As I was warned, Blood Meridian is bloody. It is full of atrocities such as casual scalpings, brutal massacres, and jail-cell or wartime torture. What is most disturbing about this violence, though, is how it’s treated; McCarthy’s style is the definition of hard-boiled, and every midnight-black event is presented baldly, free of emotion or judgment. Our main character, the Kid, seems unaffected by all that he sees, merely trying to survive, wandering from one bloody clash to the next. So what is McCarthy trying to say about violence? He might be arguing that it is fundamental to the human condition, which is a compelling point. But more than that, he might be arguing that there is something purifying, something redemptive, something deeply cleansing about being washed in blood.

The review on the cover of my copy says it all: according to critic Michael Herr, Blood Meridian is “A classic American novel of regeneration through violence.” I haven’t finished the book yet, but already I’m wondering — what does he mean by that? Could McCarthy be arguing the unthinkable — that we need violence to be fully human?

It’s a deeply troubling question, but one that I’m glad McCarthy is raising. Other novelists who indulge in violence are usually repugnant to me because they present it as a kind of pornography, eroticizing the violence, tying it firmly to a deep-seated hatred or fear of women. That may come later, but from what I’ve seen so far, McCarthy isn’t marrying violence with sexuality or arguing that women have no place in his world. His story is about men, but it is an historical tale, and the violence is not eroticized. It is, instead, simply what it is: brutal, often purposeless, often strangely fascinating.

How to handle violence yourself

Regardless of how it might seem, we live in a less violent world than humans have ever inhabited before. Violence is slowly getting stamped out of our DNA, first becoming shameful, then becoming dirty, finally, possibly, becoming evil once and for all. But in fiction, violent acts will always be powerful and evocative. They have a way of clarifying things by forcing characters to make hard choices. Violence has a way of finally making the sides well-defined and the heroes and villains more obvious. In that way, violence can “redeem” a story, finally blowing away the smoke.

So how will you write about violence in your stories? Will you avoid it on principle, or will you take a test swim in McCarthy’s dark waters? Adding violence easily heightens the stakes of your story; but I urge you to avoid the easy pitfalls I mentioned earlier. Don’t eroticize violence; don’t assume that some people deserve to bear its brunt; don’t let characters become less than human. Violence has a nasty way of turning us into less than our true selves. I’m willing to read McCarthy, though, and see how oddly attractive violence can be, in its ability to make the line between choices and consequences so stark.

I always enjoy delving into short stories; they teach me about form, function, and language even more than most novels, and they’re too often neglected. Let’s take today’s review, James Joyce’s Dubliners, as a prime example; it is usually overshadowed by his mammoth and far more opaque novels Ulysses and Finnegan’s Wake. Both of those novels are well worth reading (I assume; I haven’t gotten to Finnegan’s Wake yet), but it is the slim collection of short stories that I believe can teach writers more about writing. These short stories are also an important stop on the march of evolution of the short story. Following Chekhov, the father of the modern short, we cannot neglect Joyce, who defined the concerns and structure of short stories in a new way.

After that introduction to whet your appetite, let’s start with some good news: Dubliners is in the public domain, and can be downloaded for free in a variety of formats at Project Gutenberg. I had read it years ago in high school, but I decided to re-visit it recently on my Kindle; it’s great protein powder for anyone trying to tighten up their language. Dubliners is a series of profiles, as the title implies; it aims to capture a wide range of stories, all of them unfolding in the city itself. Dubliners is a very Irish work, with familiar tropes and archetypes; the stories are often populated by kind or oppressive priests, drunken and abusive fathers, stern schoolmasters, and long-suffering wives. The characters are familiar, but each story is unique; Joyce makes each character’s story seem unusual, heartfelt, or surprisingly tender or brutal.

There are many things to learn from these lean, telling stories, but one main reason that they work is that each character does have a plight, a problem of real drama. Boys out of school on a carefree afternoon find themselves followed by a threatening older man; a girl decides whether to elope; a man endangers his job by repeating old habits. Many of the stories are shadowed by a very heavy, very Irish-Catholic sense of guilt, shame, sin, and the precariousness of virtue. People can make one poor mistake that will lead to disaster; the danger of sin, or of disfavor with the city, with God, and with oneself, is never more than a step away. Joyce reminds us that all of the quiet drama unfolding in a city is rich, complex, and human.

Simply put, Dubliners is good education for writers, and pure enjoyment for readers. The stories often end in the middle, or with problems unresolved; while this made some of the stories seem more like sketches, in most it seemed to make Joyce’s point about the never-ending conflict of the many lives in a great city like Dublin.

For writers, reading can be our favorite way of procrastinating. It feels so delicious because it doesn’t feel like wasting time, and so often it isn’t. “I’m improving my writing skills,” we’ll tell ourselves when we’re curling up with a book instead of thinking about our own writing. “I’m learning about plot movements and character development.” Doesn’t it feel good to get something done, even if it isn’t the thing that really needs to get done?

Now, though, with the start of a bright new year, it’s time to put reading back in its place and push writing to the top of the heap. Here are a few ways to keep reading where it belongs.

1. Read what helps your writing only.

There are plenty of big old classic novels I’ve been meaning to read, as well as some lighter fare. But neither of these types of writing are what I’m particularly interested in writing. To keep your reading productive, choose wisely; read things that you think will be related to the work you want to do. If you’re writing short stories, read some short stories! If you’re writing about a historical event, only read about that historical event. If you’re writing about a particular religion or culture, read about that religion or culture. Now isn’t the time for that beach read or that dusty tome you’ve been meaning to plow through for months.

After the jump: more ways to keep reading in its place.

2. Don’t read what you might imitate.

My writing teachers, while worshipful of Nabokov and his talents, were surprisingly wary about assigning him or recommending his books. Sometimes it just wasn’t the right time to read Nabokov, they said, because his style was so distinctive and infectious that it might rub off a little too strongly on our own writing. We didn’t want to end up sounding like a style imitation, so if a particular workshop submission started sounding too much like one or another author, we’d be warned away from reading him or her for a while. In your own writing, be aware of your influences and make sure you are injecting new strains into your language. Don’t read the book you’re trying to revive while writing; instead, read new and fresh things that will help you depart from your heroes’ styles.

3. Write as much as you read — or almost as much.

Some of my teachers believe you should read about ten times as much as you actually write, and I’m a follower of that idea as well. Sometimes, though, when you’re in the thick of the project, you need to apply a little discipline and make sure your output is nearly equalling your input. If you read an hour a day, then make sure you are writing for at least half an hour a day — or make it so that you don’t get your “treat” of reading until you’ve put in a good solid writing session. Reading is wonderfully helpful, but sometimes you should treat it as a dessert that must be earned by sweating out some calories.

When you’re in the thick of a project, how do you balance your writing and reading? Weigh in at the end of this post!

Aloft, Chang-Rae Lee

Aloft concerns itself with a fairly unremarkable suburban life among the upper-middle class of Long Island, but it’s the writing that makes this book extraordinary. It’s been a long time since I’ve luxuriated in such fluid, graceful, sinuous language. The voice is sophisticated, humorous, and wise; you’ll want to listen to this writer’s voice commenting on anything. The story begins to get complicated when you realize how many different family members are wrapped up in a confused past of tragedy, enmity, and violence; and you begin to feel increasingly engaged with our narrator’s struggle to assert his role in a disintegrating family.

Black Swan Green, David Mitchell

Here’s an excerpt from what I wrote about Black Swan Green this year:
This past week I found myself happily swallowed up in his coming-of-age novel, Black Swan Green. It’s a very British novel, taking place in a small country village and overflowing with British slang and localisms, but that’s one major source of its charm: as a novel from the perspective of a young boy, it does not condescend to its subject, but fully enters its protagonist’s world, giving us the back yards and fenced fields and fairgrounds of a boy’s life. All of these things are presented to us with a young boy’s sense of what’s important, such as being cool in the eyes of the local toughs, wondering about the burgeoning sexuality around him, and anxiously avoiding anything that’s “too gay.” While reading Black Swan Green, I felt like I was getting a lot of insight to the anxieties that shape a child’s growing up, taking me back to that nervous adolescent period when being liked was so, so important, and standing out was the peak of horror. Mitchell stays closely in the voice of a young child, but also allows for a great deal of simple, elegant lyricism, describing the settings and the questions of a child with a great deal of poignancy.

Fun Home: a Family Tragicomic, Alison Bechdel

I don’t read a ton of graphic novels, but I should probably read more, because each one that I do ends up being tremendously interesting. A favorite American graphic novel for me this year was noted feminist writer Alison Bechdel’s intricate, thoughtful, and haunting memoir. The memoir is concerned with her own coming out, but also her father’s, and the circumstances around his mysterious death, which may or may not have been an accident. Her struggle to understand the way her father policed her gender — and therefore policed himself and the entire family — are a poignant commentary on the secrets we all keep, and the lies we tell ourselves as we grow up and try to figure out who we are.

Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami

Here’s an excerpt from what I wrote about Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore this year:
I’m pleased to say that while it didn’t bowl me over quite as much as Wind-Up Bird, Kafka on the Shore is another gripping, intricately plotted and dreamlike journey that is well-worth taking.

The novel begins from the point of view of a young teenager who has decided to run away from home. He hates his father for murky or poorly-understood reasons, his mother long ago disappeared, and he knows it’s time to leave. He begins a desperate flight across Japan, searching for a way to escape a prophesy about his life. As usual, Murakami grabs us not only with the subtle poignancies of his characters’ lives, but with simple compelling action, drama, and suspense. I was kept eagerly turning the pages, wondering whether this boy would make his escape successfully and what he was running from.

Just as you’re getting comfortable in this story, another story unfolds — that of the mentally handicapped man who lives in the same area, and who can talk to cats. In his past he has a strange occurrence that changed him forever, and now, years later, he finds himself in the grip of an even stranger destiny. His story begins to rise and converge with the runaway teen’s story, becoming unexpectedly surreal, metaphysical, and tense.

The Pale King, David Foster Wallace

Here’s an excerpt from my review of the Pale King earlier this year:
There are many different sections in this fragmentary novel that are weirdly electrifying or magnetic, drawing the reader in through their sheer narrative boldness or obsessive attention to detail. One section, about a boy who worries because he sweats excessively, and then realizes that worrying about sweating causes the sweating to start, and thus lives in fear of worrying about a sweat attack, begins to reel with a kind of nauseous anxiety that is undeniably powerful. Other moments, describing the utter inanity of paper processing at the IRS, shows the bizarre stifled world many of us live in….it’s undeniable that Wallace is a gifted and utterly strange writer, someone who has had a strong influence of writers of my generation. It’s just one more tragedy that this novel — certainly full of power and potential — will remain unfinished.

Sputnik Sweetheart, Haruki Murakami

Yes, Murakami is making a second appearance on this list — that’s largely because I took it upon myself to get to know this author this year, and so I read at least six of his books. And I could have put 1Q84 on this list, but I wanted to highlight a lesser-known, far slimmer novel of his, because it was one of the Murakami books I read that really left me with something — a powerful feeling in my gut. Great books leave you changed after you read them, and Sputnik Sweetheart did that for me. Like many Murakami novels, at its heart is a love story, but this is a story of a triangle of unrequited love. The narrator loves a girl who loves another woman, who is capable of loving no one. The story that stayed with me was that of this woman’s past, and the idea that we can sometimes enter entirely new emotional realms, from which it is impossible to return. Even while fantastical, Murakami’s writing is wholly realistic about the way people change, age, and compromise. Sometimes time does not heal wounds; we cannot spring back from the slings and arrows of life, but instead sail on partially wrecked, altered people. This is a refreshing denial of our culture’s fixation on purity to me. Life is a process of necessarily becoming impure, and that’s not a bad thing, but is rather a profound thing, what makes us human.

The Dharma Bums, Jack Kerouac

Jack Kerouac is better known for his stream-of-consciousness romp down America’s highways in On the Road, but The Dharma Bums came closer to my heart this year. It’s told in the same incendiary, off-the-cuff, wild rambling style, but it’s more about spirituality and everyday religion, the ways we seek to infuse our daily lives with the big questions and answers of life. Our narrator and his friend (closely based on poet Gary Snyder) are rogue Buddhists, trying to revive the ancient tradition of the wandering mystic in modern life. They climb mountaintops and shout sutras from their summits; they get in arguments about the meaning of the true dharma; and they warmly and willingly find the spiritual in every aspect of life. The writer acknowledges the bravado and naivete of these characters at the same time that he celebrates the exuberance of mindfulness and stillness. It’s a must-read for anyone interested in writing about religion in modern life.

I’ll stop there, readers. I hope you enjoy these books, or whatever books you find your nose buried in this coming year!

So with that in mind, I’ll say that 1Q84 is everything the reviewers have been saying. It’s massive, thrilling, epic, unwieldy, sometimes clumsy, sometimes troubling, a little longer than it needs to be, and definitely worth reading — though not my favorite or most highly recommended Murakami book.

It’s an alternating, two-part novel at heart, telling the stories of Aomame, a young woman living in Tokyo, and Tengo, the young man she knew in grade school. In the very first chapter, Aomame slips down an emergency exit stairwell on the highway — and effortlessly into another world, an alternate version of ours. This is the first sign that we have entered another weird, wonderful Murakami realm. What I love about Murakami’s work is how he blends realism with the surreal. His worlds are meticulously detailed, sometimes to the point of being mundane, and there is usually just one key detail that is distinctly off. In this way, the world of 1Q84 obeys almost all of the rules of the ordinary world — but it defies those rules in small, endlessly fascinating ways. This is why I’m excited to read Murakami as a writer; he can teach us so much about clean, accurate realism, as well as about fantastical, suspenseful worlds.

In spite of all the inventiveness and fantasy that goes into Murakami’s work, there’s often a very simple, old-fashioned plotline running through the center. 1Q84 is no different; at the core is a simple, long-enduring love story. Murakami’s vision of romance is sometimes simplistic, needing only a single gesture or glance for the characters to know they’re meant for each other. Sometimes I would like to see Murakami get in the mud a little and show the ugliness of failing relationships; his love stories seem a little too pure, a little too fabled at times. But that’s my only large quibble; overall, 1Q84 fits comfortably in with other Murakami novels that delighted and engaged me up to the last page.

But if I were recommending a Murakami novel for a newcomer, I would still suggest The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle; it’s his most socially and historically aware work, I think, with his most complex romantic relationships. For those of you Murakami readers out there, what did you think?

I’ve recently started keeping track of what I read at a site called Goodreads, which bills itself as a sort of facebook for actual books. It’s reading becoming social, a place where you can post what you’re currently reading, what you’ve just read, what you thought about it, and what you think about your reading buddies’ books. There are a number of other sites out there that attempt to monopolize on our social networking age, turning bibliophilia into a connected, modern hobby. The other one I know is booklamp.org, which has a recommendation service supposedly like Netflix for books; it analyzes your favorite books’ “DNA” and gives you similar results.

The main reason that I’m on Goodreads is to have a record of what I’ve read. I previously used Filemaker to keep a database so that I could see what books I’d read in a particular year or all the books by a certain author that I’d read. I recorded where I got the book from, any notes about it, and whether it had made it onto my exclusive “five star list.” But a recent system upgrade has made my old copy of Filemaker no longer workable, and instead of shelling out the cash for a new version, I tried Goodreads. I’m enjoying it so far; it allows me to be a little voyeuristic and spy on what my friends are reading, as well as broadcast what books I’d recommend. And it lets me discover new books that I wouldn’t have heard of. But it does have me wondering whether it’s the right direction for books to become such a highly social matter.

The problem is that book snobs (and I know I’m one) will inevitably do one thing: they will judge what you’re reading. Sometimes they’ll take it too far and judge you for what you’re reading. At the same time, they’re often anxiously showing off what they’re reading. So Goodreads could become like facebook in that it could be all about the anxious, self-conscious performance of it all. It’s easy to say you’re reading War & Peace when you’re really going through some paperback beach read; it’s easy to pretend you’ve already finished Infinite Jest when you haven’t. Will the social networking world of books be one more arena for us to project an artificial self-image?

On the other hand, as I mentioned, book snobs have always been book snobs, with our without the internet. Perhaps, as is often the case, the internet is just one more tool or conduit for human behavior, rather than the cause of new human behavior. What do you think?

But in the meantime, I’ve got to find a way to slake my thirst. And that got me thinking about the value of reading something different once in a while. I started my search for a new book as I always do — by poring over my own shelves, which still have a few books I’ve been meaning to read but haven’t gotten to yet. I noticed a book whose title I didn’t recognize — it was from a pile of books my mother had been donating to charity, and I had rescued a few likely-looking ones and quickly added them to my own stack in the move to a new apartment. It was Forgetting Elena, by Edmund White. Now I’m happily ensconced in a fascinating, slightly surreal novel of manners — and it’s one I never would have thought to read if it hadn’t been staring me in the face.

It can be demoralizing to think of all the great novels we’ll never read in our lifetimes, but the way we can fight this reader’s panic is to keep reading — and to remember to read something that is outside our normal milieu. There is an entire world of forgotten books out there that deserves to be revived. Just because a book is from 1982 doesn’t make it unworthy of reading (we tend to read the classics from long ago or the contemporary of-the-moment stuff, but not whatever was great in the in-between times). It’s also important to stretch beyond our comfort zone stylistically, and read work that isn’t simply what we imagine ourselves writing. We need different styles in our brains to inform and enrich our own; otherwise, we’ll end up sounding like bad imitations of our favorite authors, rather than ourselves.

Do you usually have your nose in more than one book at a time? I don’t mean literally reading two books simultaneously; I mean being in the middle of more than one book at any one time. I didn’t use to like this phenomenon, because it got tiring to jump back and forth, but the realities of work in college and the pressure of Reader’s Panic has pushed me lately to keep more than one book going. I’m currently in the middle of Jack Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums, a nonfiction book about Tibetan Buddhism’s arrival in the West, and Darin Strauss’s Chang and Eng. Last week I was simul-reading a non-fiction book about the psychology of hoarding and The Iliad. If you’d like to try simul-reading as well but feel daunted, here are a few things I’ve learned about making the experience as rich, rewarding, and enjoyable as ordinary reading.

Don’t cross the streams: keep your book choices separate.

You’ve noticed from my book list above that the books I read at any one time are widely varied. I read some non-fiction out of curiosity or for research for my novel; I read a serious literary novel; and I read something for fun or to improve my craft. This way I won’t be confusing characters, plot movements, or themes. It’s better to read books that have entirely different moods and goals, so that your own mood will always have an interesting book to match it.

In a book war, choose opponents wisely.

If you try to simul-read a book you are dying to read and a book that is dull but required for one reason or another, the book war will be too one-sided. If these unmatched books go head to head, you’ll find yourself invariably picking the interesting book, and not really simul-reading at all. If you want to get through more than one book at a time, you’ve got to choose two books that you really want to read, and that would be pleasurable to drop into at any time. Don’t try to have your biology textbook compete with Anna Karenina; in my book, anyway, Anna will always win.

Remember to savor your reading.

The worst thing that could happen when you simul-read is that you don’t enjoy or retain either book. If you’re finding yourself exhausted and dreading reading, something is wrong! If you find yourself skimming pages or not remembering what happened in the previous chapter, something is wrong! So remember that this goal is not to prove Carl Sagan wrong and get as many books under your belt as you can — the goal is to enjoy and savor more wonderful books out there.

This week, I want to urge you to take a stroll through your childhood world of books and remember when you had time to curl up with a story all day, or when you would read under the covers with a flashlight, or when you just couldn’t put a book down at the breakfast table and were late for school as a result (okay, maybe that was just me). If you haven’t looked through your books for a while, you’ll probably have forgotten many of the books that meant so much to you when you were young — books that really got you, or that were exciting in a new way, or presented a world or a life you wished you had. For whatever reason, those books were part of your growth into a lifelong reader and writer.

Examine What Has Changed

So why did these old friends get pushed aside and forgotten? Do they still have the same ring, or do you realize you don’t love them quite so dearly anymore? Try examining what has changed about your tastes in writing and what you appreciate now that you didn’t then. This is a useful exercise for learning what changes according to our age and situation and what remains timeless. Which books still excite you at every new page, and which books seem old, dated, for fit for younger readers only?

I’m in the process of unloading boxes of my books into a new apartment, and trying to sort them into reasonable categories has proven difficult. I want to put all the Russian novels together and all the short stories together — but then I find myself encountering a favorite and wanting to put all the favorites together, regardless of genre. Ultimately, my bookshelves might remain a jumble because I want to walk by them and see a flash of friends from every century and genre.

All this has, of course, gotten me thinking and wondering about the future. I’m now the owner of a Kindle, and I’m enjoying it enormously; it allows me to buy books at just a little less, while always having a book to read, even when I’m traveling or away for weeks at a time. It was a lifesaver during my recent job as a camp chaperone and it’s wonderful if you’re a commuter and take subways or buses on a regular basis. But it means that whenever I want to buy a new paper book, I find myself hesitating — shouldn’t I just get this on my Kindle? Do I need the actual physical object? Does it make me feel like I’ve really read the book more if I read a paper version? Is my retention better with paper? And selfishly and on a purely aesthetic level, don’t I want to fill my apartment with books and be the kind of person whose apartment is filled with books?

The process of change is slow, and we’re at a very early stage. But in looking at the collapse of Borders this week, I can’t help wondering whether the delight in books as physical artistic objects might be a fading phenomenon. Or books might become an elite, artisanal object rather than a mass-produced and highly common thing. We might begin to treasure the few physical books we have, while somewhere alone on a shelf a slim hard drive is holding the world’s texts.

What do you think will happen to books as physical objects in the future? And has your vision of books’ place in your home changed? Personally, I still imagine having a wall of books — but by buying about 50% of my books in a digital format, I’m slowing the process of acquisition. It might take me a lot longer than I first thought.