#118 Feeling dumb and dumber

a kind of midlife crisis

Hello friend,

I think I'm getting more and more stupid. My intelligence and attention span are lagging with every year that passes. 

I remember devouring so many books as a child, even more so in my 20s. I've read Moby Dick over one summer, I once read the Australian classic For the Term of His Natural Life over a long weekend, and Great Expectations was an absolute delight over a couple of days. 

I still enjoy long books, but they take me longer to get through; The Luminaries seemed to take forever, but I enjoyed every moment; The Goldfinch was intriguing, but it took me a couple of weeks; and more recently, Suzanna Clarke's book Piranese was a real torture for the first 200 pages but as I hit the second half I managed to finish in a few days. 

The longer, the better, I used to say when it came to books. But now it depends on the book. If it doesn't get my attention, if I don't like the characters or the writing, or if something bugs me about what I'm reading, I will give up and push the book aside.

It used to be exceptionally rare for me not to finish a book unless there was something particularly frustrating or annoying or jading about the book. I stopped reading Dostoyevsky's Notes from the Underground simply because the narrator was making me depressed. It was a book without any hope, and I didn't care to go and spiral down into the pits of the darkest part of human nature.

I stopped reading Nabokov's Lolita when the protagonist drugged the young girl who was the Lolita of the title and also his complete obsession. I had a visceral reaction to seeing inside the mind of a paedophile, so I stopped. In this case, it wasn't because of the writing; I loved the prose, but it took me somewhere I didn't care to go.

Photo by Thought Catalog

These days, I occasionally buy an excellent big book, thinking I will get hooked on it and disappear like I used to, but if I don't get into it in the first chapter or so, the book sits gathering dust. I've been trying to read different genres, more popular authors, some fantasy and young adult series. 

I've gotten through most things alright. So many things these days are easy to read and entertaining, but when I came to the end of them, I felt empty, and now, after months or weeks, I can barely recall anything memorable from them. I had a short, brief affair with so many, yet I cannot say I loved any of them.

Perhaps it's not because of my dwindling mind that leaves so many books gathering dust on my bookshelves; maybe I've fallen out of love with the books I read. I need something to be so utterly brilliant and connected with on so many levels that I will become obsessed with it.

I'm looking for beautiful books to read. Lord, save me from lousy book recommendations. I don't want any vacuous bestsellers or overly popular books that will make me vomit. Please give me some good writing, a book I can't understand. Something that will take me to another place and live there as long as I read along. 

As I write this, I remember places I've been with writers, like when Irving Stone took me back to Renaissance Italy and into the mind of Michelangelo in The Agony and Ecstasy, or in the book Perfume that took me by the nose literally back to pre-French revolutionary France. A literary adventure like AS Byatte's Possession or Kate Morton's The Clockmaker's Daughter. 

I need some dark fantasy and mythology like in the worlds of Neil Gaiman. I need a sprinkle of Dickens, a smattering of Dante or a spoonful of Calvino. I wouldn't even mind a bit of Fitzgerald, Hemingway or Capote. 

Photo by Pixabay

There are so many more authors to read. I need to find them. I don't mind fantasy, history, magic, realism, non-fiction, or literary fiction classics. They are all viable, as are so many more.

Please, please send me your recommendations. I'm flailing here. I need to get my reading Mojo back soon, or else I'll be stuck scrolling on social media and my last neuron to fades away…