Recently, I’ve started doing something I haven’t done since college. Lying in bed with a book, I’ll find myself clutching my heart over a sentence — and then feeling compelled to root around for a pen in my bedside table so I can underline an especially good sentence. Do you ever do this? Here are three parts I marked (and tell me what you’ve loved lately!)…
“I didn’t know how to be mad at people yet, so I just aped the behavior I had seen at home: speaking to someone in tight, terse little sentences until they went insane.”
— The Rachel Incident by Caroline O’Donoghue
“[My father and grandfather] both had thick, coarse beards that they cared for rigorously… it seemed that this was a kind of sacrifice made in the name of loving well, of having something that a small child could bury their hands in, something closer to the ground those hands might be reaching up from.”
— There’s Always This Year by Hanif Abdurraqib
“My curiosity about Grey is a huge, violent dog on a very tight leash.”
— Another Marvelous Thing by Laurie Colwin
In the third one, a man, in the midst of an affair, is wondering about his lover’s spouse. (Caveat, since someone asked why I read about affairs: I’m not into actual affairs, but I’m fine reading about affairs, in the same way that I’ll watch The Sopranos even though I’m not a huge fan of murder and money laundering. I am just really interested in different people’s lives and why they do what they do.)
Anyway, this line struck me because — I can’t decide if this is embarrassing to admit! — it describes how I feel about any woman who previously dated the guy I’m currently dating. I’m curious about his romantic past, but I will not probe because I know even the smallest tidbit will make me nuts — hence, a huge dog on a tight leash. Have you ever felt this way? I know it’s uncool, but what a perfect way to describe it.
Sometimes a book will get it right in a way that feels like a forehead slap. A while ago, I was at a bookstore with a friend, who said he read only non-fiction because he always wanted to learn something when he read. I pointed out that you can learn a lot from fiction. “Oh, for sure — about sentence structure, syntax, etc,” he replied. “No, about the human condition!” I said.
Remember Ethan Hawke’s wise words? “Most people don’t spend a lot of time thinking about poetry… They have a life to live, and they’re not really that concerned with Allen Ginsberg’s poems or anybody’s poems, until their father dies, they go to a funeral, you lose a child, somebody breaks your heart, they don’t love you anymore, and all of a sudden, you’re desperate for making sense out of this life, and, ‘Has anybody ever felt this bad before? How did they come out of this cloud?’” And that’s when you need it.
Tell me: What have you been reading lately? What lines have stayed with you? Novels, poetry, non-fiction, memoirs, I’d love to hear!
P.S. This poem is so romantic, and the darkly funny book I can’t stop thinking about.
