Retrograde

Do you ever find yourself pining for the places and people in a book you read?

I do this all the time. All the time. Right now I'm pining for the Moors and Jamaica Inn, for brave Mary and the uncanny Vicar.

I've only read that book once. The problem arises when you succumb to the pining, and re-read. This, in turn, cements the pining, causing the need to re-read again. It becomes an addiction. It's terrible.

Books whose characters, situations, and often actual sentences for which I now pine almost continuously include:

• The Secret History
• Other Voices Other Rooms
• The Little Friend
• The City of Your Final Destination
• The Quiet American (actually, for all Graham Greene, as a sort of amorphous longing)
• Less Than Zero
• All the Pretty Horses

Interspersed with these longings are less clear-cut desires, just as strong: for the writings of Yann Martel, Aravind Adiga, Jared Diamond, Margaret Leigh, Rumer Godden.

They are with me always now. I think about these books, these authors, every day. Not all of them, but all of them in what I imagine must be a subconscious sequence that takes each in its turn over a period of, say, 10 or 14 days.

Thank god they're all in the house. Imagine where I'd be otherwise.