'Tis the season for my annual ignoring of overfull shelves and precarious piles to revel in the promise of a fresh stack of books. So here is an imagined me, free of sniffles and aches (damn head colds), with the luxury of quiet time alone (ha), festively clad in crinkly green dots and cozed in cloud-soft woolens, fortified by a plate of oranges and a mug of black tea toddy, wondering what to read next after a year of reading too much. (I keep hoping to write about some of what I read in 2021—Erpenbeck! Ishiguro! Eisendrath! Yan Ge! Labatut! Oh well, maybe next year.)
Tales of lost ships, disappearing foghorns, and lonely lighthouses beckon. I am tempted by idiots and stories of men mistaken for gods, but also mad mountaineers and a mauling by a bear. Art history, reconsidered. Then there are the lives of artists, some well-known, others obscure and prolific, some of revelatory vision, others of unexpected turns. A fiction of plagiarist poets and essays by a real one, as well as words to conjure ghosts. A book of letters and the story of a lost friend. An "animation of the polyphonic world around us," a new book about matsutake worlds, and an old book about learning the language of the mosquito. "The literary equivalent of a mic drop." Rainbow goblins and odd apples. Childhood favorites, reissued. Advice on how to start writing and when to stop. Perhaps a history of the world that makes a better future feel possible or a compilation of images "to inspire revelations and revolutions." Or maybe a newly translated classic about how to be human. (I could use the help.)
*
Am I dressing like a renegade grandma holiday elf these days? Heck yeah. Anything to up the cheer quotient for this second COVID Christmas. Red and green galore, intarsia snowflakes, reindeer knitwear—it's all happening, styled with a nod to my great-grandmother, whose standard winter uniform was a house dress worn with a fuzzy cardigan and a ski hat from the drug store dollar bin.
*
