Karly

I thought I’d start today’s post with a bold statement; it’s Monday after all. I don’t think I can read fiction anymore. I’m not saying this in a dramatic way or because I’m filing for literary divorce from a whole genre, but rather because I’ve been thinking a lot about my reading habits and preferences, and I think this is the perfect place to share my reflections and… let’s call them findings.

While I was in London, I went to many bookshops. If you’ve been to London, you know that there’s one at practically every turn, and of course, this makes it a paradise for book lovers. I tried to find an exact number online, but the best I could find is roughly 360. I could spend hours in one at a time, sometimes buying books, others just cards, and yes, I will admit that I went to Daunt Books for a tote bag, but only because I’m very sentimental about the Notting Hill/Holland Park area (not because of the film). I guess the point I’m trying to reach here is to tell you that I read the backs of probably dozens of novels looking for something that would capture me, and nothing did. Except for some very pretty hardbacks and the Paddington books.

In a moment of introspection, I tried to think about books that I really enjoyed during my adult years, and they had something in common: they were all either non-fiction or were inspired by real events. Take for example, Love, Nina by Nina Stibbe, just letters from a Northern girl to her sister during her time nannying for Mary Kay Wilmers, the editor of The London Review of Books. A record of a life.

So I decided I would give an autobiography a go while I was on holiday. I will not be sharing the title, not because it’s problematic but because it’s controversial at best, and I’m not sure if I’m ready to say that’s what brought me out of my reading slump.

What I will say is that I picked something a little unexpected. A memoir-slash-commentary that leans political, personal, and at times provocative. Not necessarily the kind of book I would usually reach for, but something about it intrigued me. I am still making my way through it, but I can already tell that what is keeping me interested is not the politics or the scandal or the commentary on public life. It is the voice. The sharpness. The perspective. The willingness to say this happened and it was complicated and here is how I am choosing to tell it.

It reminded me that what I want when I read is not distance or invention, but closeness. I want someone to tell me their version of events with all the inconsistencies that memory allows. I want to follow the path of their logic, their regret, their humour. I want the mess. I want the way people narrate their own lives when they are no longer trying to be liked, just understood.

To be completely honest, I have not exactly been reaching for anything else. That one book has been enough for now. I am still in the middle of it, still absorbing the tone, the detail, the structure, and while I would like to say I’ve opened three more memoirs or rediscovered a long-lost love of essays, the truth is I have mostly been watching my fiction instead of reading it. Evenings with Outlander have become something of a ritual lately. They are comforting and a little dramatic and filled with a kind of visual nostalgia that makes me miss my life in Scotland in a way that has taken me by surprise. Not the university part, not the academic pressures or the quiet disillusionment. But the other version of that life, the streets and the sky and the stillness. The person I was starting to become there, but that is a story for another day.

For now, what I can say is that fiction, at least on the page, is something I am not quite reaching for. And nonfiction, in its one-book form, is holding my attention just enough. I think I am learning to meet myself where I am rather than where I think I should be. And if that means slow chapters, controversial memoirs, and quiet nights watching Scottish time travel dramas on the couch, then that is perfectly fine with me.

I am not saying I will never return to fiction. I think I will. I think there will be a time when I want to be swept into someone else’s world again. But right now, I want stories that have already happened. I want names and timestamps and the kind of emotional logic that only makes sense years later. I want to know how people think when they are not pretending. I want the details that feel small but stay with you anyway.

And that is what nonfiction is giving me. Not just insight but intimacy. Not escape but reflection. Not the shape of a perfect story but the texture of a real one.