How I Read (Now)

Over the past year, I've noticed a pretty significant change in how I read. It's not just in the books I choose to read (although I have been choosing slightly differently, it's true) but in the way I read them. Instead of latching onto characters who entertain, I've found myself latching on to characters to emulate. The scenes that I've found most moving are the scenes when a character is facing a situation. A decision. Facts about themselves or others they can no longer ignore. It's never that the character is a role model (or, at least, very rarely is the character a role model), but rather that there are elements of the character I aspire to: flexibility, fortitude, empathy.

Maybe they are role models. No one has ever thought they'd like to replicate every single trait someone else possesses, right?

I started thinking about this after finishing The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, which is unquestionably this year's Cloud Atlas, albeit without a movie or a soundtrack to buoy the obsession along. This is a book I put off reading for years, because I had heard it was sad, and because I was at a low ebb in my interest in reading "immigrant stories" and blah blah blah.

I'm glad I waited. Waiting meant that I didn't read this book as a high school student, when I probably would have focused exclusively on Sammy's story, or as a college student, when I would have felt the need to keep a running tally of every cameo by a historical figure. Instead, here I am, in this new phase of my reading life, feeling as if I too could scale the Empire State Building or brave Antarctica, just because these characters did and because in them, in pockets, I could see a little of myself and I would most like to be.

This isn't an entirely new concept. When I moved to Chicago I brought books featuring Dido Twite, Mary Ann Singleton, and George Smiley, thinking these were the characters who would stand me in good stead in my new life. I was right, even though I didn't crack the spine and re-read any of these books until I had already been here for two years and the roughest days were behind me. There were actually days when I asked myself what they would do. Dido walked me through rough neighborhoods. Mary Ann got me out of the house on weeknights. George kept me questioning the status quo.

More frequently, I asked myself what my father would do. But most of the time that was in reference to getting the best parking spot.