The Curated Muse: Books I Want to Read

I’m a slow reader. I always have been. I like the idea of a book accompanying me – sometimes for years– their characters grow onto me like unexpected friends do, people you barely paid attention to initially who end up closer to your heart than any intense short lived infatuation. It’s how I felt about Virginia Woolf’s Night and Day which took me two years or The Outsiders (German original title: Die Rote Zora und ihre Bande) by Kurt Held which was lying on my bedside table for over four years. It’s not just that I remember passages more vividly due to the slow burn and occasional re-reading of a few pages as I would have to remind myself what happened but also remembering myself, the room I was mostly reading it in, the bed, the light coming through the window, all the different selfs that walked through the story.

When you’re a slow reader, there’s always more books on the nightstand than perhaps necessary. Always more books started or waiting in the library than finished ones in a…