Reading in Public

I suppose if I want to be successful as “public reader,” a BookTuber, BookToker, or InstaBooker, um, BookaGramer?, I will have to engage in a certain amount of performative reading.

• read what everyone else is reading
• read what everyone else is not reading
• read impenetrably difficult books
• read a certain percentage of books by women, or
• make sure everyone knows I own a certain percentage of books by women, or authors that aren’t old white men
• admit the reason I and many other men don’t read popular Romantasy is that we are cut off from our feminine parts by a willful indulgence in misogynistic self-loathing.

My most recent transgression, I’ve come to realize, is a celebration of Kazuo Ishiguro as one of my favorite fiction authors. Ishiguro is a British author who is stealing cred by being born Japanese. He has the further audacity to write female characters as his main protaganists as in his first novel A Pale View of Hills and his most recent, Klara and the Sun.

As a correction, I wish all to know that I’m deep into The Left Hand of Darkness, and I’m about to read a whole bunch of Louise Erdrich.

And let’s not forget the most performative aspect of all. I’m reading books. The rest of you are, well, I don’t even know.