I love the feeling of “discovering” a new (to me) writer who already has a whole bunch of enticing-sounding books out and a reputation for excellence. Today, for me, that author is Helen Oyeyemi.
The portal to a journey, beckoning too bright to see exactly what lies beyond, but with whispers and music and shady dream visions hovering around the entrance. All I know is I want to go there.
This must be what people excited to travel experience when anticipating an upcoming trip or a place they plan to buy a ticket to. The feeling of a whole world waiting especially* for YOU to come and explore it. A place that will contain you and immerse you in unique visions, and haunt you forever after.
*Especially for you as a feeling of divine intervention that someone out there knows what you are longing for even better than you know yourself, and certainly better than you ever could have crafted it. Especially for you in the impersonal way of a stranger’s silent welcome that is simply a sort of acknowledgement that people like you exist and will be catered to with the detachment of truly fitting in, NOT in the manner of a whole bunch of friends and family shouting hello and stepping on each other to hug you with overwhelming noise and confusing motion demanding you to respond in kind. Especially for you by NOT being especially specifically for you, but rather . Seen (*recognized*) without being looked at, scrutinized, or demanded to perform.
It is so exciting to me: eight whole novels plus a short story collection = NINE WHOLE BOOKS!
I am glad I’ve “slept” on this apparently-great author and have what is for many writers a whole career’s worth of pages to read and to choose from where to start. This is a lot like wanting to travel to established cities and regions with deep, rich history rather than, say, a trendy hotel in downtown Seattle near trendy new bars and clubs and restaurants, or a new resort-suburb of Las Vegas. I am rarely motivated to “be there first” when it comes to going places and seeing things and reading.
There is something so luxurious and wonderful and promising and EXCITING about having a bunch of books by one person all waiting for you in your future.
I know; I keep using the word “exciting”. But that’s because it really is just so super fucking exciting to me, this book-future anticipation. Pure excitement: unlike looking forward to “real” travel from one location to another which involves SO MUCH STRESS and expense and obligations and anxiety-riddled commitments and potential for disappointment and disaster.
I’ll take my travel by book, please, or sometimes even better: by one author’s whole entire stack of published works. Which then will of course lead to books (and music and places and periods of time) that author loves because you want to gobble up everything that inspired and may have influenced her.
I will take my travel by book because it does not require purchasing travel insurance for peace of mind.
Next up / someday: what if we did take out the equivalent of travel insurance for special trips planned by book? What would be the ideal terms and benefits of a Destination Reading insurance plan?