(Of course, idea stolen from Reading In Bed, which, in turn, found it at 746 Books. This should come as no surprise that I am taking ideas from elsewhere, as I have been clear I have no new ideas.)

Can I read twenty books this summer? Let’s say no. Could I have read twenty books a few summers ago: yes. But, like everything else in my life, I am lagging with reading.

The books, chosen from shelves and piles left around my house.

1. The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch, 502 pages
2. Selected Stories of Franz Kafka by Franz Kafka, 328 pages
3. Warlight by Michael Ondaatje, 290 pages
4. Middle England by Jonathan Coe, 424 pages
5. Vox by Christina Dalcher 388 pages
6. 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl by Mona Awad, 214 pages
7. The Spirit of Science Fiction by Roberto Bolaño, 196 pages
8. I Love You, Beth Cooper by Larry Doyle, 290 pages
9. Bec & Call by Jenna Lyn Albert, 94 pages
10. The Spy and the Traitor by Ben Macintyre, 364 pages
11. The Pursuit of William Abbey by Claire North, 453 pages
12. The Magicians by Lev Grossman, 402 pages
13. Swimming in the Congo by Margaret Meyers, 261 pages
14. The Madrigal by Dian Day, 370 pages
15. Floating City by Kerri Sakamoto, 246 pages
16. Heartbreaker by Claudia Dey, 260 pages
17. Memento by Christy Ann Conlin, 375 pages
18. Africville by Jeffrey Colvin, 371 pages
19. this is not my life by Diane Shoemperlen, 354 pages
20. ¡No Pasarán! Writings from the Spanish Civil War by Various, 393 pages

Now laugh, laugh laugh laugh at me considering I think I’ve read twelve pages in the past week, and also, that I am still making my way through Ducks, Newberryport, which I can only read in short bursts because it stresses me out too much.

I read a book and started biting my nails because the character did it in the book. I still have the book, although its not the copy of the book that caused me to bite my nails. It’s a later book. I bought my copy now on eBay. The copy then, I think, was from the library, but maybe from the table of books for sale for a quarter at the front of the library, which would mean I bought it, read it, read it a again, got rid of it, and bought it at least one more time. Why would I have gotten rid of it? Was I a teenager and got rid of a bunch of my books? I know I got rid of my copy of Jurassic Park because my friend bought it and showed me my name written in the cover afterwards. But I got rid of Jurassic Park because there’s not much one needs to reread in Jurassic Park, although someone’s favourite novel must be Jurassic Park and they read and reread all about those dinosaurs eating babies in Costa Rica once or twice or three times a year. But me, maybe I had a copy of the book from which I learned to bite my nails, and then didn’t, but now, at least, I have it again.

It’s from the seventies, this book. It uses the word negro and the only black woman is a maid, a janitor at the start of the book. And there’s a sequel; I also have that. The sequel I remember purchasing on ebay, although I did read it before I bought it again. My sequel is a hardcover, maybe an old library copy. My nail biting book is a paperback novel, which are my synesthesia words because the words paperback novel are words that I like putting next to each other and thinking about. Maybe I do have the original copy of my book because the original one I read was also a paperback novel. Or maybe I bought it at that used bookstore I only went to once in Waterloo, a used bookstore I also bought a Judy Blume paperback novel at, and a Juliana Baggott paperback novel, and once I was giving away books for a book sale and I had no trouble giving away the Judy Blume book, but the Juliana Baggott one I still have because I put it in the box, then felt so sad I had to take it back out and keep it forever. Then, at the other used bookstore in Waterloo, where I went all the time, I bought many Solzhenitsyn books, of which, of the Solzhenitsyn books I bought there, I have read zero. Those Solzhenitsyn books I bought are all paperbacks, but not all are novels, so they don’t make me as happy as a paperback novel would.

There’s another book I liked growing up. My grandmother gave it to me. She’d bought it at her libary’s discount table, and then read it, and then gave it to me, not because she read it and thought I would like it: she thought I would like it, so she bought it, read it, and then gave it to me. This annoyed my mother, who sulked about it for a few days. To be clear, what annoyed my mother was not the present, but that my grandmother had the gall to read it, admit to that, and then still give me the book without shame. A castle gets moved brick-by-brick from Scotland to Texas and the ghosts come along and how is this not a Studio Ghibli movie already I don’t know, except maybe for the fact that one of the characters is obsessed with Adolf Hitler and the book isn’t that great about its treatment of the Indigenous peoples of what is now Texas, and I remembered none of this until I reread the book when I was thirty-one. So there’s another book gone and maybe, considering she read the book before giving it to me, my grandmother should have been concerned about the Hitler-idealization, even if it’s done by a villain, and it’s less about murdering Jews and more about the mustache and the oratory skills. Even in villainy, do we really need to try and find some parts of Hitler to emulate?

But from my grandmother, I learned you can read books before giving them. I did that for my mother-in-law, although that book was a reread, and also, the book was out-of-print and the copy I gave her already used. I did that for my neighbour, with a book I read on an airplane. When my neighbour rereads that book as an adult, what will she be shocked I let slide? I didn’t tell either of them, though, I read their books first.

There’s supposed to be a sequel to the sequel of my nail-biting book. There isn’t. There’s a book of poetry by the same author I sometimes think about, because the words strung together are like the words paperback novel: The Pearl is a Hardened Sinner, which is a book I’ve never read or seen or know anything about other than the synesthesia sound of its name. The author of all these books is old now, and in Minneapolis, and I doubt I’ll ever find out what happens to Skinny and Big Alice and Mr Foreclosure, but before I get angry about this, I wrote a book of which there is a sequel that only exists in a bloating file on my computer and maybe there are the same number of people who read my book as who read this book who are waiting in vain to find out what happens to Enid and Margery and Amber, but instead my book sours and rots, but I’m pretty sure none of my characters ever mention nail-biting, so at least I saved a handful of tweens from a habit as badly formed as all that.