Good morning (barely), a few small thoughts about coming to books "late".
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Sometimes when I see people exult about books--be they ones I've written or ones I've recommended--there's an inset apology for coming to it "late," which can mean anything from 3 months to a year or two after the book's release. Post-hype, I think. & it gives me pause!
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It gives me pause because as an author, I cannot easily quantify the delight & relief that a book's achieved a small succession of escape velocities: that it's being read outside of its hype-cycle *at all*. That it's grown legs or wings & gone where my gaze can't follow.
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So I want to establish that it's a good & beautiful thing for *authors* that our books continue to find readers after the first few bursts of marketing-propellant or award cycles have run out--but I'm also a *reader*, of course, & want to speak to that here too.
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As a reader, there is a peculiar pleasure at once quiet & fierce that comes from encountering a book outside the context of its initial reception. (There are different pleasures that come from learning those contexts--I'm still a scholar, for my sins--but that's something else.)
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There's a further pleasure in bringing the whole, curious solitude of yourself to a book--reading, not to find out where to situate yourself in a discourse, but to be alone with something--at a crossroads--at the strange intersection of an author's thoughts & your own.
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This is the condition in which we read as children, I think, & a condition that is difficult to experience as adults--but that's all the richer for it when we do, because we've already been formed, we've accrued so much experience to bring to the book & feed it, too.
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There's something to treasure in that, I think; an experience of books outside of time, outside of expectation, outside the rhythms of call & response. It's something worth cherishing, & that, by my lights, certainly needs no apology.
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I'd like us to be wizards to our books, never late or early, finding something crucial & irreplaceable in the encounter one way or another: a seed to sow for later, a stitch in time, a feast, a jewel. Whatever you do with it later--you're not late. You've arrived.
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That's all--have a lovely Sunday! I hope you've got something fantastic to read.
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Replying to
Yes! You have to have visibility to the right sources to catch books when they're released. My strategy is to review award nomination lists when they come out to see what I missed.
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