Sep 20
Does this ever happen to you?I’m having one of those experiences for which there is no word in English. I’d love to know if other languages have the perfect term to describe this feeling. I am being haunted by the book that I am reading.
I began a new book the other night, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. It’s not a constant attention, but periodically throughout my day (when I’m working, or doing something other than reading), I will flash back on the book. I can’t seem to get the landscape out of my head. It’s not a driving desire to find out what happens next; rather, it’s thinking about the scenes I’ve already taken in, and filling in the pieces that remain unwritten.
Okay, I’ll stop teasing
By writing about this now, I am breaking several of my self-imposed rules. First, I haven’t finished the book yet. Second, the book will not be published in the United States or United Kingdom for several months. By all rights, I should be holding off on this post. But I will tell you about it, especially since the book is already available in Australia. You will hear much more from me about this book closer to publication, I’m sure.
Things We Didn’t See Coming is a first collection of stories by Steven Amsterdam, a US-born writer currently living in Australia. The book has received fantastic reviews in Australia, and I expect the same reception when it’s published here. I suppose you could call it a post-apocalyptic book, but it somehow seems to surpass that label. The first story is set on the eve of Y2K, and we meet the main character as a young man; his family is packing up the car with supplies and rations that will help them weather the massive systems breakdown that the father believes will happen. The second story features the same young man, now a few years older. The world is very different; something has happened (we aren’t told what) and life has changed. And each story progresses forward in time, with massive alterations in the landscape and society, and with the same character at the center of each story. We see how he changes along with the world.
There are moments of light and humor in this book even amidst the bleak, and perhaps that is why I can think about it as I go about my day. I’ve been rationing my reading: a story a night. I’m savoring it as it haunts me.
So what do we call this experience?
I do wish that I had the perfect term to describe this feeling of living with the book throughout the day. Does this ever happen to you?
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We encourage you to write down or print out the title information and shop at your local bookstore. Titles link to LibraryThing, a social networking site that allows you to catalog your home library. LibraryThing also links to various online purchasing options. Here are the books from this post:
Things We Didn’t See Coming, Steven Amsterdam, Pantheon hardcover (tentative pub date February 2010)
Things We Didn’t See Coming, Steven Amsterdam, Pantheon hardcover (tentative pub date February 2010)
(all information is for the U.S. editions).image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/zyphichore/ / CC BY-NC 2.0
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I know that feeling. I want to push a book like that on everyone I see.
Oddly, I read four fantastic books this week. Has to be my best reading week ever. I want to push these books on everyone I see.
Adding your book to my wishlist. Thank you!
When a book haunts me? That’s a great book. Thanks for the advice; I also have this title on my wish list.
I love when a book affects me like that! Let’s see…I remember The Poisonwood Bible and She’s Come Undone both grabbing me like that so that I practically lived within them while I was reading them.
Thanks for the advanced heads up on this one!
Sue
I had that experience with The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox. I just couldn’t stop thinking about it. I hope someone comments with the a great way to describe it.
I’ll look out for Things we didn’t see coming, thanks for the recommendation.
That’s what happened to me when I read The Road. Have you read it? Yikes.
I read See Jane Run by Joy Fielding and the same reaction, this was 2 months ago and it still haunts me.
It was another post-apocalyptic book that had the same effect on me, THE LAST SHIP by William Brinkley. I was literally transformed into the world in the book, so much so, that my surroundings seemed trivial and unreal. I would look up from reading, and was confused about what was actual and what was imaginary. It was almost comparable to an out of body experience, it was so mesmerizing. Not a book for everyone; it requires the reader to endure the psychological processes of a character during the transformational episodes in the story, therefore a willingness to suspend one’s processes to those of the character is necessary for full effect. First published in 1988, when I read it. I would say now that in our post 9/11, fall of the Berlin wall world, one might not view the gravity of the circumstances in the book in quite the same manner, but I would venture to guess that reading it would still be potent.
That’s the greatest cimpliment you can pay to a writer. I recently was haunted by China Mieville’s “The City and the City.” It wasn’t the plot so much as the underlying premise — that as we go about our business, there are close-by parallel societies that we ignore.
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I just had that same experience with The Sparrow. I don’t know what it’s called, but I know what you mean.
Hmm, I love that feeling — you know it’s a great book when you can’t escape the characters and the conflict.
By the way, I came across your blog through BBAW. Congratulations on your awards!
This sounds like a fantastic book. I’d definitely like to read it when it’s released in the States. You’ll remind us, won’t you? The last book that hit me that way was Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. Great book!
Okay, so I have this great little book by Howard Rheingold called They Have a Word for It: A Lighthearted Lexicon of Untranslatable Words & Phrases, and I thought it might cover this. I found a couple words that might work:
1. Rasa is Sanskrit for “The mood or sentiment that is evoked by a work of art. [noun]” and “it is also used to describe something many cultures don’t have the words to describe: the thrill of aesthetic pleasure, powerful emotional resonance, and mood or sentiment evoked when a person experiences a work of art.”
2.Yoin (yoh-EEN) is Japanese, and perhaps a bit too esoteric, but it’s defined as “Experiential reverberation that continues to move you long after the initial external stimulus has ceased.” It’s also explained as being the word for “any kind of moving experience that causes profound emotional reverberations.”
Neither of these quite defines the phenomenon you mentioned of not being able to get a book out of your head, but I’ve found that books that stick with me like that tend to be ones that have made some sort of emotional impact, which I might be able to describe using one of the words above.
Also, congratulations on all your BBAW wins! You guys are awesome!
Things We Didn’t See Coming looks great and I love these heads up we get on good books.
I’ve read lots of books that have stayed with me and I wanted to press on people and say “read this”.
But haunted to me points to unease and I would say that Columbine truly haunted me. It literally gave me nightmares and I was so distracted while reading it, I had to put down another book and just finish it.
Dreamybee, I love you for finding those words! They both, in combination, seem to be close to what I want to express. Thank you!
Joanne, I agree that “haunted” isn’t really the right term for this one. I’ve heard much about Columbine, and look forward to reading it.
Thanks to all for your very thoughtful comments. I’m intrigued by the books that you mention that have given you a similar experience — I have read many of them, and see how they would do that. The rest, that I haven’t read, are now on my reading list.