Reading 'Beloved' at the Beach
Yeah, I'm doing books now too -- try and stop me!
Every summer since 2005 (2020 notwithstanding), my dad’s side of the family convenes somewhere in the Carolinas for a beach week. The 11 of us — two grandparents, my parents, my aunt & uncle, and five “kids” (all but one now legal adults) — pile into one house and hunker down. My primary complaint about the experience is that somewhere around 2017 my cousins started hitting their growth spurts and now I, at a puny 6’0” tall, look around and find myself the shortest man in the family. I’d say I feel like Napoleon but based on my interfamilial Settlers of Catan record (0-∞), that doesn’t feel apt either.
I digress.
One of my own annual customs nested within this family tradition is to pack way, way too many books. A laughably aspirational number of books. A pretentious, elbow-patches-ass number of books. This year, it was six:
The Man in the High Castle by Philip K Dick
True Grit by Charles Portis
Beloved by Toni Morrison
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
The Unvanquished by William Faulkner
Leaf Storm (& other stories) by Gabriel García Márquez
But this year, things would be different, I decided. This year, I would actually read all the books I packed (or, at least, most of them). A friend of mine once likened reading on vacation to a smoke break. “You can just duck out to read for a little while and no one questions you,” he said, “it’s the best way to get a few minutes to yourself.”
The biggest surprise of the vacation, however, was that I actually read all the books.
Having finished Cormac McCarthy’s The Crossing just before I left (my 3rd favorite McCarthy, behind Blood Meridian and The Road but ahead of No Country for Old Men and All the Pretty Horses), I was revved up and ready to go. By the week’s end I had read all but Leaf Storm, but I had also read a Stephen King book my mom had packed and I’d knocked out 400 pages of Philipp Meyers’ The Son, which I had picked up at a used book store halfway through the week.
Here are my thoughts:
The Man in the High Castle
Good (?). I read Ubik when I was 17 and it blew my mind. This one, in comparison, was a bit of a nothingburger. Regardless, it still made me want to read more PKD.
True Grit
Another fast-moving, plot driven book narrated by an eightysomething woman speaking through the character of a fourteen-year-old girl. A cowboy book set in Arkansas. Incredibly simple, good but not great (at least this time around), yet somehow I already know I’ll wind up rereading it several times.
The Old Man and the Sea
A classic, and befitting of the beach. Read it in one sitting; it was good. Another one for the “good-but-I-don’t-quite-get-the-hype” pile, another one for the “I-can-already-tell-I’ll-reread-this-a-lot” pile1.
Beloved
Oh man. Ohmanohmanohman. Undoubtedly the best book I’ve read in a long time, maybe the best book I’ve read ever (even if it’s not much a contender for my favorite book [A River Runs Through It still holds that post]). I read this in two sittings across two days and tackled the last 180 pages or so in one long, wide-eyed, and profusely sweaty push that left me staring at the ocean and sort of pacing and a little bit winded. It was fantastic. I didn’t know books could do that. I didn’t know they could do any of that.
Joyland
A little Stephen King palate cleanser. Read the whole thing the afternoon after I finished Beloved — talk about a tone shift! The whiplash gave me a sore neck and the style took me about 70 pages to get into but it was a fun ride once I got the hang of it.
The Unvanquished
I read The Sound & the Fury when I was 18 and loved it, even though I’m confident at least 40% must have gone over my head. Still, I loved the writing and I found the plot pretty compelling. This one, though? This one fell pretty flat. The closest a writer like Faulkner can come to pulling teeth (I hope). Bleh.
Reading-wise and otherwise, it was a great week. The whole vacation I could almost feel my reading mojo returning. I’ve kept my momentum (to a lesser extent, of course), even since my return to Richmond and full-time work, and I’ve even finished a few others despite the lack of sand and free time. Maybe I’ll write about those soon too.
Throw Crying of Lot 49 on this pile as well
Man or Machine (reading variety)?