I love reading. It’s a salve for what aches. It’s a friend to loneliness. I recently heard someone describe it as the cheapest form of entertainment – one free library book can provide hours of fun. In Good Will Hunting, Will (Matt Damon) wins over Skylar (Minnie Driver) with one of the best put-downs ever. When another Harvard student tries to impress Skylar with his knowledge, and insult Will in the meantime, Will corrects him: “You dropped a hundred and fifty grand on a fu**ing education you coulda got for a dollar fifty in late fees at the public library.”
I am who I am because of books
As a first grader I snuck books off of the upper shelves, even though we were only allowed books from the bottom shelf. And as soon as I was old enough to walk six blocks from my house to the public library, I spent summers trotting back and forth, carrying a stack of six books at a time and reading them on our front porch so that I could both be outside and be in a book – my two favorite places to exist.
In seventh grade, I read the first page of a Madeleine L’Engle book that floored me. I couldn’t tell you which right now, maybe A Ring of Endless Light? I remember setting it down and thinking, well, that’s that. The best first paragraph of a book that could possibly be written has been written. It’s done. It’s over. At the time, it was the most beautiful thing I had ever read. I had no idea that words could do that. Could paint that picture. Could take me where they just had.
I read it again. Did someone really write this? I thought. At that point, I knew my goal in life: to try and produce a paragraph that rivaled that one. That transported the reader like she had. That could paint a similar picture. If this could be done, then it’s what I wanted to spend my life trying to do.
Reading as a career
So that’s when I started writing. But I never stopped reading. A book to read grounded me. I always had a book with me. I chose English as my major in college, because I didn’t love anything as much as reading.
I knew I wanted to write as a career, but even after an excellent undergraduate education I felt that I still hadn’t read enough. So I went to grad school for literature – so I could read more and get a degree for it.
Six years later, just married and already pregnant with my first child, I started another Masters program, this time in creative writing. And I read voraciously again, resting books on my billowing tummy as I took the train to and from work every day.
The books, the conversations about them with my classmates and my professors, the writing they inspired inside of me – these things were needs that I had. I hungered for them like one hungers for water, or air. My little seeker’s heart wanted to understand the humans in this world and my place in it, and nowhere could I be more intimate with another human’s head and heart than in a book. No, not in my marriage, not with my children, and not with my friends. Definitely not with a TV show or movie. Not even with my therapist! Reading placates my need for intimacy. It is companionship in loneliness.
Reading as intimacy
Perhaps this need for companionship and intimacy is why American women read 16 books a year on average, while men read 10. Women are also more likely to read fiction, the most sensual and intimate genre, where characters can actually feel like our real-life friends, and a foray into fantasy can satisfy our need to escape the monotony or trials of mom-ing and working mom-ing life.
I didn’t realize all of this though, until I stopped reading. I didn’t know just how much I needed it. When my second child was born, around the same time as my first became verbal, I stopped reading.
When I stopped reading, I lost fantasy
Books on my nightstand were replaced by baby wipes, extra diapers, and love notes from Belle. B & B consumed nearly every moment of my day, and in the moments I wasn’t with them, I worked one of two jobs. I was reading for work or reading mommy forums online, or reading children’s books to my kids. But I wasn’t reading for me. I no longer had that book on my nightstand that tethered me to my own imagination and to a space in my world for fantasy. By contrast, reality challenged every part of my being in those years, when money, sleep, time, attention, and health were scarce.
I’ve always wanted to believe that anything is possible. In books, anything is possible. But in reality, it is not.
I didn’t start reading again until after the divorce. Like searching for water in a desert I clung to books in those early days of separation, when every moment felt scary and nothing about life seemed real. I read more books in our first month apart than I’d read in years, trying to recapture the self that I’d lost, but it was too late.
Darth gave me a list of books for us to read together – self-help books – and I immediately read every one (except for one I could not find because it was out of print). I discovered Esther Perel and Elif Shafak who wrote about middle-aged women in a way that made me feel seen. I read about how to truly set healthy boundaries, and learned the difference between being “nice” and being “kind.” I rediscovered Anne Lamott, who kept me company in my insecurity.
It felt a bit like growing up a second time, like a reeducation of sorts. A reawakening of my own belief that anything can happen – I can survive divorce; I can love again; I can be a single parent.
Because to me books are more than stories – they are survival – I’m going to share reviews of the books that helped me grow up again here in the hopes that they might help someone else who’s in a tight spot. Books make room for light in our dark places. They bring us more expansiveness inside of ourselves. If you’re looking for something to help you recover from illness, divorce, or parenting burnout, I hope you might turn to the stories that I showcase here.
