In the Biblio Files blog, Sno-Isle Libraries staff members engage in conversations about reading. Join in by adding your comments.
Monday, July 7, 2014
Ever had a book hangover?
The other week I had the worst book hangover. I’d just finished J. K. Rowling’s Casual Vacancy
and when I was done, I couldn’t just pick up the next book in my stack. I spent a couple of days walking around in a daze while the characters kept talking in my head, scenes kept replaying, and I kept wondering “what was going to happen to the characters after the end of the book” (a notion that drives my husband nuts).
The urban dictionary defines a book hangover as:
“When you've finished a book and you suddenly return to the real world, but the real world feels incomplete or surreal because you're still living in the world of the book.”Example: "I have a really bad book hangover today, I could hardly concentrate at work."
Here are a few other books that gave me a hangover over the past year:
The Interestings, by Meg Wolitzer I grew up reading about those overachieving east coast types in books by E. L. Konigsberg and Madeleine L’Engle: Imagine being accepted into their rarified circle and staying beside them through adolescence through middle age. In the summer of 1974, ordinary, suburbanite Julie Jacobson (“an outsider and possibly even a freak”), has a full ride to a summer camp for artistically gifted teens and, once there, is drawn into a mesmerizing circle of sophisticated New York City teens, who become bonded for life. The group’s dynamics play out over the years as some succeed in the arts, others give up on their dreams, long-held secrets are revealed and characters face their demons. This would make a great discussion book!
The Long Song, by Andrea Levy The dialogue in this book hooks the reader right from the first page. The voices are so real that you feel that you know the characters. July, the child of a field slave on the Amity sugar plantation in Jamaica, is separated from her mother at a young age and moved into the great house as a sort of pet/servant to entertain a newly transplanted English widow, who renames her “Marguerite”. After the slaves are freed, July remains bound to the plantation despite her "freedom." Heartbreaking scenes are interspersed with hilarious, laugh-out-loud sections. I encourage fans of The Help to try this one.
Please Look After Mom, by Kyung Sook Shin This one is deceptive. The author seems to be emotionally detached as she tries to puzzle out what happened to her mother, who went missing on the subway one day. As more days pass and Mom fails to turn up, details about the narrator, her mother, and memories that float to the surface reveal more and more about what might have happened. If you’re like me, you’ll be blindsided by the emotional impact that comes at the end of the book. Have a box of Kleenex handy.
Tell me about YOUR book hangovers!
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7 comments:
Great blog post! I think mine remains The Time Traveler's Wife...my answer to almost every question posted here ;)
I get non-fiction hangovers. Where you've read everything written for the average consumer and suddenly all the books you're looking at online are by academics and are used as textbooks and cost $200. Curse you academic book market!
I like other people to read the books I am reading so that when I finish, I have someone to talk to about them. This may be a cure for the common book hangover or it may just be a special kind of a book hangover. The main thing that is clear from your post is that you enjoyed these books and are very likely luring us to them. It is very likely we will like them too.
I have had book hangovers--also from finishing jigsaw puzzles and knitting projects. Hard to go on to the next thing!! Thank you for the book reviews--these give me good ideas of what to read next!
I just finished Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast series on audio book, and I got a book hangover big time. Those books are all about atmosphere, and the reader (Simon Vance) is a genius.
I'm an English professor so my job is reading and discussing books with college students; I'm afraid that when I read, I am thinking more about the discussablilty of the book than about the lives of the characters. In his work "Old Times on the Mississippi," Mark Twain says that when he learned all the intricacies of the river as a pilot, the charm and beauty went away for him. I think the same sort of thing has happened with me, and novels. But at least I don't get hangovers.
Yes, I facilitated a book group for a number of years and found that, being the leader, I couldn't just read with "wild abandon" because I had to take mental note of various discussion points as I read. It took some of the magic of reading away for me. It's wonderful to be utterly lost in a book and swept away to another world... and the interruption to scribble down a comment or put a sticky note on a page broke the spell. I'd rather be swept away and have the hangover!
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