Freaking Out Between The Pages

On having a reading induced panic attack.

For the first half of this year I have been reading with the tenacity of an athlete training for the olympics. Okay… maybe that’s dramatic, but I’ve been steadily reading for two or three hours each day and I often finish a book, look at my husband, and say out loud: “I feel like the Incredible Hulk!” It’s not uncommon for me to read an entire book in a day. Right now, as I write this, I am 10 pages into a book for a book club that I (impulsively) decided to join today. The book club meets tomorrow and not a single person that I’ve talked to has doubted my ability to read the book by tomorrow evening. In my writing world I’ve been working on a couple of book ideas, publishing this newsletter steadily, and getting down 1000 words a day most days, and with that comes an appetite to read. A lot. I’ve also dedicated myself to reducing the amount of time I spend online and on my phone and I’ve needed something to occupy me. I’ve mainly focused that energy into reading, writing and swimming. P.S. If you’re someone that’s wondering “How do I get that into reading?” I’ve got just the thing for you.

With my reading habit being what it is you might wonder how it is that I afford all the books? 50 books in 6 months would cost a lot of money, around a thousand dollars by my calculations. The answer is less sexy than you might think. My secret? I don’t really buy books unless I’ve already read them. Or at least I didn’t, we’ll get to that later. Instead, I use my library card like I’m in an episode of Arthur. I am a master of the holds system, and I’ll check out too many books at a time and generally I’ll get through most of them before their due date. I LOVE BUYING BOOKS. More than most anything I love reading, and I love owning books that I really love and if you think about it, it makes a lot of sense to buy things after you’ve read them. I buy all my new books from Novelette, the cutest book store around.

Up until recently, I’ve had a well oiled system that is library dependent and doesn’t involve an e-reader. If someone recommends something to me or I see something I like, I borrow it. If the person who made a recommendation has a copy to lend, I’ll get it from them and move it to the top of the list to ensure a speedy return. If there’s no one to borrow it from, I’ll add it to my library holds where it will sort itself into a queue that usually moves along at a manageable pace. 

This perfectly tuned system got me through half the year, and until two weeks ago helped me burn through books with ease. And then my system got totally upended.

There’s a used book store in Nashville that I’ve come to love dearly called McKay’s. It filled the Half Price Books hole in my heart after leaving Austin, even though there are HPBs in Nashville, they’re just not as big and not as easy to frequent as the HPB in Austin that was right near my Saturday bagel spot.

McKay’s functions like a lending library and book store hybrid. You buy something used from them, you read it, and then you sell it back to the store for credit to get something else. Its model isn’t unique, but has been around for a long time and the store is massive. My husband and I love it and go on an almost monthly basis. Some time ago I saw that their birthday was coming up, and they were turning 50. To celebrate they were throwing an incentivized roadtrip across all 5 locations spanning Tennessee and North Carolina. If you made it to all 5 stores you received $800 in store credit, as well as McKay’s swag. I decided I had to do it and prepared like a child going to Disney World. I made friendship bracelets to pass out. We made a driving plan and packed a cooler and off we went.

The McKay’s Road Trip made news headlines all over both states for being incredibly well attended, almost too well attended. The bookstore thought maybe a thousand people would show up, and by some estimates 5000 people started at each respective store on the bookend of the linear path. We got in line at the first location, but had to leave early because it was so crowded that lines that weren’t actually lines were forming. Thanks to some coincidences and luck, this caused us to be on our way and ahead of the hoard of people. The rest of the trip was stressful and eventful, but at the end of the day we snagged our $900 each (we got bonus credit because they’d run out of all the swag). Now, I have a small fortune I get to spend at a beloved used bookstore.

I went last week on a shopping spree. I got 22 books and I still have a lot of credit to spare.  

Before the spree, I’d purchased 5 total books all year.

If you’re curious that list is as follows: 

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami (a rare Japanese pressed english pocket edition that’s in two parts) 

My Sister, The Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite ($2 at Mckays)

Parable of The Sower by Octavia E. Butler 

I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman

A week later, as I was swimming at the YMCA pool I saw a woman bring an e-reader into the shallow end to read as her kids played. I realized that a waterproof e-reader must exist now. Eventually I found out that the new Kindles are waterproof. I wondered if I could read while I was jogging in the pool each day, and decided that if I could my life would improve exponentially. I am pleased to report that I kind of can read while I’m water jogging and stretching afterwards. It feels luxurious. It’s the best money I’ve spent all year. 

Both of these things are incredible innovations in my personal world of reading, but they did send me into an absolute spiral at first. I love systems. And I had a system! It really worked for me. I was able to effectively manage my To Be Read list!! And at the time of the spiral there was a stack of 22 books that I own staring me in the face, a Kindle with library loans ready to go, and a stack of 12 books that I’d borrowed from the library. I am a voracious reader, capable of a lot, but having 40 books on deck almost crashed me out. And, my dear reader who would never judge me for such a thing told in confidence, I had a full blown panic attack, alone in my office. I sobbed. I snotted. I felt beat down. I felt like I’d let the consumption beast in me win, even though that wasn’t true. Of course there were so many other things that caused the panic attack, but still, there I was, sobbing over books. 

Through a lot of self talk I reminded myself that it’s okay to get excited about things, it’s great even. The most important thing was to figure out a new system that works for me, and to aim to spend my (very free!) money at the used book store on things that I wanted to own in my personal library for a long time. I also reminded myself that I could still spend money (real money!) at my beloved bookstore that sits under the very place where I’m writing this newsletter.

Now, my library books will be going to my Kindle for pool reading. I’ll work my way through my already purchased from McKay’s pile. I made peace with the fact that I may never read some of those books, and I may take them to sell back to McKay’s. Which is okay, I remind myself.

The meltdown was not entirely caused by book acquisition, or the change up in my system, or the books needing to be read. In reality, it was the pressure I was putting on myself to perform the action of something I love in a perfect way. It was, as many things are, a symptom of something bigger. Reading is for pleasure. This is something I need to remind myself of every time I open a book.

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A note: In the coming weeks I will be transitioning to publishing two newsletters a week, one that is for free subscribers, and a second that is for paid subscribers only. There will be plenty of words spilled about this in future editions ahead of the change, but for now I just wanted to let you know it’s coming. If you want to show your support ahead of time you can go ahead and upgrade your subscription here. It would mean the world to me!

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