Time for literature

What are you reading? With all the books in the world that I would like to read one day, I still go through stretches where I am not actively reading any book. This is one of them. By my bedside I have The Brothers K by David James Duncan, which I have already read before, and which I am now reading aloud, slowly, with my partner, a few pages a night on those nights when we choose it over music or a crossword puzzle; Drawing Lessons from the Great Masters, by Robert Beverly Hale, which I love but read sporadically, a little at a time; What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, by Haruki Murakami, a memoir, half read for weeks now; and a few volumes of poetry. Most nights lately they sit unopened as she and I work on the Sunday New York Times or Boston Globe crossword puzzles.

I'm not sure why. This is, after all, midwinter, which is usually the ideal time to hunker down with a good book. It is not about opportunity: yesterday I had the entire day before me to do what I liked, and I did not chose to pick up a book. I cooked and did laundry, took a long walk with the dog, watched a movie, Out of Africa, on television, followed by the Super Bowl. It was a literary movie, and I loved it, just as I enjoyed The English Patient on film the night before. I had not seen either one of them before. Both movies were captivating, and it was easy to absorb them in visual terms, in only a few hours. But their basis was print: they required a memoir and a novel and written scripts to be realized on film.

The last book I read was a biography of John Cale, last month, during a trip to the Midwest (in it, John is described as a voracious reader, reading more than 500 books a year, on nearly any topic. He does not collect books, though, instead donating them annually to the New School). The last novel I read? The Tie That Binds, by Kent Haruf, but that was also read aloud. Before that, quietly, on my own? I cannot remember. The Comedians by Graham Greene, I think.

Though none of his novels made my deserted island list, Greene is one of my favorite authors, and I have have several of his sitting on my shelves, unread. Perhaps he can jump-start the process. (The 1950s Haiti Greene describes in The Comedians, by the way, is remarkably like the culture of corruption and instability I experienced there in the late 1990s, and makes me doubtful that the country can recreate itself in the aftermath of the January 12 earthquake, the latest in a series of human and natural disasters ranging from Papa Doc to Baby Doc to the massive, destructive 2008 floods. But that's another story).

It's not that I don't read. I thumb through at least two newspapers a day, and subscribe to several periodicals. I almost always read something from The New Yorker, which remains my favorite magazine, and I thoroughly enjoy many of its long feature stories. I read things online daily as well, although it is a kind of USA Today-style reading: short bits, amply illustrated.

I'm always picking up something to read, always looking up something. I write for a living, after all, and am a champion of the printed word. But like many of the other things we value or love to do, such as painting or exercise, reading literature is a discipline, a habit, and it is missing from my life just now.