WHAT TO READ IN MAY

(if you feel like reading)

Oh wow, you‘ve read twenty books already? NO WAY. I‘ve just managed to promise myself I‘d start tomorrow, though the quarantine is seeing its light in the end of the tunnel and my business as usual is just around the corner waving its red cape in front of me. So I‘d really love to slouch on the sofa with a top notch reading in my hands, but..." all those fictional but rather typical excuses I've heard on Skype, Messenger or Zoom. Polished to a diamond-shine bathroom tiles - check, perfectly dusted plinths and their tiniest cracks - check. Meticulously re-arranged wardrobes resembling an opening of a high street fashion boutique - check, even a registered record of watched TV series - check, but when it comes to reading a book - it‘s always time to hit the sack. By no means it‘s a criticism towards your priority of choices (I‘d love a couple of friends cleaning my kitchen cupboards, too) but trying to jump on the bandwagon of quarantine book reading just to keep up with all social media crowds will only disappoint your personal well-being.  

If you’re still not convinced what following the trend might turn into, open Beautiful You, the novel by an inimitable Chuck Palahniuk, a master of a schizophrenic hotchpotch, who always comes with the craziest ideas for his books. This time it‘s not the lethal red button setting off a nuclear war we have to fear – beware of the women who in a never-ending O are capable of everything! The tech genius Maxwell develops a million-worth business idea and supports it with brilliant marketing campaign. Sex toys are equipped with certain nanorobots, which penetrate female bodies from within and allow a malicious businessman to control their consumer behavior with a help of one remote control panel. This idea is so intoxicating and so evil that even the U.S. president chooses to shoot herself instead. Only Penny Harrigan, an average-in-everything girl from Nebraska, who actually helped Maxwell to perfect his innovation tool, is capable to stop him by an almighty shriek from down under of her making all nanorobots go to hell. Obviously, Chuck Palahniuk will take you to the totally different league, but if the end of the world is still not enough for you, try his latest satire Adjustment day and drown in the thick swamp of absurdity squared. 

Too complicated the read? Well, here’s another one - a perfect fit for your stagnating status enhanced by the tiring quarantine. Though perhaps many of you still enjoy slower pace, Pyjamas all day long and couch surfing at your own place. But don’t get too excited because you might turn into Eva Beaver from The Woman Who Went to Bed For a Year by an amusing English writer Sue Townsend who, immediately after her seventeen year old twins leave home to start their studies at Leeds University, dumps her duties as a housewife, climbs to her bedroom and up to her bed, even with her high heels on.  She is fifty and determined to spent the upcoming future just within the limits of her comfortable family bed. Family? Well, just hers from now on. When Eva decides she won‘t leave her bed, she starts changing not only her habitat but her attitude as well. At first, you admire her will, even envy her, for it is she who stays in bed and not you!  However, the longer she stays in bed, the harder to stay with her at her side. Appearently good things come in doses. After one year when Eva has pushed everybody out and from her life figuratively and practically she realizes that life is too difficult to travel alone. So here comes the morale: beds are hazardous to your health, if used long-term!

May is a wonderful month of spring. Don’t waste it for activities you don’t really care about. But if you decide to plunge into the realms of literature, don’t make it a competition - just enjoy the moment. (I’ve already outread you, anyway).

stay safe and sound,

Literary Yours,

// ERA