Books, Ballads, & Bites Vol. 4
the bookish haze, pungent humor, and Thomas Hardy's wont for tragedy
Welcome to Books, Ballads, & Bites, a bi-weekly newsletter of all things artsy and bookish. Here I share my recent reads, pass along musical finds, and give you a seasonal recipe to enjoy. The full newsletter is available to paying subscribers. As always, thanks for reading, and thank you for supporting my work here on Lady Agrarian.
I’ve been toting Kristin Lavransdatter around with me for weeks now. The 1,000-page book feels like a literal brick in my backpack, and I rarely get the chance to read it, but I keep bringing it with me anyway.
You never know whether or not you’ll need a book to read when you leave your house in the morning. In my job, there’s often waiting time while two parties negotiate terms. I might find myself on the side of the road waiting for a tow truck.1 In life, it’s always best to be prepared with the proper footwear, a snack, and a good book.
The other day I was in a law office, quietly eating my lunch with Kristin Lavransdatter open on the bench in front of me, when the attorney who hired me walked in. “Good book?” he asked pleasantly.
In the book’s introduction, Brad Leithauser describes how he carried the heavy volume around with him to different places over the course of several weeks. Strangers, mostly older women, would remark that they, too, had once read it long ago. The book inspired a human connection that went beyond anything having to do with its subject matter.
When I was in high school, I was even more bookish than I am now. This made me rather solitary. I remember sneaking up to the church library on Sunday mornings to read Christy in an effort avoid the obligatory socialization between class and the service.
I lived in a sort of in-between storybook world, traipsing between eras and interests depending on whatever book I was obsessing over at the moment. There are things I regret about spending so much time in a bookish haze. For instance, I didn’t really have friends in the sense of a group of people that you hang out with regularly until later in my teens. The things I cared about most in life were stories that weren’t real and people who didn’t exist.
I’m painting with broad strokes — of course it wasn’t totally a bad thing, and I’m grateful I was brought up to love reading as I do. I believe reading is such a worthy pursuit, not just for enjoyment but for the truly endless enrichment it can bring.
If I were a Shakespearean character, however, I know what my fatal flaw would be. My “one weakness”, as Dorcas Lane would say. It is that I am terribly apt to become too swept up in a story, too invested in characters who aren’t real, and too willing to forego the richness of real life in order to spend more time in medieval Scotland, or whatever it might be at the time.
I’m an adult now, so along with planning out meals and paying taxes and using proper grammar, I’ve been trying to keep certain things in check. Some people are addicted to sugar; I’m addicted to stories. I’m trying to be realistic, but I don’t want to totally suppress my love of fiction. As with most everything, there is a balance to be struck.
Stories are powerful, important, enriching. Life is fleeting, defining, full, a gift. People are needy, funny, lovely, and eternal. In many ways, all the years of reading have probably given me an even greater love for life and people.
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