Bought/Read/Forgot: Winter Edition

Welcome to the second dispatch of my seasonal reading list...

Photo by Debby Hudson on Unsplash

When I think of reading with the seasons, I immediately think of Ali Smith’s Seasonal Quartet: Autumn, Winter, Spring, Summer. I fell in love with Smith’s writing after being recommended How to Be Both at Gay’s The Word before I became a bookseller there, but I began to understand more about the depth of her capacity to wield language and story when she began this writing project back in 2016, to capture the world and its seasons in real time over the course (of a very dynamic, to put it mildly) four years. The book I think about most is Winter, but the reason it sticks in my mind may not be what you’d expect: I didn’t get it.

At the time, I could appreciate the language and the voices Smith created in the novel, the depiction of two headstrong women in the winters of their lives, its setting in rural Cornwall (a place I love), and that it interwove the artwork of Barbara Hepworth and the politics of Greenham Common, but it didn’t resonate with me. At the time, I thought, Well, I’m not going to relate to every book, that’s OK. (And it is.) But the following winter, I began to think again.

There is a British tradition of telling ghost stories at Christmas, dating back to the Victorian period. This may be to do with the ‘period of closeness with the spirit world’ in relation to the solstice, or it may be something the Industrial Revolution and its monetising drive may also be responsible for. Whatever the reason, Smith definitely knows her literary history. But this isn’t my literary (read: cultural) history and ghost stories really aren’t my thing (no matter how much I keep trying). Maybe that was part of the reason I didn’t enjoy the second novel in the series. Or maybe the heart of the novel is as elusive as an actual apparition, not fully formed. Or maybe I just didn’t like it as much as her other books and that’s OK. (As a bookseller and a reader, it really is. No one needs reading guilt.) Whatever the reason, I think I’ll give it another go one in a winter to come. Maybe then I’ll be able to exorcise it, to love or to forget.

Tangentially related to the topic of reading through the seasons, I’ve also been thinking a lot (again) about where I get my books, but specifically my book-related footprint on the internet. The (US) economic blackout on 28th February and this guide to breaking up with Amazon from Two Birds Books in Santa Cruz, CA, prompted me to close all of my Amazon-related accounts. For me, this wasn’t a difficult thing to do: I’ve not bought anything from Amazon in five years and very little in the decade prior to that. I understand Amazon can be a helpful source of goods in places where the nearest shops are miles away, and over the years I’ve cultivated a wide range of other websites (independent or otherwise) where, more often than not, I can get the goods I need or want (even if it’s eBay!). Still, my account was technically active, as were my Audible and Goodreads accounts (both owned by Bezos & Co), and I had long been wanting to replace the latter two with Libby + Libro.fm (for audio books) and The StoryGraph (for book tracking/finding). So far I’m delighted with them all (in fact I like The StoryGraph way better)—and I wrote more about that process here.

As winter comes to a close in a few weeks, I have been surprised to realise I have been in a season, if you will, of nonfiction reading. In difficult times, many readers will escape into alternate universes or classic genre staples (romance, crime, etc) as a break from this systemically difficult time we’re all living through. For whatever reason, I have found it too mind-bending to add another world into my head.

Prime example, I loved C Pam Zhang’s debut book How Much of These Hills Are Gold and couldn’t wait for their second book, Land of Milk and Honey. I bought the paperback from my local bookshop, Phlox Books, months ago and took it with me to visit my family back on the West Coast over Christmas. I read the first page on the plane out there and was so bowled over by Zhang’s tantalising opening that I read it aloud to Alex then and there. Then I put it down—did our kiddo need something maybe? did she suggest a movie?—and I haven’t picked it up again. There’s a hesitancy there, and it’s something to do with fiction.

Instead, I seem to have found solace in, well, real life? By which I mean, science writing, memoir, fan culture, history, cookbooks. But how long this will continue is anyone’s guess…

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For the free subscribers, here’s what I’m currently reading:

• Thank You for Calling the Lesbian Line by Elizabeth Lovatt. A hidden history of queer women in Britain (and sometimes abroad) that is a mix of volunteer-run phone lines, imagined conversations, and personal memoir. It’s as gorgeous as it sounds with the added bonus that the author is a friend I made on the internet who I now sometimes see IRL!

For paid subscribers, here is the full Bought/Read/Forgot: Winter Edition.