For a while, one of the cups I kept in the cupboard at the Pub for my Diet Coke had these words emblazoned on it: “I LIKE BIG BOOKS AND I CANNOT LIE”—a reference to the 1992 Sir Mix-a-Lot song, “Baby Got Back.” The point of the cup was to proclaim my undying adoration for books galore. Technically, however, I don’t like big books, and the words on my cup which said I do, are evidence I lied about it. It doesn’t matter how interesting the book is, if it’s much over 300 pages, it feels like work to me to finish it. I especially despise a long book that requires me to devote more than a week to it. After a week of reading, if I still haven’t finished it, I feel trapped. I feel as if I’m weeping and wailing and gnashing my teeth all the way to the book’s bloody last page. I’m at war with the damn tome. You can’t just jump ship and abandon a book when you’ve already spent a week on it. You have to finish reading every last word of it. It’s a point of honor—even if the book itself turns out to be worthy of only a “meh” rating.
Just last week I decided to read a somewhat obscure book I’d always heard about but hadn’t yet read: The Recognitions, by William Gaddis, originally published in 1955. I ordered it online, and less than twelve hours later, Alexa informed me prime had delivered it to my doorstep. I was excited to begin reading—until I opened the front door and saw the thick package. I lifted up the package and my spirits sunk further because it wasn’t just a thick book, it was an unusually heavy, thick book. I tore open the package, hoping maybe other books I had ordered had been shipped with it—thus, accounting for the thickness and the weight of the package. But no, it was just the one book. The Recognitions has 933 pages. I was bereft.
It’s a psychological cootie I get: I look at a book with more than 300 or so pages and think, “I will be dead before I can finish reading that bigly book. I don’t have enough time to read a book that long.” But really, I’m going to read books anyway. Between all the books I’m reading simultaneously, I’m going to read that many pages and more in a week’s time. Logically, I know it should make no difference how many pages a book has, but it really does make a difference to me. Lots of pages means lots of distress for me. I would have no anxiety about reading every page of a 1000-page book if it was presented as 3 or 4 separate and less husky books. My Bigly Book Anxiety is simply one more peculiarity in a catalog of my many reading peculiarities.
I have a theory or two about why I am anti-bigly books. The first theory is simple: most lengthy books I’ve read seem to be trying to be long, at the expense of trying to be great. I have rarely read a bigly book that couldn’t have used a good editor to do a more thorough weeding of the manuscript before publication. Too many good writers have a tendency to want to put every jot and tittle into their story. They like to hear their own writing voice. They won’t cut out a fine piece of writing that might be lovely, but is totally unnecessary to the story. I think they are secretly afraid they’ll never get published again, so their book has got to be “the” book to end all books. Sometimes these writers think they have a lot to say so they write a 1,500 page book, when the story could be beautifully told in 200 pages—with much more impact and clarity, without all the blah, blah, blah to cloud it. So, yes, I am saying that most stories don’t need to be like the Primary song in which the pioneer children sang as they walked, and walked, and walked, and walked, and walked, and walked. And walked. A story needs to end at some point, preferably while you’re still alive to read it.
My second theory—the one I think most explains my disliking bigly books—has to do with my assertion that reading is an activity. It is doing something, in the same way shooting hoops is doing something. Many of you probably heard something like this from a teacher or parent more than once when you were a kid, holed up in a chair reading a book: “It’s such a nice day outside, you need to get out of this house and ride your bike.” Like reading is the same as the Deadly Sin of sloth, or loitering. Reading is not wasting time. To read is to engage with other people in other places, dealing with other situations. Reading takes you far outside yourself, even as it simultaneously plunges you deeper inside yourself. Reading requires your attention. It requires skills. It changes you. When you finish reading a book, you are not the same person you were when you began it. I’m not overstating this point: When you give yourself up to it, the act of reading—with your full and open attention—enlarges and transforms you, one book at a time, in a multitude of ways, some of which you might not even discover until years later.
So how does this relate to my dislike of long books? For me, I like to experience these transformations regularly and often—every 300 pages or so. It’s a kind of high, and I’m proud to be addicted. To read a lengthy book is to defer the transformation for so long that some of it gets lost along the way. At the end of a bigly book, I often feel more exhausted than changed. I feel like I’ve been through an active experience, but my brain is too wrung out for me to fully care about understanding the implications. This aversion to bigly books is an eccentricity that is likely due to some sort of failing in my personal reading habits. I will own my failure. But, to be honest, I’m not all that interested in trying to alter my reading routines and proclivities at this point in the game. I am what I am, and I read how I read. I like regular-sized books, and I cannot lie.