I never used bookmarks when I was younger, because it never took much longer than a day or two for me to finish a book—never so long that I needed something to mark my page for later. My tenth-grade English teacher once said that a voracious reader is someone who reads while brushing their teeth, and that more or less describes what I was like then.
I read much more slowly now and only rarely while brushing my teeth, but there are still books that keep me up until midnight—long past my bedtime—and even later. Most recently those books have been the Dublin Murder Squad series by Tana French, the first of which, In the Woods, I read in late August. I couldn’t stop reading that book; I had to get to the bottom of the mystery. But I also saw how solving the murder was wrecking the narrator. The closer he came to the solution, the closer he came to completely falling apart, because he was implicated in the matter, for reasons he was keeping (inappropriately) secret from everyone but his partner. I was implicated, too, by giving my time to witnessing the unraveling of this character. It wasn’t pleasurable, really, but I couldn’t look away! I cared too much.
And then, of course, I had to read the next book in the series, in which a different narrator doesn’t quite unravel but certainly bungles the case although she solves it. She, too, is implicated in the matter.
And then, of course, I had to read the next book in the series. And so on.
The last book in the series, The Trespasser, is on its way to my local branch of the Brooklyn Public Library and will be in my hands soon. I am both eager and filled with apprehension, because once I’m done with that book, there is no next book to read.
And that is the paradox the voracious reader confronts again and again: the faster they read, the sooner there is nothing left to devour.
Get the books Check out the novels of Tana French at BMCC’s Library, the New York Public Library, the Brooklyn Public Library, or the Queens Public Library.
About the author Rachael Nevins is an adjunct librarian at BMCC and also a writer, voracious reader, and long-distance runner.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
