Books that serve as a comfort blanket
Ready to fold 2018 away and move on? Here is a silly reading list to help you on your way. Maybe, says Eleanor Black.
Iwas so ready to kick 2018’s bony arse goodbye. It has been a true ‘‘how to eat an elephant’’ situation: take one bite at a time until you are done. I am a little sick to my stomach.
I often re-read favourite books, to take me back to happier times, or remind me to get on with some shelved project, or to test my beliefs or just because I know how the story ends. It’s comfort reading, and I have been doing it since I could first read.
Where once I dived into Little Bird over and over, then Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing and Jane Eyre, this year it has been a return to books that I first read during the 90s, or that remind me of that time.
Like my last remaining jean jacket, my reading this year has been comfortable and classic. Nothing new, nothing trendy, nothing challenging. Just books that make me smile.
❚ Generation X, Douglas Coupland I am Gen X and I read this book for the first time when I was at university and at my most angsty. Brown matte lipstick, sulky eyes, Nirvana on repeat, ennui overload. I was adorable, and this book is also adorable. Three misfit friends abandon their low-wage ‘‘McJobs’’ and move to Palm Springs, California, which was populated almost entirely by retirees in 1991 when Generation X was published and declared ‘‘groundbreaking’’ by the Los Angeles Times.
There they languish, delighted by the old-Hollywood glamour of their surroundings and their own musings about the meaning of life, but hopelessly confused. This is the book that identified the Mid-20s Breakdown (or Quarter-Life Crisis) that dogs us still.
❚ I’ll Have What She’s Having, Rebecca Harrington
Rebecca Harrington didn’t embed herself with soldiers in Afghanistan, but she did put her body on the line for her work as a writer for New York magazine, where she tried celebrity diets so she could knowledgeably report on their ridiculousness.
In I’ll Have What She’s Having, a collection of diverse celebrity diet trials (Victoria Beckham, Pippa Middleton, Miranda Kerr, Greta Garbo), Harrington attempts to drink 10 Diet Cokes a day (Karl Lagerfeld), drink raw eggs whipped in warm milk (Marilyn Monroe) and to flush her body clean with Queen Bey’s Master Cleanse, a punishing mix of lemon juice, water, maple syrup and cayenne pepper.
Trust me, she suffers and you will laugh yourself dizzy as you reach for another caramel choc.
❚ Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott Ostensibly a book about writing, Bird by Bird is mostly a book about how to live a good life. When you are feeling like a loser who is not making any progress in any endeavour, it is helpful to read nuggets such as this: ‘‘Some of the loneliest, most miserable, neurotic, despicable people we know have been the most successful in the world.’’
Anne Lamott, an elvish soul from California, writes about raising her son on her own, tussling with her faith, kicking alcohol addiction, and the strength and joy of being jarringly kind and generous. She is a wonder, and I love her.
I saw her speak in San Francisco 12 years ago and for some dumb reason I did not rush up to the podium at the end to get her signature and a hug. I would not make that mistake again.
❚ I’d Die for You and Other Lost Stories, F Scott Fitzgerald
F Scott Fitzgerald is a chauvinistic, privileged white male writer I just can’t quit. I adore him, not like Zelda adored him, but still. I have read and re-read his five novels so many times that they blur into a giant smudgy portrait of a beautiful tipsy dancing couple whose lives are about to fall apart. Similarly, I have read some of his short stories again and again. This collection contains some lost gems and some stories he might have preferred stayed in the attic but which nonetheless add light and shade to his desperately sad biography. ❚ The I Hate to Cook Book,
Peg Bracken
Peg Bracken was a humorist and reluctant home cook who made a name for herself during the 1960s with a series of books about making the best of boring domestic jobs like cleaning and cooking for company.
I stole my mother’s copy of The I Hate to Cook Book when I left home and have now collected I Didn’t Come Here to Argue, I Try to Behave Myself and But I Wouldn’t Have Missed It for the World via used book sites.
I read each one once a year. I don’t make many of Bracken’s recipes, which are time capsule items often involving a crock pot or a dash of sherry, but I have been known to bust out her Cheese Balls when in a good mood.
More comfy goodies:
❚ Not Her Real Name,
Emily Perkins
This is Emily Perkins’ first book, my favourite, because when I read it in 1996 it felt like she was writing for me, a weird, annoyed, self-obsessed 20-something living in New Zealand.
❚ Bulibasha, Witi Ihimaera
A loving look at the tension between rival sheep shearing gangs during the 1960s, set in my dad’s home territory, Poverty Bay.
❚ The Shipping News,
Annie Proulx
A newspaper reporter loses his parents and wife in quick succession, then moves to a bleak family property in Newfoundland, where he unexpectedly flourishes.