Hiya Reader!
Sometimes I experience anxiety. This in itself isn’t such a big deal; I’ve suffered from it on and off for years, and I’ve gotten good at managing it. The real problem is that over the past couple of years it’s interfered with my reading. And tv and movie watching, if I’m being honest.
Anxiety is messing not only with my life, but with my entertainment, and I am not, in modern parlance, here for it.
This is what happens: I pick up a book - let’s say it’s one that’s been on my To Read list for years, and just happens to be one of my favorite author’s favorite books. And let’s say that I’m five hours in on an 18 hour read (I mean, just for the sake of argument) and then let’s say that it appears that Something Is Going To Happen.
Obviously something is going to happen - it would be a pretty terrible novel if it were devoid of action. But I’ve got a bad feeling about the thing that may or may not be about to happen, and suddenly I find that I’ve got to turn off the audio player. Because I’m starting to feel anxious.
It does not help that this is not real life. It does not help that literally millions of people have read this same book and loved it. All that matters is that I’m starting to feel really worried, and that emotional stress has a physical component, and I just don’t want it in my body.
You have probably deduced that this is a real-life example, so I’ll tell you that the book in question is Pachinko, by Min Jin Lee. I highly recommend it, if you have more fortitude than I. Which isn’t all that much, as it turns out.
The first time I noticed this problem was when I cued up the audiobook version of The Lincoln Highway, by Amor Towles. I love Amor Towles. His book A Gentleman In Moscow is, to me, a perfect novel. Honestly, I could not have been more excited to read this book. So imagine my distress when, after a mere hour of listening, I started to sweat.
I turned it off. I turned it on. I turned it off again. I couldn’t do it! I could not listen to this book by a favorite author which has garnered nothing but rave reviews because I have become a literary ninny!
But it was so clear to me that bad things were going to happen. To a lionhearted boy and his little brother. And I just could not bear it. So I stopped. The thing is? I don’t even know that bad things actually happened to this pair. For all I know they had a super chill road trip out there on the Lincoln Highway with nary a raincloud to darken their way. But that seems unlikely; it would hardly be a great novel if that was the synopsis. Tension makes for good reading. But tension is not a thing I can take a lot of.
Now the book is being turned into a movie, directed by none other than Chris Storer, creator of one of my favorite shows, The Bear. So maybe I’ll wait for the movie? That seems like a cop-out. And not necessarily a solution, because I have this same problem with tv and movies. If it’s super stressful I will just turn it off.
I have lost the ability to persevere.
Maybe it’s not that surprising. Merely opening up a newspaper these days can expose one to satanic levels of cortisol-spiking stress. So why would any sane person intentionally choose anxiety-producing entertainment? Well, lots of reasons, I suppose, but that’s not terrifically helpful to me as I practice my deep breathing.
This is a problem I do not seem to share with anyone I know. My friends, my kids, they have no problem watching war and murder, reading about abandonment, or casually eating tamales while listening to podcasts that would turn my hair white. But I can’t be the only one who suffers from Inability To Handle It Syndrome.
In addition to Pachinko, I stopped reading these books this year due to fear: Sorrowland, by Rivers Solomon; Blackouts, by Justin Torres; Once There Were Wolves, by Charlotte McConaghy, and Long Division, by Kiese Laymon. You might really like them! I did, until I got too scared to keep going.
To be fair, I stopped reading a lot of books this year for a lot of other reasons too. Once I’ve lost interest in the characters or reading starts to feel like a chore, I’m out. I mean, I figure I’ve only got time for about 2000 more books, and I’m unwilling to spend any of it on books I don’t really like.
My Goodreads archive indicates that I’ve spent more time than I’d like to admit reading British police procedurals and YA novels that involve war colleges. Not that there’s anything wrong with those! It’s not that I don’t like highbrow stuff, it’s just that sometimes with great writing comes great anxiety and apparently I’m not in a place to appreciate it.
I look for two things in a novel; great writing and a good story. And I’m happy to say that I’ve been finding plenty of both in books that do not set my heart racing for all the wrong reasons. So here’s hoping that I develop the courage to read the books on my Abandoned Due to Stress list; I’d hate to miss out on a collection of masterpieces because of fear.
On the other hand, I do enjoy a good fantasy war college epic.
xo, Julia
