found my way back into it.
For more on the horrors of the publishing industry, Tajja Isen’s reporting in The Walrus is illuminating and infuriating in equal measure
Nikole Hannah-Jones’s essay on the public memory of Kirk is a must-read (gift link)
yes, exactly