Sara Nelson, So Many Books, So Little Time: A Year of Passionate Reading

Literary Review, Spring, 2004 by Albry Montalbano

Sara Nelson, So Many Books, So Little Time: A Year of Passionate Reading. New York: Putnam Publishing Group, 2003.

"I have a New Year's plan: I'm setting out to read a book a week for the next year and write a diary of the experience," write Sara Nelson in her memoir So Many Books, So Little Time. But this book is much more than what she intended it to be. It reads like a memoir including interracial marriage, sibling rivalry, teaching an eight-year-old to hit a baseball, erotic literature, all these seemingly disparate elements of Nelson's life brought to bear on the art of choosing the next good read. By the end, Nelson admits, "[ ... ] for every moment that was exhilarating, there was one that was frustrating. For every reading experience that was edifying, there was one that was elusive. And just as I thought I had a handle on what I was doing and how important it all was, I realized I was as clueless as ever." But what a great read the year made for the rest of us.

Nelson begins the new year with a reading list and a plan "to read a lot of nonfiction, to pay attention to poetry, to fill in at least some of the holes in my [literature] education," but finds that by the end of week one even the best laid plans fall through. Nelson starts with Ted Heller's Funnymen but becomes distracted due to her physical location--a secluded Vermont lodge once inhabited by the exiled Russian thinker and writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn. As Nelson attempts to read Funnymen, she finds herself blending her present situation into the narrative of the novel. "But suddenly it's not so Funny. In the book, Heller is describing the honky-tonk vaudevillian atmosphere of a Catskills nightclub; I look up for a moment and see hard ground and bare, frozen trees. One character refers to the 'A-bomb' nature of the act because it 'kills' so well, and I wander into the Russian Orthodox chapel the author built for himself in the basement." Moments like this occur throughout the book as Nelson vividly draws us into her interior world of reading so we too can experience a year dedicated to reading--something most book lovers can only dream about.

Nelson breaks down the reading process into a humorous yet insightful bit of wisdom, "To wit: (1) Choosing a book is not all that different from choosing a house. There are really only three rules: location, location, and location. And (2) In reading, as in life, even if you know what you're doing, you really kind of don't." Many readers have had the experience of a great book in hand but find themselves in the wrong place, time, or mood to read past chapter one. Nelson succeeds in making universal experiences singular, creating a booklovers world where readers commiserate over the joys and frustrations of reading.

By week nine, Nelson encounters another unexpected situation and uses it to discuss how books affect friendships. In a half-serious, half-mocking tone she writes, "There comes a moment of truth in every new friendship, a moment after the initial bonding and sharing of life experiences, hopes, and fears, a moment when one or the other friend does something that could threaten the fragile bond that has been put in place between two imperfect but well-meaning souls. I had one of those moments this week. My new office friend, Mary, gave me a book." Nelson hesitates at this gesture. If she does not like the book, she dreads confessing that she does not like the book that her friend loved. Nelson knows it's a ridiculous worry but feels, "I should let it go, or reconsider my feelings about the book in question. But I end up reconsidering the friendship instead." Week nine is one of the many testimonies to the impact books have in our lives.

In a private moment, Nelson takes us behind-the-scenes of her marriage, describing how books helped her understand her relationship as a "privileged daughter of East Coast professionals" married to a Japanese-American husband. Nelson believes "read what you know," and in her push for Leo, her husband, to read literature about Japanese-Americans she insisted that he read David Mura's memoir, Where the Body Meets Memory, saying, "It's just like your family." Nelson then learns a lesson about reading experiences and what it is that does or does not attract us to books. It is her husband that forces this realization on her. "[Leo] said something that flies in the face of everything I thought I knew about reading, something that destroyed my whole theory of reading about what you know. 'Why should I read it?' he said. 'I don't need to. I lived it.'" Her engaging descriptions of somber topics like the internment camps ("The Yoshimura's, who were interned at Manzanar near Santa Ana California, always refer to this time as their years "at camp" as if they'd been shuffleboarding in the Adirondacks") as well as her humor about herself in forcing Leo to confront issues in an interracial marriage ("Maybe another, smarter woman would have let it go at that") keeps the tone light in the face of material that might otherwise be emotionally overwhelming.