a week of no books

Early on Monday evening I lay on my bed, gazing wistfully at the stack of books I had borrowed from the library only a couple of days ago. I longed to grab one of them and just start reading, any would do but mostly I wanted to get started on Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger, a classic I had yet to devour. But instead I went on listening to my podcast and eventually fell asleep at the most inconvenient hour of 6 p.m. 

That morning I had started on the fourth week of Julia Cameron’s twelve-week course into rediscovering my creativity, known to most, if not all, as The Artist’s Way. (How many times I have heard or read someone exclaim ‘It completely changed my life!’ I’m not sure, because I haven’t counted, but it certainly has been many.) The course gives you daily and weekly assignments, and the biggest assignment of week four was what Julia calls ‘reading deprivation’. Basically, during that week, you are not supposed to read at all; not books, not magazines, not emails — you read nothing.

My initial reaction to reading deprivation was shit no!!!!!! with as many exclamation marks one could use. I’m a person who reads several books a week and is not particularly picky on what she reads. In addition, I read magazines, newspapers and blogs daily, not to mention Instagram captions or emails from friends & mailing lists. But, given Julia’s arguments (’For most blocked creatives, reading is an addiction. We gobble the words of others rather than digest our own thoughts and feelings, rather than cook up something of our own. […] Sooner or later, if you are not reading, you will run out of work and be forced to play.’) I decided I would give it a go.

Monday was admittedly the hardest. I felt like I was suffering from withdrawal symptoms and had to consciously stop myself from picking up a book, a magazine or my tablet for the purpose of reading. It started getting easier on Tuesday, until a book I had ordered online a week earlier was delivered kindly to my doorstep — apparently Amazon EU does that. I knew the book was coming, but had presumed I’d need to pick it up at the post office and had decided I wouldn’t until Sunday. It was sooo hard to resist, but resist I did. This gem is waiting for me in the living room dresser and will be the first thing I read tomorrow morning.

(As most everyone’s, my infatuation with Paris life & style began somewhere around the first decade of the 21st century. My best friend from Uni went to Paris as an exchange student; Amelie of Montmartre had us all in tears of laughter and awesomeness and the inexplicable feeling of alienation inside all of us, which it so beautifully portrayed; magazines were full of Lou Doillon and Charlotte Gainsbourg, whose 5.55 incidentally was the soundtrack of our lives in the autumn of 2009. One of my all-time favorite non-fiction books is How to Be Parisian Wherever You Are, and this promises to be almost as inspiring as that one.)

After the low of not being able to read the book delivered, I started slowly getting used to not reading excessively or, in fact, at all. Wednesday was a breeze, and by Thursday I thought I had the lack of books situation under control. I made a list of things to do early in the morning, but as the morning wore on, I started feeling very very tired from going to sleep too late (I’ve been in the habit of reading myself to sleep since I was a kid and have trouble falling asleep without a book), and from waking up too early (sent my daughter on a trip with her grandma at what felt like dawn). Soon after, I felt extremely nauseous and unable to function, and it didn’t take me long to do the math — it was one of those regular hormonal things. Now, on those days, what I normally would do is rest and read books and try to eat lots of vitamin C. This time, given that books were out of bound, I found myself vertical on the couch, on a Netflix binge, something the course specifically tells you NOT to do. But I just knew if I picked up that Salinger, or the Paris book, and started reading again, I wouldn’t be able to stop. I was confident enough that my energy levels would be on the rise the next day, and that I could then do something else besides moping around. On Thursday evening I made myself a hot bath with some Epsom salt for extra magnesium, and went to bed early to wake up well-rested, and to break the cycle of exhaustion I was looking at for the next ten days or so, if I didn’t find a way of re-energizing myself somehow.

Sure enough, on Friday I took myself on an around-the-town Artist date (a weekly requirement on the course), bought myself lots of fruit, went thrifting, and even went to the pharmacy to pick up some magnesium & vitamin C. Back home, I discovered replacement activities for reading & Netflix, such as knitting & crochet — there’s a post coming on all the things I got off my needles & hooks this week. During the week, I also got to see the bottom of all three of my laundry baskets, which is a miracle I never expected to happen. I baked cookies, cakes, and pies, and then had friends over for coffee to eat them all, which was all kinds of fun & something we, for some reason, don’t often have the time for. I made chocolate chip granola, and listened through the long list of podcast episodes I had saved on my podcast app but had never seemed to find the right time to listen to. Heck, I wrote several  blog posts, posted a couple of them, drafted a few, and thought of some more. I even got myself my very own url, one which I’ve been thinking of for years and to which I’ll probably be moving this blog — once I can read the instructions online...



And above all, I discovered my habit of reading may just be a little bit obsessive and excessive. I would never encourage anyone, not even myself, to stop reading altogether, because books have the ability to transport us to different worlds, to broaden our world views, to teach us millions of things about what it is to be human, and to help us form a view of ourselves & build an identity in relation to the wide world outside of our immediate sphere of life. Besides, reading is just so much fun!

But. When I read what I just wrote about the positive aspects of reading books, doesn’t that same go for, say social media to some extent? Might there have been a tiny little sliver of truth in the original denouncement of novels, back in the 18th century, as something frivolous and a tad dangerous? Might the element of danger be the same we now associate with social media — namely that when diving into the worlds of others we tend to forget about the world immediately in front of us, forget to live our lives to the fullest when we’re sucked into the imaginary worlds of novels or Instagram feeds? So maybe it’s better to do reading, too, in moderation, like we try to do social media?

I don’t know. I really don’t know. What I do know though is that not reading has given me a lot of time to think deep thoughts about EEEEVERYTHING, including reading, and that I would never have thought of these thoughts or done half the things I did without reading deprivation week, so Hey Julia, thanks for the life lesson!