Mashed Potato Books

Beside my bed are twenty library books. They arrive in overly large batches and it's up to me to deal with them in a timely manner. When I've read them all I can open a window in my library wait-list and another score will speed to Runnymede Library to be picked up.

 

Back to those twenty books beside my bed. At the moment there is not a single title I want to pick up. This makes me marvel, avid reader that I have always been, so it requires some pondering. My conclusion is that (because of Covid? Because of age? Laziness? Lack of engagement?)—the conclusion is that at this point in my life I am looking for a mashed potato book.

 

What do I want in a book? I want comfort. I want to wallow in the unremarkable, the unsurprising. I want to be fed, with a spoon, goodwill and happy endings. But don't get me wrong. My mashed potato books must be well written. They must engage me with their characters. I'm no dummy. I know the difference between cheap instant mashed potatoes and the real thing. I'll even accept a few lumps in the service of authenticity as long as the butter and the cream and the essential potato goodness are not lost.

 

I think I've wrung everything I can from that metaphor, but its essential truth is this: for the moment at least, my tastes have changed.

 

So here I am with these twenty unread titles, mildly cursing the reviewers who had recommended them to me. But, dear reader, I am persevering. I can get rid of half a dozen titles by reading the front cover flaps. Why did I ever think I would like a spy novel set in 1939 Berlin? Back it goes to the library. And so forth.

 

This is what my faithful book-carrier, DinoVino, refers to as his load-bearing exercise. He lugs them home from the Runnymede Branch, and then he lugs some of them back almost immediately, unread.

 

So then I discover something else. Perhaps it has been said before: you can't judge a book by its cover. In this age of excellent graphic designers (or computer design programs, more likely), we are used to striking, evocative, attention-grabbing cover art. Faced with fifteen unknown titles, I start with the covers that call to me. Sometimes that works.

 

In the past week, down to the dregs of my most recent haul, I have read, one after the other, three titles that I had previously bypassed because I was sure they wouldn't appeal to me. And I have loved each one. So there you are. You just have to go through them one by one, start reading even when predisposed not to, risk kissing scores of frogs in order to find the princely reward. And often you will be surprised to find you have a perverse affection for frogs.

 

 

 

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