Bethanne Patrick

What's On Your Nightstand?: Books I'm Avoiding
May 21, 2008

Another month, another new stack has grown in front of my previous stack. I know other people have this problem, too. Maybe I shouldn't call it a "problem;" after all, I wouldn't want to fix it! At this point, the only room in our house that doesn't have books of some kind in it is the laundry room, and I've been thinking: wouldn't that be a great spot for extra cookbooks? I need something on hand to read while I'm waiting for the spin cycle to finish.

(An aside: If you've got the opposite problem and are looking for something new to read, check out the latest National Book Critics Circle Good Reads list.)

My own stack has several of those titles in it. No one has yet invented a way to read more than one book at the same time (please, Amazon, don't do it!), and so some books that I'd really like to have finished already have uncracked spines.

So here are the books that I'm trying to move to the top of the stack. First, Peter Carey's His Illegal Self, which I've been holding onto for too long as an "emergency book." Does anyone else do that? I try to keep at least one book in reserve that I know I'll enjoy, in the event of a day when there might be nothing else in the house to read (we already know that this is impossible, but still I hoard...). If anyone out there has good reasons for me to pick up this book immediately -- or to discard it immediately -- I'm all ears. Sometimes the herd must be culled. (I can already feel myself picking up the Carey and putting it in a different spot somewhere to prevent your comments from influencing me to get rid of it.)

Next, the new Jhumpa Lahiri, Unaccustomed Earth. I seem to be neglecting it simply because it's been so lauded. I'm a bit perverse like that. Also, I'll confess: I don't like the cover at all. There's something cold and stark and forbidding about it that doesn't draw me in. I feel more than a bit of a philistine admitting that, but I'm not judging the book by its cover; I know I'll read it one of these days. C'mon, tell me: are there books you've neglected because of cover art? Or been drawn to because of cover art? I know I'm not alone. Sometimes I really do wish we followed the French practice of binding everything in spare, serious, identical covers -- then I realize that that might be too much like getting a box of filled chocolates and no identifying diagram, and it takes a bit longer to figure out a book is dreck than it does to bite into the nasty orange creams.

Finally for today, Joseph O'Neill's Netherland. The reason I mention this one? After reading Dwight Garner's front-page NYTBR review, I'm sold. Netherland was a book I was avoiding not because I had any negative thoughts about it, its cover, or anything else; I was avoiding it because I had high hopes for it and didn't want to be disappointed. (Critics become critics in part because we've had our hearts broken again and again.) I may not agree with everything Garner says by the time I finish O'Neill's novel, but I'm pretty confident that I'll have some good things of my own to say at that point.

So what's on your nightstand that you've been avoiding? Or am I the only one? I look forward, as always, to hearing more about your stacks. 

Reminder: If you'd like to claim your "Michael Connelly's LA" guides, please email me at the reading writer at aol dot com. Right now I've only got two readers' email addresses, so it's going to be a coin toss for the party invite...

Posted by Bethanne Patrick on May 21, 2008 | Comments (5)