What Happened When I Finally Got Around To It

She had been a voracious reader in those days. I have no reason to believe that she is any different now. The two of us have not seen each other for more than sixteen years. There is no reason for us to see each other now, nor has there been since the day it ended.

She was a voracious reader, have I mentioned that? She was also the loudest page turner (SWOSH-t-FISHT) I have ever known. She would sit in the other room, on the bed, legs propped up in a 90 degree angle with one leg crossed over the other. The look on her face (SWOSH-t-FISHT) when she read was the look of sheer joy, fascination, amazement.

The truth is, I am not the voracious read I wish I could be. I am not now, and generally speaking, I never have been. Sure, I've had years when I read a great deal, I recall 195 novels in 1998, but those years do not happen very often. As close as I can gauge, I generally read about fifty books a year. I mean, that's a book a week. Like most people, I have so many other obligations and demands on my time, like work and home life. Of course I would rather write with my free time. I read, and I read because I have to.

When someone tells me that I have to read this book or the other, I always politely disengage myself. I have had people who tell me that I must read series books about adolescent vampires or children hunters. Whereas I would read such stuff if nothing else was available, I doubt I'll ever get into that situation. I feel like if I'm lucky I have about 40 years left. If I have 40 years, and I read about 50 books a year, I have about 2,000 books left to read. I probably won't squander those precious few books on anything that I do not (SWOSH-t-FISHT) find utterly engaging.

That being said, I have a list of a dozens of books that I have been meaning to read for years. Decades, some of them.

I spent a couple of years with the reader I was mentioning. She was not a writer. She was not particularly artistic. She was a good bartender, a Jazzercise instructor and an avid smoker of weed. And she read a great many books. She read, easily three times the number of books I read. She would read a book every couple of days. She followed trends, Pulitzer, Booker, NY Times and Oprah.

Seldom, or ever now that I think about it, did she say, “Anthony you just have to read this book.” That just wasn't her personality. But when it came to The God of Small Things she was so enthralled with it that she read me a few passages, and when she finished the book, she talked about it for weeks. The passage that has stuck with me for these last several years was about a child behaving like a mosquito on a leash. It's on page 94.

I remember thinking at the time, although I was involved with James M Cain, Jim Thompson and Richard Brautigan, that I would read Arundhati Roy's book, The God of Small Things. That was 2000 or maybe 2001.

Now, here in February 2018, I finally read it. The book is twenty years old now. I think it has beheld up well. It has not aged. It was one of the most engaging, if not saddest books I've ever read. She rivals Kazuo Ishiguro for utter sadness.

Aside from the writing, which is engaging with the style and the words (choices, order and made-up), I felt like I learned something about culture, human nature and the nature of love. It was, at the heart of it a love story that ends very tragically. It was one of these books: (SWOSH-t-FISHT) (SWOSH-t-FISHT) (SWOSH-t-FISHT) (SWOSH-t-FISHT) (SWOSH-t-FISHT) (SWOSH-t-FISHT).

Roy, Arundhati. The God of Small Things. Harper Perennial: New York, 1997.