there are too many books in this otterful world!
on being a writer who doesn't really read
This is Ottavia Paluch and you’re reading Things You Otter Know.
None of the below is very polished but screw it, this is my Substack.
I read voraciously as a kid. Reading expanded my vocabulary and the way I saw the world. Reading is what got me to pass as smart. When the smartest girl in my cohort discovered I was a good writer and asked me for my secrets, I told her I read. Junie B. Jones, Ramona Quinby, Judy Moody—they were my best friends. So open about what they loved and hated, so confident and yet also so self-conscious. But I didn’t really see myself in their stories. They were more like ideals, girls I desperately wished to be but always failed to imitate.
I tell this story all the time, but I got a copy of The Fault in Our Stars for my 10th birthday and that was a life-changing gift. I still have that dog-eared large-print copy. It opened my eyes to the world of books aimed at older readers. If John Green has zero fans then I am dead.
In high school I leaned hard into the writing portion of things. (If I hadn’t, you wouldn’t be reading this!) I moved towards poetry and away from the Rick Riordan ripoff trilogy of novels I had worked on nonstop for 3 years (which a few of my high school friends STILL complain about. “WhEn ArE yOu GoNnA fInIsH iT?” they ask.)
The culmination of that balance between reading and writing was when I was an Adroit mentee. I had to email my mentor Jessica every week with thoughts on assigned readings and poems. I was fifteen. I didn’t know ANYTHING, those early poems of mine were SO BAD, and yet somehow Jess STILL texts and emails me the most heartwarming messages of belief in me. She even reads this Substack sometimes. (Hi, Jess!!!)
ANYWAYS. Here is an relevant excerpt from one of the many emails I sent her that summer:
There are poems out there that make me want to write, make me want to forgive, make me want to forget and remember. When a certain line hits me, I want to read it again, savor it, cherish it. I listen to bands like Radiohead because I hear them and feel like I may actually belong. I read poetry and feel like it’s okay if I don’t.
There are a lot of poems I don’t get, but the ones I do understand have a conversation with my conscience. I haven’t been reading as many novels as I used to because they’re longer and have deeper character arcs and plot and all that. Poems are shorter and give me everything I need to hear in bite-sized packages. I think that’s what makes poetry speak to me—their unlimited ideas about living and dying and breathing and being within such a limited space.
I think this still holds up within the current context of my life. Reading was starting to feel more like a chore than something I did for pleasure.
GoodReads says I read 55 books in 2021. That was me trying to restart that reading habit.
Then last year—if you’ve been an Otter for a while you’ll know about this—I read 10 books. Talk about embarrassing!
So far this year I am at 15 books. My goal for the year was 52, so I’m 37 books away. If I somehow get there in the next 4 months you’ll probably get to read about that.
I am most appalled by my lack of knowledge on the classics. Dostoevsky, Dickens, Bronté—these names and their books are essentially foreign to me. I am severely under qualified to be an English major.
It worries me a little! I have incredibly little interest in the canon. I’ve said this before, but thinking about writing essays on Chaucer and stuff makes me want to puke.
I think what frustrates me most, other than my lack of ambition and sheer laziness, is the fact that there are too many books out there in this otterful world. Too many great ones! My GoodReads want-to-read list overwhelms and terrifies me.
All of this means I cannot have deeply nerdy conversations with my fellow English majors (even though I wouldn’t want that anyway).
There’s this girl I vaguely know who goes to UofT and runs an Instagram all about the books she’s reading and she’ll post reels like, “hey guys! today I read 281 pages which is super far from my goal of 750 a day but we’ll try again tomorrow. remember to like and subscribe!” (Oh wait, wrong platform.)
I guess you could say that I naturally gravitate to contemporary stuff rather than books I’m afraid will put me to sleep, so I’m trying to do that right now in my current reading life.
I don’t know how all these famous writers balance writing and reading and teaching at their fancy MFA programs. I can barely balance my classes and my free time. Usually the scale is always completely tipped over in favour of one or the other.
For now I’m starting slowly. I have 5 David Baker poetry collections from the UofT library here on my desk that I will eventually get to. I read all of Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan last night—very succinct and quietly devastating book. I also started Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris and also Bono’s memoir that came out last year.
I should also note that I have 1.5 weeks off before the new school year starts. Ao maybe all of my striving to read regularly again is gonna be for naught. I hate it here!
I think I’m supposed to ask for book recommendations here. My brain says don’t bother, but my heart says yes. I’m sure if y’all put your otter noggins together, you’ll find me a book that will make me fall back in love with reading again.
🦦—O— 🦦