I realised it's been a while since I've written about the books I'm reading. This is not because I haven't actually been reading, but because of the admission in the title: I like big books. And big books take a while to get through. Last year, when I was trying to read 52 new books in a year, I picked the smaller ones because I would be able to cram more books into a year. This year, things have been a little different.
Because the new books I buy usually disappear into one of my five bookcases, it often happens that I can't really remember that I still have unread books somewhere, so I buy even more books to read (well, this is the excuse I tell myself for buying ever more books). To call a halt to the ever-growing expanse of books, I decided to put all the books I own and still haven't read into one big pile on one of my mantelpieces, so I could easily see how much I still had to read, and avoid buying more books. And believe it or not, this sort of works (although I did not put all the books I still have to read on the pile, because taking War and Peace or Far from the Madding Crowd or The Count of Monte Cristo from their respective rows will leave me with such gaping holes that I will feel compelled to buy more books to fill up the empty spaces).
I have now picked three books from the to-read pile, and two of these have been big books. And by big I mean 500+ pages. Apart from being big, they're also 'heavy' books, not only literally, but figuratively as well. I mean, I have the sequel to Me before you on the pile, but it will be one of the last books I pick. So, in short, I apparently like big books.
The first book I picked was In the light of what we know, by Zia Hayder Rahman. I've mentioned this one before, as the book I could not get through in the States. This is one of those books that you either really get into and love, or throw away after twenty pages because it isn't really about something. Or because it is about too many things at once. It is pretty big (564 pages), but it needs to be big, because it's dealing with so many subjects at the same time. This is the kind of heavy literary stuff that has allusions to about a hundred other literary works (most of which probably went over my head, but I read a review that described it as Heart of Darkness (although every novel that has something to do with colonialism or post-colonialism is compared to HoD at some point) meets The Great Gatsby, which I thought was pretty accurate), wins awards and is never read by a mainstream audience. It was an impressive read, and although it took a long time to get through, it did not feel as too big. It felt as exactly right for all the stuff it contains, and because of the importance of its contents, it feels right that it should take a while to get through.
Following, I decided to read something Dutch, and I picked a book by Arjen Lubach, who is one of my favourite Dutch tv presenters (not in the least because he is from the city I live in, but mostly because of his great sense of socially critical humour). The book I read was Magnus, and I think it's a good thing Lubach went from writing to presenting, as this book is not particularly good. It is, however, again pretty heavy in it's subject matter, although in a far more conventional format and style than its predecessor. But this was not a 'big' book, and I feel like the only reason I picked it was that it was the best Dutch book I had available at the time.
Upon finishing Magnus I wanted to get back to English literature as soon as possible, and again I picked the biggest book from the pile: A Little Life, by Hanya Yanagihara. This book has been making the rounds for quite some time, and I'd been hesitating over buying it for a while, when a friend made it all easier by giving it to me as a present (the British Picador version, not the original US version with the much-debated cover). We're talking 719 pages, one of the biggest books I have, and probably the biggest contemporary novel I own (most of the other large ones being nineteenth century stuff). It took me a while to get into, but now that the characters have become familiar (in the beginning, I kept confusing JB and Jude, which I can't imagine anymore now) I really cannot put it down. One of the reviews on the back says "It's not often that you read a book of this length and find yourself thinking "I wish it was longer" but Yanagihara takes you so deeply into the lives and minds of these characters that you struggle to leave them behind", which must be the highest praise any 'big book' can get. And I'm only at page 156!
So, last year it was all about quantity. This year, it is not about quality per se, but about picking the books that I really want to read. And I can now safely admit; I like big books.
