There is something special that happens, something ephemeral and transitory, when I approach the end of a good book. It can go one of two ways: I either rush headlong toward the conclusion, driven forward by a thirst for the sweet wine of revelation and release, or I hold off, pacing my approach, lingering over what has come before whilst imagining, wondering, whetting my hunger for the last few chapters. It is a magic, specific to books, this control, this opportunity to choose.
When we watch a movie, the pace is set for us, as we experience the timing, the focus, the framing decisions of director, cinematographer, and editor. The Pause button is analogous, but a weak shadow, often used merely to grab a nosh, hit the loo, or tend to a load of laundry in the dryer. One does not pause a film in its approach to a climactic scene merely to reflect on all the scenes that have come before.
But with a novel, we are the director, we frame the shots, and we flesh out the rooms and towns and landscapes—sketched by the author—with costumes and onlookers and paths of our own fashioning. In a book, we are the collaborators, assisting the author in their work. We bring the words to life in our mind’s eye, and in the case of a well-written book, it is a joy, this work, this journey, so as the pages tick past, from recto to verso, as the end-papers grow nearer, we must choose: race ahead? or slow-walk our way to the last page?
(For those of you who read the ending of a book first, no judgment—okay, a little judgment—but I think you’re missing out on one of readings truly great pleasures. That’s not to say I’ve never read a book that didn’t go along swimmingly only to have a massively sucky ending, but I’ve only thrown a handful of books across the room for that reason, so for me, knowing the ending ahead of time would ruin far more than it would preserve.)
The decade past, my fiction diet has been lacking. The ongoing stresses of work, coupled with what I perceive as the slow (and now much more rapid) deconstruction of our national norms, left my brain ill-equipped to concentrate sufficiently on a novel. The run-up to retirement was anything but stress-free. Disappointingly, the first year of retirement was likewise fraught with unexpected challenges, from dealing with new insurance carriers to a cancer scare to dealing with large household projects and more. So, my first year as a retiree was not just me, lying in my hammock, a novel in one hand and a wee dram of whisky in the other.
Since my recent non-diagnosis, however, I’ve redoubled my efforts on the fiction reading score, and once more I find myself in the delicious dilemma described above. I purchased several books that were on sale, titles and authors about which I knew nothing, the sale decision made solely on the strength of the blurb, and so far I have two titles on this year’s list of Books Read. One turned out to be a mystery, and I found myself wholly absorbed as I read to the conclusion; the other was a surprisingly twisty bit of magic realism, and for that my pace slowed, savoring the last chapters.
I plan to foster this renewed joy of reading books, physical books, in the months (and years) to come. It used to be that I never walked anywhere, stood in any queue, or waited for any bus without having a book in my hand. I took a book with me from room to room, catch a page or two while the tea water was heating, or read a chapter before sleep. I’m hoping that, like riding a bike, these habits will return, that the tablet I have been carrying with me everywhere is exchanged for a dog-eared paperback with a tattered receipt as a bookmark. It’ll take some effort, but I suspect it’ll be worth it.
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Kurt R.A. Giambastiani 