Bookpile 7: Fiction
Bookpile is short posts on Fridays about what I’m reading now and what I’m liking about it. This week, it’s a love letter to the joys of reading fiction.
Many, many, many, many, many (okay, I'll stop exaggerating – only 20) years ago, as a fresh young art school first-year, I encountered that wonderful and mythical creature, a grad student. The first one I ever met was the teaching assistant for my design history course. I still vividly remember how much time she spent reading for her coursework. She (I think proudly) said that she read all the time, even when she was blow-drying her hair. This seemed incredibly cool to me at the time. Imagine! There's so much knowledge to squeeze out of the world that you're busy with readings to the extent of multi-tasking while you groom.
Fast forward 20 years and many people I know are that person: perma-busy, often with little time to do simple things like read for fun. And I absolutely perpetuate that image of myself with my bookpile posts. I post almost exclusively about academic or heavy or factual texts I'm reading, giving the impression that those are the things I find worth reading. So this week it's a shout out (and a bit of a love letter) to any and all fiction. Whether it's heavy or light, fun or sad, and whatever genre it may be, fiction is a lodestar I always have to come back to. It brings joy and solace, it can be relaxing, and it continues to be one of the better ways to broaden your horizons without leaving your house.
Pictured is DallerGut Dream Department Store by Miye Lee, which I've already read at least twice and am currently reading again because it's sweet, lovable, and stealthily insightful. I may be a hipster about many things, but this book is not one of them. Sometimes, a bestseller is a bestseller because a lot of people think it's great. And that's an attitude towards fiction-reading that I want to keep actively treasuring.
