I began a few weeks ago re-reading Great Expectations, but about halfway through I picked up My Ántonia, which I stopped halfway through to read A Visit from the Goon Squad. I finished the last one last night and began promptly again with My Ántonia. I’ve dubbed this the Inception method of book reading. A book inside a book inside a book. Well, would anyone write such a thing as one novel? I guess yes, since Frankenstein features that very tack. 

But why am I reading books like that—one book one day, another book the next—often without finishing either? I treat them like socks, perhaps, changing them daily instead of wearing them day in and day out until they’re threadbare and finished. 

Oh what am I talking about. Books and socks and socks and books and fox and sox and box and lox. Is a simile good for anything? 

I wonder sometimes if I read like that because a) I have no attention span, b) I, entirely unbeknownst to myself, dislike fiction books, or c) I have no self control and will hop onto anything that catches my eye. I certainly don’t change my socks for any of those reasons. I do think I loved Frankenstein for some of those reasons—always something new in that one! 

But when it comes to relationships I’m not like that at all. I can’t stand the quick turnover—the hopping from book to book of casual dating, I mean, and also the end of a relationship where there is love and a connection which ends before it’s threadbare and worn out, before every possibility is explored. That is called tragedy, perhaps, or maybe heartbreak.