Book slump

It’s been a while since I’ve read a new-to-me book that sucked me in and gave me everything I wanted. The last book that did that — that made me think and feel, that I could sink my teeth into, that was epic, and the characters were alive and real and I loved them, and the writing sang to me, and I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough and I also wanted it to last — was A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. It’s a brutal, brutal book. A real suffer-fest. As happy-loving as I am, I don’t fully understand my attraction to literature that plumbs the depths of human sadness, but sometimes that deep deep pool is what I want. Maybe because there is no such thing as pain-free happiness, that light is defined by dark, and one without the other isn’t the full story, not really. Or maybe because I’m fascinated by human psychology, and how we deal with the cards we’re dealt, and who loves us, and who we love, and whether we love ourselves.

At any rate, A Little Life was probably my favorite read of 2022. I read some other stuff that was fine. Not fine as in exquisite, but fine as in somewhere between okay and great. Looking through Goodreads, I see I gave some books 5 stars, and I don’t recall one single thing about the books! How did they earn 5 stars if I can’t remember anything about them?

A Little Life and a few others ruined me for finding truly satisfying reads. Light page turners are fun, but they don’t go deep and get to the big stuff I like to immerse myself in. Lately I’ve been re-reading books that I know will provide everything I want. I just reread The Goldfinch, and I’m sad it’s over, and now I have to find another book again. While I look and think, I’m reading Madame Bovary, and it’s not doing it for me. I read a few pages and then put it down to do something else. This tempts me to go for something known, like Fates and Furies again, but there are so many books in the world, I don’t want to be in a rut of only reading stuff I know. I’m at a loss. I know I’ll find something eventually, I’m just impatient to get there.