Shaved Meats, Piled High: March 2019
#AlwaysForPleasure
Two weeks ago, I told my daughter that I had taken Twitter off my phone. She said: "THANK YOU!"
Because of those two sarcastic yet heartbreakingly sincere words, I won't be reinstalling it, ever. If you see me out and about and I'm staring moodily into the distance, it's called daydreaming and I used to be very, very good at it. In fact, it's probably why I became a novelist. When I was a child, bedtime was one of the highlights of my day. Because when I went to bed, I told myself stories in which I was the hero. Being alone with my own thoughts used to be one of my favorite things in the world. I needed to reconnect with that old pleasure. Apparently, I'm not the only one. Boredom is big. Boredom is the next hot trend. You heard it here . . . second?
Reading was, is, one of my favorite things as well, but it has been complicated by two decades as a novelist and, recently, sporadic reviewer. When I read for a review or a blurb, it feels like homework. When I read crime fiction in general, there's a whiff of obligation, a faint buzz at the back of my brain, analyzing and dissecting. (This falls away when I'm reading outstanding crime fiction, of which there is much these days.)
Now, as a part-time resident of New Orleans -- that's me above, Mardi Gras 2019, I have no idea why the photo is upside down, but it works -- I'm aware of the Lenten season, although I'm all about Mardi Gras, not so big on Ash Wednesday, much less Lent. This year, I decided to use the weeks between Mardi Gras and Easter as a chance to add something to my life, something good for me but also joyous: A steady diet of pleasure reading, at least 100 pages a day. I floated the idea on Twitter and created the hashtag above, an allusion to a wonderful documentary about my darlin' New Orleans.
I'm on Day 7 and guess what? It's hard. It was meant to be. And I cheerfully admit I missed my self-imposed goal over the weekend, when I was re-reading a book for a review. But I'm learning to use oddments of time for reading instead of staring at my phone. I've also discovered that spending time with someone else's prose is a great warm-up to my own writing sessions. My hope is that when I file Tiny Letter next month, I'll have read more than usual. But -- we'll see.
READ/READING: The Great Believers, Rebecca Makkai; Evicted, Matthew Desmond; [Book for Review], title and author confidential for now; A Student of History, Nina Revoyr; The Platinum Age of Television, David Bianculli.
REREADING: From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, E.L. Konigsburg; The Losing Game, Anne Emery; Marjorie Morningstar, Herman Wouk.
ME, ME, ME: I had some thoughts about crushes and sad men.
Laura Lippman
March 2019