January often feels to me like a slow, creaking return to routine, spent coming up with late New Year’s resolutions in my notes app and waiting for the days to finally get lighter and longer. Crucial to embracing those 4pm sunsets, pervasive self-improvement narratives, and confusion about what year it even is, is a set of good books to read. In particular, the works of John Williams, Patti Smith, and Paul Auster might provide refreshing perspectives to begin the year with.
A book which perfectly accompanies the return to normality and routine in January is John Williams’ Stoner, which injects beauty and meaning into the seemingly mundane life of a university teacher from rural Missouri. Williams offers a narrative which feels deeply real, scattered with moments of romance and drama, but ultimately propelled by the uncomfortable realities of life like regret, boredom, and embarrassment. Rather than being boring or uncomfortable, however, the narrative is deeply engaging as it peels back the hidden layers of meaning in ordinary relationships, interactions, and discomforts. Williams’s poetic prose demonstrates that a truly good book does not need an extraordinary subject matter, and that meaning and beauty reside as much in tiny, everyday experiences as they do in drastic life changes.
Another book I would recommend reading in January is Patti Smith’s Year of the Monkey. Beginning in the New Year 2016, the narrative guides you through Smith’s reflections and adventures throughout a single year. Unlike Stoner’s grounded realism, Year of the Monkey mixes memoir with magical realism, often blurring dream with reality in lyrical, poetic prose. It offers wise musings on grief, solitude, and political despair interwoven and counterbalanced with fantastical dreamscapes and visions. Altogether, this provides a new perspective on the world which refreshingly embraces the irrational, the magic, and the fantastical in an increasingly technological and rationalised world.
Finally, I would recommend a piece of moody, wacky detective fiction — City of Glass by Paul Auster. This is the perfect novel to devour on a gloomy January weekend, but it is not your typical detective novel. Full of existential questions and postmodern angst, City of Glass tackles knotty themes like identity, language, and authorship, packaged in witty prose which will entertain and perplex you. Hopefully, the wit and wisdom of Williams, Smith, and Auster can provide interesting perspectives to start the new year with. At a time when it can feel like the pressure of self-improvement is everywhere, books can offer new ways of looking at the world, providing a sense of renewal without the need for self reinvention.
Illustration Via Jessica Bolevin @jessicadaisyillustration for The Student