Coming and Crying

I’ve read through about a quarter of the book. I’m trying to not just read it through in one sitting.

I know it’s not usually considered a bad thing, doing that, but I really have a problem just blowing through books, particularly anthologies and collections. It’s not that I don’t savor each story, each scene, it’s that I just overwhelm myself and don’t breathe.

Reading this book is sort of like eating a four-star prix fixe meal. Everything is just so damned good and you’re thinking about how good the next piece is gonna be. So you try to settle and focus and breathe with each bite into what’s in front of you and you slow down, for a bite or two. Then you hit something that just intoxicates you, maybe you find a new layer to the meal before you, so you say “I need more. I just want to try this again, I’ll linger on this piece, I swear.” You never do, you just keep going at it.

Then the next portion is before you, and the same thing happens. So, for the sake of my sanity, I’m gonna slow down. I’m gonna linger over the pieces I’ve read so far and think about what they can teach me, as a writer, as a person, as a reader. I’m gonna focus on the things that come up for me in reading memoirs of a stranger’s love(lust)-life.

aghskdfiafd- anyone who can needs to reserve the last of the copies at Mcnally Jackson, or start petitioning now for a second edition.