Nothing Left to Read

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This is not a state I have ever achieved, by the way. I generally have zero unread emails, but I don't file or delete all my email, so my inbox is never altogether empty.

Once or twice a month, I go to the library and stock up on books – mostly novels. Sometimes I have specific books that I want to borrow, but often I'm just browsing.

When I was a kid, I wanted to read everything. Even in my teens and early twenties, my reading tastes were more varied. And now? I still read a lot, but I feel like my tastes are narrower than before. When I go to the library without specific books in mind, I always worry that this is the day when I finally fail to find any books that interest me. Nothing left to read.

Or rather, the worry is not about running out of books; it's more about running out of interest or curiosity. Of my tastes narrowing to a point where I comb the fiction section of a library but fail to find a book I want to read.

The other day I walked through the fiction section in alphabetical order and, although I was admittedly just skimming and not looking too closely, I almost made it to the end without finding any books I wanted to borrow. Then in the Y–Z shelves, I suddenly found three promising titles: Lion City by Ng Yi-Sheng, The People in the Trees by Hanya Yanagihara and Happiness Is Possible by Oleg Zaionchkovsky.

I didn't enjoy Lion City and gave up partway through. The People in the Trees was really good – like The Lost World (which I loved as a child) but with post-colonial consciousness. And Happiness Is Possible was a cracker – one of those instances when it felt less like me finding a book; more like the book finding me, at a time when I was was ready for it.

I liked it enough that, in keeping with my stated policy, I bought a copy for keeps.