Dear books I read in 2018,
There were more of you than I could have counted. The beginning of the year you were mostly required reading, of whom I, honestly, don't remember much. Save for John Keats' poetry and letters and the criticism connected.
Keatsian books, I thank you for bringing me life during college. Too often I find myself dying in spring thanks to the system, but you made it different. You brought nature back to me. While I was surrounded by cement sidewalks, tortured and trimmed lawns, street trees with cages; you brought me life of the forest. Love of the sky. Quiet of half perceived paths in a wood. You reminded me to look for nature in the tiny windows the city obscures. In the flowers fighting through the cracks of the pavement. In the cool twilight wind playing with shadows on fences. In the sunset spread behind the traffic lights. You encouraged me to seek the small efforts of nature persisting. Nature is a force after all. If ever it's truly stopped, we'll no longer be living on a planet of water and rock.
You showed me ideas Keats did not fully flesh out. Perhaps he was young and yet still forming the ideas. Perhaps he does not state what he means directly; he alludes to it and wishes us to make of it what we will. That is the interpretation of art anyhow, despite what its author wills. I'm new to these ideas in many ways, and yet I had to write about you as if I could comprehend you within the span of a month while Keats himself could not do you full justice in his short lifetime. I apologize. I tried to write about what I thought of you when I had not yet thought enough. The limited time allotted and my limited understanding caused frustration. But that is not how it shall end between us, and I think, with incompletion in your very nature, we shall never end. I'll not leave off wondering about you. You are something made for wondering about, theoretical at your core, or so I think at this time. And theory is something I rarely let go.
To the books I read after college, you were the ones I've been wanting to read. I am sorry it took so long. College is a strict task master. I shouldn't have let it push me around as much as I did. I'd forgotten what it was like to read something at my leisure. To not be in constant anxiety over a deadline and in tedious boredom over something ruled as educational or good for me. I'd forgotten what it was like to have freedom of choice in my reading. I treasure that. And I started keep track of you.
You YA books, The Murder Complex and Every Breath. I love you. I really do [although Murder Complex, you could've been more complex. give your characters more time. not everything has to happen now. digest things. it's ok]. But I can tell, you're not my favorite anymore. My reading preferences have become more versatile. I like books that have more to give than you're willing to, but I think I still need you. Versatile means you're included. You're still irreplaceable.
Rereads, Red Rising and Emily of New Moon, I'm glad we've met again. Red Rising, you only grew in depth, and I could hardly turn the next page for all my excitement and anticipation. I can't express how much you are to me. It seems almost wrong to simplify it from chaotic thoughts and fleeting ideas to comprehensive, tangible words. So I won't. Instead I'll always come back to your
bloody-damned universe.
Emily, dear, you shrunk and grew. When I first read you, I was that starry-eyed dreamer, much like your Emily. My stars are now balanced with healthy cynicism, and I wouldn't have it any other way. You are real and unreal. Your characters are such polarities, such extremes. I know people like your people which is amusing and yet disconcerting because you are a children's book, so what does it say of those people? But I still love you. I love you for being such a paradox. And I love your lines and your scenes. Such eloquence, sometimes decadence, but it's a decadence that slowly realizes the unromantic side of reality. You are learning the balance between the stars and cynicism.
Classics, what a strange diverse lot. Children's nonsense poetry and Hammett's hard-boiled detectives. I have a detached interest in you. That's not an insult. I enjoy a detached interest. It's refreshing to not have to be adamantly passionate about something to enjoy it.
Now Macbeth, you wonderful play you! What exploration of fate and human will! What an exploration of kings and tyrants and government! I will look deeper into you yet. I'll not forget.
Northanger Abbey, I am sorry you are so underestimated. You seem overlooked in the wake of Pride and Prejudice and Co. I admit, I love Pride and Prejudice and used to forget you in its shadow too. But now? If one thinks Jane Austen a master of wit in Pride and Prejudice, they know not half her abilities until they meet you. I think you might just be the pulse of Austen's unrelenting satirical heart, sparing no one and no thing. And here I must apologize again. I lacked a full understanding of your times and circumstances to truly enjoy you in your totality. And even still, I found you amazing. So I will educate myself further and then return to you with growing appreciation and adoration.
Vicious. Finally, we have met. I put you off for so long. Not for lack of interest, but for strength of interest. Perhaps I like detached interest because it's nonthreatening, because perhaps I fear being adamantly passionate about something. And I avoided you because I knew once meeting, I would be adamantly passionate about you. And I am. You are subtlety and directness in the finest balance. You are crisp and brief yet lingering and obsessive in, again, the finest balance. Your characters have such chemistry. I wish to say more but perhaps later. You deserve your own time.
Gaiman's Norse Mythology, I have to single you out too. You kept me company when I was down, in spirits and health. You are such a light despite the dark times you foretell. Why do I revel so much in Ragnarok? Why do you revel so much in Ragnarok? You speak of it in a foreboding thrill that strangely holds little regret. It is the symbol of change. The change of ages. Change is always foreboding and looming in its inevitability, always disruptive and uncomfortable, but not bad or wrong. Not fully. Change does not bring the end of an age without introducing the new age. It is the chaotic collision of an end and a beginning, of persisting old and vivacious new. Now that I look back, that is where I was in my life when I met you, and maybe I'm yet in the midst of it. You tell me that no matter how foreboding and dark the chaos seems, it is also exciting and bright too.
Perhaps this is weird, writing a note to you of 2018 as if you'll be out of my life now. I can always reread and re-experience you. But I also can't. I can never read you again in the year 2018. You can never be with me through the same experiences I was having then. I won't sit with you in the same coffee shops or rooms. The sun won't shine the same way. And why would I want it to? Why would anyone want it to be the same? Our experience was not bad. But it was once in a lifetime, and that's what makes it important. If I come back to you, it will be yet a another once in a lifetime experience. I will be doing and thinking different things than I was the first time we met. Your words will be the same, but I'll read them with different eyes, a different perspective, and with a fond glancing back to the time of 2018. That's what's amazing about you, books. You make us grow, and while you don't change textually, your stories change in relation to us. You allow us to change around you and become better as we go. You aren't just paper and ink with a spine. You chronicle what I was doing in my life when I was with you. You let me remember where I was and see who I've become and inspire me to chase a better yet. Books of 2018, you've done that for me, and I'll return to many of you. I might change in small or large ways, but I will still remember what you did for me.
Thank you for a good year.
What books did you read last year that are very memorable to you?
