Friday Mood Recs: Not-so-sappy books about books
Four books featuring bibliophiles that strike a different tone
This month the FictionMatters Book Club is reading Bibliolepsy by Gina Apostol. The book features a protagonist who’s obsessed with words and texts, but this obsessiveness manifests differently than you might expect. The desire sensual in nature, an overwhelm desire to consume resulting in a book that is explicit and provocative.
I’m enjoying this reading experience. It’s humorous and engaging—at times unsettling and at others deeply relatable. Most of all, it’s surprising! What makes a book like this so unexpected, I think, is that so many books about books and readers are sweet to the point of saccharine. I love books, of course. I always appreciate encountering characters who adore books and finding novels that explore the relationship between book and reader. But I find the sweet and saccharine version of these reads deeply annoying, both because they are reading experiences I don’t typically enjoy and because they reflect reading experiences that aren’t meaningful to me. Many of these books attempt to create a warm and connected reading experience by generalizing about and aggrandizing readers, and I always find books that are specific, singular, and sometimes strange to be more meaningful.
But while it’s difficult to discover not-so-sappy books about books, it’s not impossible. I’ve mentioned Possession by A.S. Byatt dozens of times in this newsletter. It’s still my favorite (and one I hope to reread this year), but today I’m sharing are a handful of others that I’ve enjoyed.