Retroversy

I have read Gideon the Ninth. This would not be news, seeing as it’s pretty much the hottest book in this corner of the internet, if it weren’t for the fact that it is the first book I have finished in approximately three years. For the longest time, my executive dysfunction has made it nearly impossible for me to read. It still does, a fact that is certainly not made any better by the fact that I might have sleep apnoea and as a result, will get drowsy after a good dozen or so minutes of sitting down fixated on printed words on a white sheet of paper. As a result, not a lot of books have departed on a journey with me over the past couple of years, and even fewer have made it over to the other side.

Suffice it to say, I have to be in a particularly ambitious mood to even attempt to start reading a book. My previous attempt to read Dune before the new film came out had failed, so for about a year or so, I lived at peace with the thought that I simply wasn’t made for reading. That was an odd thought to internalize, seeing as there were times in my youth when I devoured a book a week — but then again, I thought, I wasn’t depressed back then.

Nevertheless, in March I bought myself a tablet computer, which did come with an interesting proposition that could potentially change my mind. Maybe reading books digitally could help me overcome this bizarre wall that had been erected between myself and the entire art of literature over the past couple of years? Unfortunately, I realized reading on a tablet is about as pleasant an experience as watching a movie on an etch-a-sketch about as soon as I started doing it. Too bad.

When I moved house in August, however, I quickly realized that my compulsive need for the massive bookcase I had somehow bought to install in my living room to look aesthetically pleasing was going to cause me to buy a lot books, regardless of whether or not I was actually going to read them. After a pathetically short amount of time, the inevitable happened. I soon found myself having spent hundred of euros on swanky hardbacks — because of course I bought hardbacks — including a copy of Gideon the Ninth, a book I had unfinished business with. I figured that if I was going to assemble myself a library, I should at least try to be deserving of it. And what better way to start than by giving the book I was reading when I realized this struggle was going to be slightly more bearable the old-fashioned way its proper due?

So, I started reading again. From the beginning, because I have a memory like a sieve. The same problems starting rearing their ugly heads again. I couldn’t motivate myself to sit down and just read, even though I wanted to know how the story would continue. I continued to fall asleep after a few pages if I tried to relax. Often, when reading did seem to be going smoothly, I found myself realizing I hadn’t processed any of what I’d read for the past few pages or so. It took me four months to get to the halfway point.

And then it took me two days to get to the end. I don’t know what happened. Something, whether it’s the book’s pacing or some bizarre timer in my brain that decides to trigger hyperfocus after weeks of stumbling through consciousness, flipped a switch inside me and took me all the way back to my childhood, when I could read and read and read all afternoon and the idea of things ever being different was as unfeasible as imagining I’d ever live in a time when the guy from The Apprentice was the President of the United States.

Nevertheless, here I am, having seemingly disproven my own belief that reading for me has to be some kind of ordeal. The right book in the right place at the right time can and will make it all click again. I just have to find what makes the right book, the right place and the right time. At the very least I’m glad I now at least have an incentive to find out.

Oh, and as for the book? It’s pretty good! Stylistically ambitious for a fantasy novel, with strong characterization and unapologetic in its sensibilities without ever alienating the audience or breaking suspension of disbelief. They shouldn’t have pitched it as “lesbian necromancers in space”, though, because that’s a) pretty reductive, b) kind of too, like, performatively “lookie-here-gays-this-one-is-for-you”-ish and c) likely to muddy up a reader’s experience of the character dynamics and development just ever so slightly when they already know there’s going to be a romance subplot? I dunno. Blargh.