Book Triggered Memories

This morning I was, pre-coffee, looking at the covers of the books I'd read this year. I realized a few of them, while not being my favorite books, had in fact solidified themselves in my mind due to where I was while reading them. This was interesting to me that they, much like smelling a smell I'd forgotten I'd known, were able to conjure such clear, visceral memories. So today, I'm going to share some of those memories with you.

I went to visit my parents just after the new year. This was pre-inauguration, post-holiday, in that quiet, quiet time of year where people realize the fun stuff is over and now they just have to slog onto the time change. It was a snowy, bleak afternoon, and I was riding my parent's stationary bike reading All Fours because a friend of mine asked me if I'd read it. While I found this book bonkers in the mode of a melting-down lady, LA literati, the memories associated with it are super liminal. I read it in a lull. Personally and nationally, things seemed stable. I was had no schedule for a few days. I was getting to discuss it with a friend I rarely, if ever, saw. It was a lazy, winter's moment right before things went insane.

If you liked The Pink Hotel or Woman No. 17, you will probably like All Fours.

This book wasn't my favorite. And I know, Orhan Pamuk is a more decorated writer than I will ever be, but I'm allowed to not be interested in stories that flirt with pedophilia. But I read this because I was in Istanbul, and inside this book there is a free ticket to get into the actual Museum of Innocence that they built based on the book. It's the most meta book experience I've ever had, reading it in Istanbul, then going to the actual museum that was made because the book was about a fictional museum. When I think about this, I think of being as far from home as I've ever been, surrounded by a super vibrant culture that I could only begin to understand, in an unstable time, and yet, we were there, doing it anyway.

If you liked Lolita, check out Museum of Innocence.

I binged all seven of these in less than three months. I started book one at the end of January. I found the plot line–that aliens had forced Earth's remaining inhabitants into a bizarre reality TV show where everyone had to fight to the death in an underground dungeon–strangely comforting. I mean, if Carl and Donut can face down intergalactic evil, I can probably get up and go to work. When I think of reading these, I think of finding safe haven in a rapidly changing time. I remember listening to book five while sitting in a parking lot and staring at nothing. It felt like the world was swirling around me, but I needed to know if Mongo was going to make it through, and in that moment, nothing else mattered.

If you like Dungeons and Dragons and the 1987 movie Running Man, you'll probably like Dungeon Crawler Carl.

This book is quick and superficial. But it's fun and light, and I remember listening to it while I was shoveling out our irrigation ditch at the end of March, right before they turned the water on for the summer. I was in a place where I had finally made it through the long dark season, and the sun was coming back out. I was outside, moving and doing something productive. And listening to a fluffy comedy about sentient cats was... hopeful.

If you liked The Kaiju Preservation Society or Austin Powers, you will probably like Starter Villain.

A friend gave me a copy of this right before I left her house to get on a plane. I got on the plane, found out I was in the last row of the plane, and I had a very short lay over to make my next flight. Initially this was stressful, and as soon as the engines turned on, it was loud and stressful. But I put in my earbuds, simply to block out the noise, started Departure 37, and I lost track of time. I read the book in less than twenty-four hours, and while I don't remember much of my multi-plane journey home, what I remember is totally losing myself into this book while I traveled, which is in itself, a form of losing yourself. It was cool to be sucked away from the world while flying over the world.

If you like coming of age stories, cold war thrillers, and/or the hint of time travel, you will probably dig Departure 37.

To start, this book wasn't for me. The main character is a classic toxic (to put it mildly) man who just wants to be rich. But I started reading this at the beginning of the summer when I was starting a new job, and I was having to travel between work units. I listened to this while driving, and something about being in a new place, at the beginning of a new season, shook me out of my old routine and really solidified in my my mind that I was at the beginning of something new.

It's hard to give comps for this one because it was just so toxic. Things I did like: it took place at the beginning of summer in a little coastal town.

And now that I look at all these books, I realize they all stick in my mind because I was reading/listening to them during times of transition. Be it I was physically moving across the world, or the world as I knew it was shifting rapidly, these books, while many of them I would not recommend, still meant something to me. Which is, very cool.

I love reading, and it turns out where you are and when you are, can totally change your appreciation, for good or bad, of a book. It's a more layered experience than we usually talk about. Not just the plot and the quality of the writing is important. Who you are in the moment you read a book can mean everything.