If you had told me, twelve years ago, that I would be just now getting around to The Night Circus, I definitely would have laughed. Maybe even snorted. It’s one of those books everyone was reading at the time, and now it’s one of those books seemingly everyone has read. I’ve been carrying a copy around for so long that I don’t have even the faintest memory of where I got it; only this week, when I finally cracked it open, did I discover that it’s autographed to someone else.
Everything about this specific copy of this book is a mystery to me, including why I haven’t read it yet. So I started, the other night, and was four or five chapters in before I looked up to realize it was bedtime.
How does this happen? How is it that sometimes, a book that’s clearly meant for a reader takes so long to find them?
There is no answer to this question, of course. Books come to us when they come, and it’s either their time or it’s not. It’s very hard to manifest the precisely perfect moment in which to read a given book, though every so often, it can be done. You can pick just the right book for a trip, for a vacation, for a long weekend of doing little else; you can decide you’re going to drink the same cocktails as a character or eat your way through their meals or do any number of things to manifest a story’s world around you. You can build the perfect moment, but you have to have some idea what it is. And you have to have the time and inclination to design it, rather than taking the moment that you get.
Still, sometimes the books are late. Or early. Or just off. A friend and I were talking recently about The Secret History, a book I still haven’t read but have, for at least a decade, intended to. She said that most people she knows who first read it as adults hated it. (Did I take this as a challenge? Only slightly.) Those who read it younger, on the other hand, are passionate. Another friend has told me more than once that you have to read The Secret History in the wintertime. Maybe this cold, dark, gloomy start of the year is exactly my time—or exactly the book’s time.
What I’ve come to think is that every book has its just-right time, but that time is different for every reader. And it’s not finite or single, not in most cases, anyway—and it’s not necessary. (Sometimes reading against the grain, the wrong book at the wrong time, is in its own strange way perfectly right.). Sometimes the only time it’s fun to read a book is when everyone else is reading it, when the vibes are jubilant and communal, when you’re part of something bigger. Sometimes there are books you read once, at a precise moment, and can never read again—the associated feelings are too big, too heavy, too messy, too much to revisit on a casual reread.
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But mostly, I think, you can find the moment for a book. This is why I keep a list of the books I don’t finish. It’s not a forever breakup (except when it is). It’s just a break. I tried to read Victor LaValle’s The Changeling at the wrong moment; I struggled through 100 pages, admiring the prose but feeling like I couldn’t open the door to the heart of the book, and set it aside. It wasn’t my time with that book, not yet. I started rereading Shadow and Bone, thinking this time I’d finish the series, but got lured away by the promise of something new. But I might still go back to Ravka, later.
Timing is everything and timing is nothing; you never know what will land in your lap, or cross your feed, at any moment. It took me almost a year to read Alexander Chee’s How to Write An Autobiographical Novel—not because I didn’t love it, but because as soon as I started it, I knew I wasn’t ready for it to be over. I moved it from one year’s spreadsheet to the next, and kept going, slow and steady. When you are a fast reader, a person who wants to read everything, now, immediately, that is something to relish—a book that absolutely insists you slow down, living by its time rather than your own.
I know that not everyone thinks constantly about what they’re reading when, and how it fits into the grand scheme of their reading life, or into the lineup of everything else they’ve ever read. But those patterns are there, all the same; those books we skip or linger over, the ones that come back, years later, looking shiny in a whole new way. I think about it because I write about books, but I also think about it because I’m a magpie, always distracted by something new and shiny, and because I’m a generalist in many ways. I grew up on and still read a mountain of SFF, but I go through phases: emotionally devastating YA novels; really specific nonfiction about rituals or neighborhoods; literary fiction of the “women figuring their shit out, or not” bent; and my own kind of bookish comfort food, like fairytales rewritten and retold. If I don’t pay attention, I can slide into a little genre oubliette of some design or another. And I want to keep moving around, broadening the circle. Every book has its right time, but only if you’re looking for it in the first place.
This year, I am trying—trying!—to alternate old and new. Writing about books means there is always something new I should be reading. But there is also always something old that I should understand—there are always books whose moment I might have thought slid past me, but it didn’t, or books I just never saw before. Or books like The Night Circus, which sat right in front of me, waiting.
What has it never been the right time for you to read? What is it just the right time for, right now?
Molly Templeton lives and writes in Oregon, and spends as much time as possible in the woods. Sometimes she talks about books on Twitter.
Thought-provoking post!
East of Eden I read in about twenty-four hours and that experience falls into the “Sometimes there are books you read once, at a precise moment, and can never read again—the associated feelings are too big, too heavy, too messy, too much to revisit on a casual reread” category.
I’m not sure about the timing of my reading of East of Eden or of anything else. One book that I finished in just over forty-eight hours was Jane Eyre, which I had to read for class but would have probably read at some point anyway; it only became resonant because of life changes that caused me to relate to a line I hadn’t on any earlier readings, tho’ the line was actually in the ’83 BBC adaptation (and the line sparked an idea and I ended up writing my diss on all of Charlotte Brontë’s novels).
Have you done a post on books we didn’t know we needed but are glad we’ve read? I’m one of those don’t-care-if-I-relate-to-the-characters-or-not-I-just-want-to-find-out-what-they-are-like-and-what-happens-to-them readers, but twice there have been serious points of contact that caused me to glom onto a book because those books fall into the didn’t-know-I-needed category because of emotional resonance…the books are Rebecca Wells’ The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood and Lucy Maud Montgomery’s The Blue Castle. (Of course there can be not-so-serious, random points of contact, like staying up too late finishing a homework project or being nearsighted, but those are random and elicit just a “Yep, been there done that” or “Yep, good description” matter-of-fact response.)
Funny coincidence! I got The Night Circus as a Christmas present and read it shortly thereafter.
There is no better feeling in the world than the, “Aaaaahhhhh,” of starting the exact book you needed and wanted at that moment…and no worse feeling than the frustration of knowing there’s something specific you want, but you don’t know what it is and you’re not finding it.
There’s also a real difference in the way a, “Not yet/not right now,” experience feels than a, “Not for me,” experience feels. So I can start books and know now is not their time but their time will come, just not yet.
And absolutely, there are books you can only read once. Beloved is one of those books for me. I read it 30 years ago, and reading it, understood why some experiences are called ‘harrowing.’ I can’t go back there.
I guess every now and again I think I’ll go back and read more of Stanley Elkin’s Magic Kingdom.
Back in the n8neties, I bought Bridge of Birds by Barry Hughart, and tried to read it. At the time it just wasn’t working for me. A number of years later (about 6, since I still had the receipt tucked into the book), I picked it up again and absolutely loved it. It was finally the right book at the right time.
so, if I pick up a book and it’s not *bad*, up it isn’t working for me, I set it aside. Better to wait for the right time than to force it when it obviously isn’t the right time for it
I love this article, as others have said it is very thought provoking and only someone who loves reading and books would understand.
As I tried to think of my own perfect time for that perfect book, I thought it would be a struggle. Have I had that experience? And just like that, happy memories formed. I could probably go on and on but I just tell of the first one that came to mind.
It was it was Sep 89, in Charlotte, NC, living in little apartment in a bad part of town and Hurricane Hugo had just blown through, knocking out the power. So I read the first book in the Thieves’ World series (Thieves’ World Book 1) by candle light in the dark, during the foreboding aftermath of a natural disaster in what was already a comparatively dangerous neighborhood. Needless to say, I felt like I was transported to city of Sanctuary.
<em>The Night Circus</em>! My husband bought it for me years ago, but my copy arrived in a highly scented condition so I couldn’t read it (yet). Maybe I can add it to my outdoor reading this summer? Glad to be reminded of it, thanks!
(D’oh! Too accustomed to typing in hypertext.)
There have been books that I couldn’t get into because I was too young to comprehend them (ex. To Kill a Mockingbird – I had never encountered a slice of life story before and couldn’t understand why such a classic book had such a meandering plot. When I next tried it, I was surprised how hilarious it was in between the scenes of severe racial injustice). In other cases, I was too inexperienced to fully appreciate the story, as in Paladin of Souls, where it didn’t strike me until my second read how cool it was to have a middle-aged widow protagonist and also what a quietly horrifying position she was in, no vocation, thought to be mentally unstable, and at constant risk of her liberty be curtailed with the best of intentions by those who loved her.
As to what still isn’t the right time? I recently read The Monster of Elendhaven and Childhood’s End, which don’t really have a lot in common besides having endings I felt down about and producing a strange midway feeling that wasn’t strong enough for liking or disliking but also not weak enough to call apathy. Perhaps it’s what you feel when you recognize a work of quality, but you can’t personally decipher the notes that make it appreciable. Maybe they’re just not for me, or maybe I haven’t experienced what I need to decode them.
SIX volumes of the Arabian Nights, FOUR volumes of The Three Kingdoms, THREE volumes of Tolstoy’s Collected Short Stories… All these are taunting me from my bookshelves. There are more. I’m not sure when – or if ever – their times will come. I’m grateful to have them there, just in case!
I have books that I am “half-way through” as well: On the Wings of a Dove, Travels With My Aunt, Balthazar are three that prick my conscience.
I was hoping retirement would be a time of comfort and relaxed reading. I overlooked grandchildren, DVDs and lethargy. Still, I remain hopeful all these books and others will find their own time (it occurs to me, though, that it may not be with me).
I’m the type of person who will nest the books I’m reading like Matryoshka dolls, eventually coming out of each book and diving back into the one I’ve most recently started ignoring, and successively finishing them in the opposite order I started reading them. So maybe it’s because of this that I feel the need to expand on the right book, right time idea, that maybe the right time for a book isn’t continuous or that maybe there’s a right time for the beginning of a book, and altogether different times for the middle and end. Since the book I started reading often, upon reflection, isn’t the same book I finished reading, it feels sensible that my emotional, mental, and environmental needs vary throughout the entirety of the book as well.
Oh can I relate! First example in my experience was with C S Lewis adult trilogy – I was fine with Out of the Silent Planet, and absolutely devoured Perelandra, but it took 5 tries and over 7 years before I could get into That Hideous Strength. It felt as if the book kept closing itself on me! The time had to be right, and once it was the book graciously allowed me in and I loved it….well appreciated it. A perfect ending to the trilogy but not all pleasant.
At the moment my library consists of about 500 tactile books, of which I estimate I have read about 10% – when I do read a book it only remains in my collection if I know absolutely I will want to read it again and again. Otherwise I gently rehome it to make space for another future treasure. As far as my Kindle, it is a grossly swollen 5000+ and the read % is far less, but since they take up no physical space I am less concerned about the numbers. Alas, I think my preference for physical books means that % will continue to remain low. Too many begun and still unfinished.