by Kelly Pickerill
Yesterday, I finished reading the young adult novel and one of our upcoming Oz First Editions Club picks:
The Emerald Atlas by John Stephens. It was an action-packed adventure starring three young orphans who are far from ordinary and are beginning to discover their destiny. But I don’t want to talk about it too much, cause I’m sure there will be blogs coming up from Emily, who is pumped about this first book in a trilogy by a new author who already shows so much promise.
After finishing a book, especially on a gorgeous Sunday, a little panicky voice whispers, “What are you going to read next? That book was so perfect for a Sunday on the porch with the sun and the soft breeze and the mild weather . . . and now what? You know you’re just going to pick something absolutely dismal, you always do — something depressing or overwritten — not at all a good segue from that delightfully charming book whose last page you just turned. It’s taunting you, that last page, isn’t it? Well, you should have slowed down, but no, you had to finish and it’s only five and the sun won’t set for two hours and what are you doing to do?!”
My anguished inner monologue was given further fuel because I had just days ago begun a book that seemed to have promise and found it wooden. I couldn’t slog through that. No, I needed to gamble, to start fresh.
Well I didn’t. I made supper and watched some tube and considered my reading over for Sunday.
Till bedtime. I took with me into bed Open City by Teju Cole, a book that initially got some buzz but, at least at Lemuria, that we haven’t heard much more about. This is the plot of the book as far as I can tell: Julius, a young Nigerian psychiatrist in his residency, meanders through New York City, musing on his life, his childhood in Nigeria, his patients, music, culture, anything really. But that’s not the importance of the book, as far as I can tell: it’s a meditation on solitude, on the paradoxes of silence, juxtaposing its oppression and its freedom, its narcissism and its sensitivity. Julius is a thoughtful narrator, and Cole has created a novel that speaks to its reader’s condition in situ — the condition of reading, of being alone and quiet, of being closed and withdrawn while simultaneously being opened to new ideas.
On an afternoon of heavy rain when ginkgo leaves were piled ankle-deep across the sidewalk looking like thousands of little yellow creatures freshly fallen from the sky, I went out walking.
chapter 3 opening, Open City
Today is overcast, and as the wind sometimes whips through the trees outside, I sit silently at my desk reading.
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