Sometimes a violence-free, bitterness-free book can take your mind off of the violence and bitterness of the news
(Author photo)
Another day, another decision: How much of today’s news can I read?
Almost any book beats the news for daily digestion. This essay accepts that premise while exploring the question: Can relief for today’s extreme stress and anxiety be found in an unpretentious good book?
Current good books are not working. I recently finished Ian McEwan’s What We Can Know and am re-reading The Odyssey for my book group’s Ulysses Month. McEwan’s dystopia and Homer’s blood and gore somehow don’t do a lot for my blood pressure.
Mysteries work, but there goes the whole day. If you haven’t started Julia Spencer-Fleming’s Clare Fergusson-Russ Van Aelstyne series or Peter Grainger’s DC Smith series, use caution about starting the first book. You will NOT be able to quit. Grainger (a pseudonym for British author Robert Partridge) and Spencer-Fleming will take your mind off Donald Trump but wrenching yourself back into real life could create new stress.
Sometimes you just need a comfort book.
Meet Michiko Aoyama. I had missed Michiko’s earlier What You Are Looking For Is in the Library and The Healing Hippo of Hinode Park; in fact I had never heard of her. But Hot Chocolate on Thursday has my vote for beautiful writing, fine translation, accomplished craft . . . Comfort Book. I am in favor of reading for enlightenment, for character development, education, distraction, personal enrichment and fun. But after today’s news? Comfort.
A comfort book cannot be a beach read, or just a best seller. Thousands may have ‘liked’ it on social media, but if it’s crappy writing your stress level only rises. This makes the discovery of a perfect comfort book all the more rare, and appreciated.
San Francisco, like many cities (I am learning) has an ongoing promotion called “Lucky Day” books. These are featured on prominently placed shelves and comprised of an eclectic selection almost always including fiction, nonfiction, biography, story collections, you name it. The deal is that if you want to go home with one of these, you may, even if there’s a wait list. It’s your lucky day. That’s how I found Hot Chocolate on Thursday.
(Author photo)
And it was my lucky day.
We need more than luck to get through these days. Trump says something more obscene or outrageously untrue than yesterday’s obscene untruth. Kids shoot kids with our ever-available guns. Pictures of starving children or bombed-out buildings etch themselves onto your brain.
You take a few deep breaths only then to blink, and read of something worse. Someone texted me a few minutes ago, “Is the Reichstag burning?” To which I replied, “Probably. But our attention is constantly diverted to chaos elsewhere so we won’t notice.”
Michiko Aoyama was born in 1970 in Japan. After her university studies she moved to Sydney, Australia for a while to work as a reporter for a Japanese newspaper. (I automatically love writers who have worked as newspaper reporters.) Those parallel experiences inform Hot Chocolate on Thursday, which sends the reader (comfortably) back and forth between the two countries.
Lastly, a comfort book needs to be something you can enjoy for a while, set aside, and pick up again with pleasure. The chaos we’re living through comes in relentless waves, at unpredictable times. One of the best ways to survive it is through a book that takes a deep breath with you. Thanks, Michiko.
May we all survive to read another day.