Book Shelf: Where do you read?

Big feelings about books, and where we are when we read them, emotionally and physically.

To read a book is to feel things. An author chooses how they want their reader to feel in small moments and big scenes, and the feeling they want to linger at the end. If they have done their job well, the distress, the joy, the gut-punch, the comedy, the heartache and heartbreak all feel very real and high-stakes. I loved how Caroline O’Donoghue framed the author-reader relationship in this excellent, recent interview for

The Hyphen by Emma Gannon

:

“A book is just a person, in a moment in their lives, speaking to a single person in a different moment of theirs. Reading is not a group activity, but a weird bond between two people across different timelines.”

A book is an author deciding how they want a reader to feel, and hoping that comes true.

When it does, those feelings layer upon, and mix with, and bleed into each other. And layer upon, mix with, and bleed into the inner lives we bring to the page.

My reading experiences have felt different recently because I have felt different. I’ve felt anxious and low. These are the ebbs and flows of living with mental illness. When the whirring feels loud and relentless for days/weeks at a time, or the black dog/grey fog comes, I flee to the reading extremes: reading ravenously, clinging onto stories for escape and relief and companionship, or retreating into a rut.

This time, I’ve been slipping towards the latter. And wondering how I can course correct.

I love the experience of reading on holidays, especially if I’m somewhere I haven’t been before. I feel noticeably more sensitive to the world, so more sensitive to the worlds about which I’m reading. I feel disconnected and distanced from my own life, so more alert to others, ready to leap inside a character and inhabit them.

During mental troughs, I can either feel too exposed, or too detached. The membrane between me and the world feels sandpapered down, rough-edged, and barely-there, or sharpened and hardened and thickened, like I’ve reinforced the edge of myself with a marker over and over. It can be very overwhelming and anxiety-inducing to feel the former day-to-day, to feel so skinless. But that’s how I want to feel when I read. Like I’m on holiday from my life, living a different one.

So I have been thinking about where I am when I read: emotionally and physically. Do they have an effect on one another? I’ve been reading in different places in an attempt to find out.

I’m lucky enough to have a home office, with a big desk my dad found second hand for $90 and lovingly restored for me, baskets of dog toys for our cavoodle Maggie, a little stand lined with books, a print hung on the wall, and a green couch. I have started laying on the green couch to read. It faces a high window looking towards the garden, so I can see the tops of the trees. I can hear birds (sometimes even a kookaburra!). I can feel the afternoon sun streaming in, onto my legs and my face and the hands holding the book. This spot has become perfect for the weekend, when I’m in no rush. I often doze off in the sun, the book splayed on my tummy.

I’ve kept reading in the bath - my favourite place in the world. It feels warm, comforting, cocooning, restful. Reading in bed feels cosy but sleepy. I have read in Parramatta Park, where I got married earlier this year, and felt grateful and nostalgic as I lazed on the grass, Maggie and a book on my lap.

Reading on the train to and from work has become a special bookend to my days. I purposefully structure my commute so I can board an old Blue Mountains service whenever possible. I love the purple leather seats and the older, snugger carriages. My reading time also feels more intense there because it’s finite - a precious 30 minute burst to use wisely. It feels different to, more concentrated than, a languid afternoon dipping in and out of a book, or reading at a slower pace to match my mood.

My mood has put more pressure on the books I’ve read lately. I need my leisure time to feel restorative right now. I need to feel confident and comfortable - not necessarily in the story itself, but in the writing. I need a book to hold my attention. I am especially conscious of its weight and heft if I’m holding a hard copy. It’s been nice to read some books (eg Octavia Bright’s heartwrenching This Ragged Grace) on Kindle, to engage in the story’s emotional weight while the physical experience remains light and unencumbered.

I’ve also been thinking about who I read with/alongside. After a writing workshop I attended earlier in the year, we formed a book club (the first I’ve ever been in!). Our first read was Yellowface. Wifedom by Anna Funder (which seeks to piece together the life of Eileen O’Shaughnessy, George Orwell’s wife who has been largely ignored/forgotten/erased) is our second, and therefore my current read.

I noticed it when reading and discussing Yellowface, and I’ve noticed it this time around even more acutely: Reading a book for the purpose of articulating thoughts about it has sharpened my reading. I’m paying closer attention to the feelings (both those the author wants me to experience, and the unintended frustrations when the text pushes me away). As I’ve engaged with books on this level, it’s felt right to also wonder whether where I read a book might inform how I feel about it. I’ll continue to experiment.

Where do you mostly read? And where do you most enjoy reading? Have you read a book in a place that impacted your experience of reading it, positively or negatively? I’d love to hear from you in the comments.

And if you’re wanting to maintain a reading rhythm or break a rut, and you’re looking for some more recommendations (reminder that my first newsletter was a review of nine books I’ve read recently), Pandora Sykes just wrote about all 30+ books she’s read so far in 2023 for

Books + Bits

. I’ve added a fair few to my (ever-growing) to-read list.

Until next time,

Britt