I’ve been following the Morning News’ Tournament of Books this year, and I’ve got to say the main thing I’ve taken away from it is a wicked temptation to read Robert Bolaño’s 2666. There’s the controversy, of course – is it great or is it terrible? Also, it’s a translated book, it’s South American, and of course I want to read more of that sort of thing, but, there’s something else: I find large books very tempting.
I like a book where an author can stretch out, allowing him or her to play with the language without having to worry about getting anywhere quickly. One of my favorite series is Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle, which comes to around 3,000 pages over three volumes. If you look at the story being told in that series, it could lose about a thousand pages or more without seriously impacting the plot, but I would sorely miss the digressions, the asides, and the somewhat meandering explorations of coinage, commerce, stock markets, and insurance. It creates a sense of place that you could move your whole imagination into for a while.
On the other hand, I’m really trying to read shorter books this year, because I feel I’m missing out on something. There’s a great deal of pleasure in reading a book that must accomplish its aims with great economy. And, stylistically, a short book must make its words count since its got so few of them to spend.
I’m not sure how I got sucked into the idea that a great book needs to be a lengthy one as well. To Kill a Mockingbird, The Great Gatsby, and The Dubliners are all fairly short, for example, but they stand up. It may be that I am, I confess, more of a consumer than I am a lover of literature. In deciding which of two books to purchase, I often abandon any thought over which book might be better or worse, and instead, focus on the value-for-money aspect of the decision, at least in terms of raw page numbers. “Well, $15.99 for Pnin, or $7.99 for Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell… hmm.”
Am I a philistine, then? Unquestionably. This is no proud declaration of ignorance, mind, but rather a resigned confession; I may be too old to change my ways, or to develop sophisticated tastes. Anyway, I’d rather be fun at parties – even if they’re the wrong sorts of parties. Still, I am concerned that I’ve put aside too many worthwhile books for no better reason than the fact that they seemed too expensive by weight. Even with my debased preferences, I realize that one shouldn’t buy books the way one buys meat. Besides, I get most of my books from the library anyway.
So, any recommendations for small books?
